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DEECOMPRESSION
About Dee
PersonalMy life is my family and friends, and it seems that I've been doing a lot of living! Here's a Quick Chronology: Denise Elizabeth Walsh (Dee) Parents - Sisters, from oldest to youngest - -Raised at "home base" at 349 Park Street, Vienna, Virginia. -Moved to Rome, Italy 1964-68. Attended the Overseas Schools of Rome Elementary School. -Attended Wolftrap Elementary School in Vienna (home of the famous "Arbor Day speech"!) -Spent a wonderful year in Frankfurt Germany, 1973-74. -Went on to Joyce Kilmer Middle School (Where I actually first got interested in health care, via the mentoring program for students with mental and physical handicaps...) -Marched through four years at James Madison High School (where I
managed to squeak in some English, science, math and language courses on
top of the all-important marching band, jazz band, symphonic band,
and orchestra!) Here I met some of the folks that would help to
shape my life, including my "adopted" family
through the exchange program American
Field Service - -In 1978, something amazing occurred - I met Bucky Walsh. Being that I'm a spur-of-the-moment kind of person, I decided - finally! - to marry this incredible person in 1982.... and now we are celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary! (Click on photos to enlarge, and hit your "back" button to return to the page.)
-And a more current photo, with a bit more gray to prove that we have
been
the parents of teenagers! -From 1982 to 1999, I worked at the UVA Medical Center full-time in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and the Burn Center, and in Orthopedics part-time, in roles ranging from staff nurse to head nurse to nursing manager to grant coordinator to seminar coordinator to... you name it, I did it! I also worked for a short while with PRA International part-time. (Bucky has worked with PRA since the early 80's...) -And during this time, the BEST thing in my life happened!!! Our children were born in the late 1980s - First Liz, and then Mason. Life got wild then.... -In 1993-94, we had a wonderful experience living in Hockenheim, Germany, while Bucky was assigned to the PRA Mannheim office. The kids did a great job adjusting to German schools, and we made lots of new friends and renewed our ties with old friends, like Robb Knapp and his family in Ebensee, Austria! (Click here for photos - soon!) -In the mid-90's, I stayed busy with work and doing the all-so-vital PTO-mom thing, keeping up our house in Ivy, Virginia, mothering an old beagle-hound and two kids, and staying in touch with friends as best I could... (Click here for a test photo - I'm still figuring this out!) -In 1998, we moved from Ivy to a new development just north of Charlottesville called Forest Lakes South, which offers the kids the opportunity to walk or bike to pools, schools, and neighbors homes... it was hard to give up our mountain views, but the trade-offs were worth it! -As the kids hit the teen years, I started going gray,
and decided to cut my hair (before it went totally white!) and donate it
to Locks of Love,
which is a group that makes wigs for sick children. I
encourage you to donate, too, if your hair is long enough - just 12 or 13
inches is needed! -I graduated in 2001 from the Virginia School of Massage, and I've started a therapeutic massage practice here in Charlottesville. Massage is something that "I've always wanted to do", and I'm really pleased to have the opportunity to spend time with folks one-on-one! (If you want to hear more about it, click on over to my "professional" page.) -Most of the family got together in early June 2001 for a wonderful
event - the marriage of Eileen and David Fullerton! Best wishes to
the bride and groom - enjoy the photos! -In December of 2001,we spent a wonderful holiday in Brumunddal, Norway, visiting with old friends. The kids went skiing and snowboarding on Olympic-grade slopes (remember the `94 Lillihammer Olympics??) and I even ventured into cross-country skiing! The weather was cold, cold (-25 Celsius/-13 Fahrenheit!), but the homes were warm, and there was lots of good food and fine company to keep us fueled up against the weather! New Year's Eve was an incredible event, with terrific meals and spirits and fantastic home-grown displays of fireworks ALL over the town! We enjoyed ourselves thoroughly, and are very thankful to have such kind and open-hearted friends - we felt welcome in every home we visited!
-In January of 2002, we got back into the swing of life in Cville, and in February, Mason won his division in the Beltsville Judo Tournament, while the girls went back to visit friends in Hockenheim, Germany for a long weekend.
2002 brought us a lot of joy - In addition to the trips to Norway and Germany, we headed as a family to Hawaii in June and Bucky and I enjoyed a cruise to the Caribbean, courtesy of PRA as a thank-you for a job well done. Liz started at The Covenant School in the 10th grade, and Mason was the "Big Man on Campus" as an 8th grader at Sutherland Middle School. We were blessed by good health, a harmonious family life, and the company of lots of good friends in this year. (Sorry about being so slack in posting photos, but... I'm happy to say the the massage business has been good, and that has been keeping me hopping!) Who knows what happened in `03, but if you really want the scoop, check out Liz's Holiday letters from 2004 and 2005! 12/2005: In a nutshell: Liz graduated from Covenant School with all kinds of honors and is studying NURSING at Clemson University in South Carolina. Her blood now runs orange. Mason is working ever-so-hard in his Junior Year at Albemarle High School, and is looking hard at college prospects. He still works at Dips N' Sips and spent the entire summer working as a helper on a construction site, too. I think he sleeps once in a while, but I wouldn't attest to it. My massage business was going great guns until my back blew out in June of `05, but somehow I managed to stick with the travel plans for the last half of the year, which included a trip to Norway with my folks for Anne Kari and Geir's 25th wedding anniversary, a cruise to Alaska with the whole family and in the delightful company of close friends, a three week stint in China to study Tuina (Chinese manual therapy), and a cruise with Bucky in October to round out the season. Bucky, on the other hand, still travels for for work all the time, and suffice it to say, he is a great sport about sharing his frequent flier miles!and.... 2006! As of July 2007, it's already been a banner year in the Walsh Household! Pops turned 90 in April, and took the entire Hitt Family (himself, Mom, 5 daughters and 4 sons-in-law) on a romp to Tuscany, Florence and Rome for a week - what a blast! I guess there's a reason we call him our "Energizer Bunny"! This Spring, we started building our dream-home in Earlysville - fun! "Blue View" has been suggested for a name - sounds good to me! The other big news is that Mason graduated from Albemarle High School and is headed toward an exciting time at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia, where he'll be studying Political Science and participating in the President's Leadership Program. He's also bought himself two knee surgeries in early 2007: a menisectomy on the right, and an ACL repair on the left.... what a trooper! Bucky and I went to China in October 2007 to celebrate our 25th anniversary! We visited Beijing (and the Great Wall), XiAn (Terra Cotta Soldiers), Chong Qing, the Three Gorges via a Yangtze River cruise, Yi Chang, and Shanghai! Here are links to many, many pix - with my apologies for poor lighting and filtering. The weather was marginal, and our UV filter was smashed in transit, but... we had a great time and many happy memories! China October 2007 - Cool Places and .... Things China October 2007 - More Cool Places and .... Things China October 2007 - People in "The Group" China October 2007 - Cool People - "The Locals" China 2005 Favorites – a few from my previous trip to China In December of 2007, I headed to Chicago for a quick weekend to visit with our dear friends Amy and Duncan, and Robb Knapp - who was on business from Austria! Photos from this (quick and fun and COLD) trip are here! In early 2008, we went to the Poconos to celebrate Pops' 91st.... a little closer to home than his 90th birthday celebration! I also visited my friend Doug in Salt Lake City in the Spring, and had just a great time. It's a beautiful city, filled with lovely people and places. AND my week was filled with beautiful harp music, too! Photos (lots of photos!) here. We moved to Blue View in July of 2008, whoo-hoo! August was a bit slower-paced as Bucky tore his distal biceps tendon and had it surgically repaired. His brace is reminiscent of a Borg-like hybrid, that's for sure! Then we headed to Norway in September to help Anne Kari and Geir celebrate their 50th (and 51st!) birthday milestones! Click here for pix of our trip, which included driving through several fjords in addition to our visit to Brumunddal. Fun! THANKSGIVING 2008 was super-duper-extraordinarily fun! We not only had Thanksgiving together, but many folks came on Wednesday and Friday nights, too, so we really got a chance to visit and catch up, which was great - AND we all had a chance to celebrate sister Cyn's birthday, too! We gave it the name "Bennett-Hitt" reunion, as most of the players are descended from, or in some way related to, the Bennett side (cousins Pam Hitt, Carryl Howell, and Sue McElroy) and the Hitt Papa (Glenn). We had 52 celebrants for dinner, and folks came from all over: Norway, California, Missouri, Illinois, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Kentucky, AND Virginia! Photos can be seen by family and friends in unlisted Picasa albums - just email me if you want the passwords to view them! Here's the synopsis in the Christmas Letter from 2008! February 2009 ushered in a whirl-wind trip to Munich with my dear friend Janette. I visited with her lovely family and an old friend from Hockenheim, and was made to feel so very welcome! Check out the pix - many of which are of "Hunde-Babies": Puppies! In May and June, Bucky and I joined his parents, Alice and Bill Walsh, for a lovely trip to Alaska. We went into the Denali National Park and Preserve, and then on a small 80-passenger ship though much of the Pacific "Inside Passage". Along with lots of human wild-life, we saw bears (Grizzly and Brown), moose, caribou, dozens of eagles, wolves, Dall sheep, mountain goats, ptarmigans (the state bird, no less!), dozens of eagles, ravens the size of small cars, snow-shoe hares and red squirrels (the "fast food" of the tundra! ;-), ..... big breath!....... humpback whales, sea lions, otters, Dall porpoises, puffins, falcons, owls, a wide variety of seagulls, and... yes, you guessed it! Dozens of eagles! We enjoyed riding the domed train to Denali, and during the cruise, Nana and Cap astounded us all by jumping (several times!) into inflatable rafts for "close-up looks" at the fjords, flora, and fauna. It was a thoroughly enjoyable trip, and if you'd like to look at way-too-many photos, check these out: http://picasaweb.google.com/deecompression/Alaska2009Fauna#
http://picasaweb.google.com/deecompression/Alaska2009People#
Whoa! Half a year passed in a flash! I'll let Liz tell you all about it in her Christmas 2009 Newsletter!
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