“Life is Just a Tire Swing”
Jimmy Buffet (1974)

Jimmy Buffet wrote those words in 1974, yet (with all due deference to my Parrot-head buddies) science still has not firmly established just exactly which piece of playground equipment that life is actually like. For example, it may be that it is more like a teeter-totter (having its ups and downs), while another camp believes that the data suggest that life is like a merry-go-round (i.e., the so-called Billy Prestonites, who believe that life goes around in circles). Those of us who have accumulated a certain number of years may lean towards the slide theory of playground equivalence, which states that you spend the first half of your life climbing, only to find that the view from the top isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be, and worse — it’s all downhill from there.

Personally, I tend to believe that life is like the monkey bars — you spend half your time wondering how in the heck you got here in the first place. And the other half hanging on for dear life.

Regardless of which theory best describes this thing called life, it’s been a tough year in the playground for many this year — all the more reason we feel blessed to have had such a fine year in the Butner-Stephens household (and in our ever-growing network of branch offices).

As has been our family custom, the chore falls to me to enumerate these blessings in words and pictures, and (I’ve been urged) to do so in a way that navigates those fine gradients between sharing and showboating, between telling and tedium.

This year, in part because I’ve become an increasingly visual thinker in recent years (but mostly because I remain, basically, lazy), I thought I’d tell the tale of our year in photos. Ten of them, in fact, as the title of this post suggests. So let’s get going….

#1 and #2: Sean’s Wedding

no, Sean did NOT have the lipstick on his face during the ceremony

Laura helps Sean get beautiful for his wedding photos.

August 22, 2009 was a pivotal date this year, sort of the emotional, logistical and geographical center of gravity, if you will, for the family. On that date, our youngest son, Sean, married the former Ms. Lucie Saindon in the town of Seymour, WI — HOME OF THE HAMBURGER! — just a bit west of Green Bay. Lucie and Sean met while at Thomas More College, and by the time their sophomore semester in Rome was over, it was clear that they belonged together. At the end of their junior year, they had both decided to conclude their undergraduate education at the University of Wisconsin at Green Bay, with the significant fringe benefit of being near to Lucie’s large and very friendly family, who, as far as we can tell, comprise a statistically significant fraction of Wisconsin’s 5.5 million residents.

Laura, Ryan and I made our way(s) back to Wisconsin — Laura and Ryan by air, me in the aged Mazda Protege I’ve driven since 1999 (the idea being that we’d either give it to Sean and Lucie when I arrived, or it would break down in, say, Bismark ND — stranger things have happened — and we’d no longer have to worry about it).

The car made it to Green Bay, where we understand it is surviving the Wisconsin winter. Along the way, I had the opportunity to visit a few of my friends (including breakfast with MHS classmate, Rich Sherlock) — and to fit in fishing expeditions on the Missouri River in Montana (thanks, Ben!), and the Tomorrow River near Amherst, WI (thanks, Michael & Karin!).

But this is one case where the journey is secondary to the destination — and when Laura, Ryan and I reconvened in Seymour, we found the Saindons to be a charming bunch. Sean married well, and the wedding itself was beautiful — the reception dispelling some of those stereotypes of midwesterners as staid, reserved folks who can’t or won’t cut loose (i.e., my kind of people!). We were fortunate enough to be joined in Wisconsin by my sister Leslie (aka “Lolly”) and her son Andrew.

As if the wedding were not enough of a landmark, in October the newlywed couple announced that they were expecting our first grandchild — at this writing gender still undetermined — with a due date in mid or late June.

The idea of being grandparents is still sinking in. The idea of getting old no longer carries much novelty — the realization that our diaper changing days are not completely over is the part that is hard to accept.

If you want to see more of Sean and Lucie’s wedding pictures, click here.

#3. Ryan buys a house

Ryan (with some help from dad) refinished the wood floors in three rooms and a hallway. They look absolutely gorgeous!

Meanwhile, closer to home, Ryan — our oldest — has started to show some workaholic tendencies like his father once displayed, but is by all accounts doing well in his new job as an energy policy analyst at PNNL (the same Lab where I work). We even had the surreal experience of working on a report together — an analysis of the environmental impacts of tar sands.

The nerd doesn’t fall far from the tree, I guess.

In July, Ryan took the plunge and became a home owner, taking advantage of a buyer’s market and low interest rates. He bought a small (900 square foot) home in Richland, approx. 1.2 miles from our house — we know this distance well, because we have made the trip dozens of times helping Ryan renovate the home before he moves in. A target move-in date of Labor Day became Halloween, became Thanksgiving; now on the day after Christmas, New Year’s seems like a realistic goal — but the house is looking better with each weekend’s effort — new paint, newly refinished wood floors, new tile and fixtures in the bathroom, new electrical fixtures throughout, and as I write this, the new tile floor in the kitchen is about 40% complete and new appliances are stacking up in the living room, waiting to be installed.

It’s like watching a flower bloom in slow motion — very, very slow motion. But like a flower, it’s a beautiful thing.

More pictures of Ryan’s house, you say? Of course!

#4 & 5. Laura and I visit Vienna

We'll be dreaming of this white Christmas for years to come!

much of our navigation of the city took place underground, in Vienna's fabulous subway system. Once in a while, though we'd get around on trolley, for a little closer view.

As some of you know, I tend to travel a lot for work — but for the most part, the destinations aren’t exactly exciting enough to entice Laura into skipping work to accompany me. But just before Christmas this year, Laura set aside her subbing to accompany me on a business trip to Vienna, Austria — where I participated in a technical workgroup meeting for the IAEA. The meeting concluded the day before our 28th wedding anniversary, and the lure of visiting Vienna the week before Christmas just seemed too much to pass up — so she accompanied me and spent 3 days seeing the city with the sister of one of my colleagues while I attended meetings — then we hit the town together, visiting art museums and ducking snowflakes.

There’s really no other way to describe Vienna at Christmas time than “magical” — the pictures below just barely hint at the charm of this city. I hope to return soon, and often. I suspect that talking Laura into going along will not be much of a problem.

Until then — here’s more pictures of Vienna.

#6. Drifting the Owyhee River w/ Brother Bill and Friends

4 without: engines, cell phones, deadlines, other people, or starbucks. Even better than it sounds!

I usually pepper these annual letters with tons of fishing pictures — but this year I didn’t get a chance to fish very often. A busy work schedule, too many conflicting obligations after work, and a sore shoulder all combined to keep me off the river. Not to mention, the retirement of my long-time fishing buddy, Vern, had the paradoxical effect of giving us fewer fishing opportunities, not more — supporting the theory that people get busier in retirement than they ever were in their career days.

Still, I took a few trips, and one of them was a once-in-a-lifetime drift down the Owyhee River (located in far eastern Oregon) with my brother Bill, and our friends Jeff Davis, Rhonda Price and Dave Tucker. Rhonda and Dave run Dreams on the Fly guide service, and invited the rest of us to accompany them on a scouting trip down this very remote section of river. Four days and nearly 50 miles of river — much of it at the bottom of 2,000 foot canyons — were our reward, and words barely begin to describe the trip. Which is why I am providing a link to http://www.flickr.com/photos/rs_butner/sets/72157621084353706/show/, an extended tale about the trip, and Jeff’s masterful video of the trip — and I promise, this is not your average home movie!

#7. Family Reunion(s)

To say that Joni dotes on her grandson is something of an understatement -- but he IS a cutie!

We didn’t have any big family reunions this year, but I did make an effort to touch bases with various far flung parts of the family where I could. Perhaps most notably was a delightful visit with my cousin Joni down in San Bruno, CA in April, squeezed in between meetings at the National Environmental Partnership Summit which was held in nearby San Francisco. At Joni’s suggestion — it never takes much convincing — I brought some camera gear with me and photographed her grandson Colton.

Towards the end of the year, I also caught up with my uncles Dick and Gordon up in Arlington (where Dick is a city councilman, though it didn’t get me the key to the city). During the year I get lots of little political jabs from both of them via e-mail, which I enjoy, but it’s always more fun to just get together and share old stories, and hear some new ones about my family.

More family pictures, here.

#8. Old Farts Keep the Tradition Alive

from left: me, Brad M., Ozie G., Vern C., and Keith K.

For the past several years, a collection of my old high school friends and I have got together on the Yakima River to fish and tell stories together. This year, we had a change of venue, and added a true old fart, as Vern accompanied me up to Avery, ID where we met with Ozie, Brad, and Keith to spend a couple of days fishing the beautiful St. Joe river. Keith had bid on the opportunity to spend the night in the ranger’s cabin far up the river, so we overnighted in style — the first time I’d slept in a bunk bed in many years. Middle aged guys, chili and hot dogs for dinner…I probably don’t need to draw you a picture of how that evening played out.

More of the St. Joe and the old farts…

#9. Old Friends

From left: Jerry Scheffler, Vernita Corbin Benedict, Lesley White, Ozie Greene, Sherri Malek, Craig Hilt, Shawn Hicks, Colleen Dempsey, Dave Van Beek, Scott Butner

In 2009, I continued in my highly improbable role as social coordinator/cheerleader/mid-life guidance counselor and bad role model for my high school senior class — a self-appointed task that I took on a few years ago so that we’d have a 30th reunion, and found that I could not stop doing it once I started because the fringe benefits are just too good to pass up.

Chief among those benefits are the often warm, sometimes touching e-mails I get from friends that shared my childhood with me — another is the opportunity to get together with them from time to time, in small groups as the opportunity and mood strikes us. I’m happy to report that there is usually a minimal amount of reminiscing over “the old days” and a lot of catching up on what’s happened since.

This year, an added highlight was being involved in a fun little reunion of the “kids” (now all officially old farts) who grew up along Upper Ridge Road in Everett. We met at fellow Upper Ridge Road alumni Gemma Bell’s house — Gemma still lives on the ridge — and it was fun to share experiences with people who literally shaped my childhood.

More pictures of old friends here.

#10. Scott Steps it up a Notch

During 2009, I made a real effort to improve my skills in photoshop, which added a little drama to some of my pictures.

I have really been enjoying photography again, after a long hiatus — and in 2009, bumped up my level of passion for the hobby, and began to take it a little more seriously as an eventual retirement plan. I ended up doing a lot of photos for other people, which was fun because it pushed me well outside of my comfort zone in many ways. I took on magazine assignments on everything from ice fishing to “body art,” did family photos, portraits, maternity pictures — you name it, I probably shot pictures of it.

I still look at photography primarily as something I do for myself, but increasingly my favorite pictures include photos I shot for someone else. Here’s a collection of some of my favorites from the last year.

There’s still lots of fun things about the year that won’t fit in 10 pictures of course — the retirement of two of my best friends from work, road trips to Portland and to Missoula to see weddings of friends, our own remodeling project which has just gotten underway….

But I hope this glimpse into our year provided some cheer.

We always welcome hearing from friends and family — our mailing address is 1319 Stevens Drive, Richland, WA 99354 — we can forward mail to Ryan and Sean — or better yet, we’re online so contact us that way:

• Scott (scott_butner[at]charter.net; facebook)
• Laura (laura_stephens[at]charter.net; facebook, too! )
• Ryan (rsbutner[at]gmail.com; facebook, three)
• Sean (verbose[at]gmail.com; also on facebook!)