2008, First Edition

Allison came home one day in January to inform me of a 2% opportunity she might have for a work assignment in India. After a good laugh (like that’ll ever happen!), we traveled to St. Augustine, Florida to visit with Allison's brother Dean & family & to tour Kennedy Space Center. We had a great visit with Dean, Tara, and their boys Matthew and Zachary. The cousins enjoyed walking on the beach, going to the park, and feeding the sea birds through the trap doors in the restaurant. Larrie entered spiritual ground at Kennedy, having grown up with the space missions. Walking the Saturn V moon rocket, and the memory of doing it, gives me shivers.

February was spent preparing for our trip to South America in March where we sailed from Santiago, Chile around the horn of SA to the Falklands, Montevideo, Uruguay, and into Buenos Aries, Argentina. We made this trip with Allison's folks, who still had one more cruise in them. Rounding the horn in gale force winds, we decided that living that close to a pole was not in our future. Jessie immensely enjoyed the Land Rover excursion through the peat bogs of the Falkland Islands, and Larrie came to understand a little about his great uncle Bob, who went to Argentina in 1926 to find fossils for the Peabody Museum in Chicago.

In the winter months, Jessie decided she wanted to try ice skating, and she had a lot of fun with it. She is the resident Minnesotan as she likes skating, skiing, and swimming in lakes and rivers. Jess waited all winter for a cabin trip to try skating on the pond, which was dissapointing due to snow crusting, but during a summer trip to the cabin Jess went swimming in Lake Superior, which was actually warm enough to swim in, but still pretty nippy.

May brought more travel visiting Larrie’s family in Vernal, UT. Larrie's uncle Lawrence turned 95, and most of the clan gathered for the first time in a long time to visit on the home grounds of the Thornes. May ended with a bang over Memorial Day when our house suffered hail damage requiring extensive roof and siding repairs. Also, the possibility of moving to India went from 2% to 95% causing great discussion about the future and did we really want to go to India.

Once the decision was made to move to India, the summer was spent preparing the house for sale (it is now sold – another story), throwing away 13 years of stuff (hard on Larrie), dealing with street replacement in the neighborhood, going to the cabin for R&R (which is now a storage facility), taking Jess camping, and preparing mentally, physically, and materially for the move to India.

Summer was also spent with Jessie in soccer, which she also enjoyed. She is a natural player, and she continues to play at school here in India.

We’re now bona fide residents of the state of Karnataka, India for the next two years. We left the US on Sep 24 arriving Bengaluru on the 26th after a grueling 20 hour flight. Living in a suburb East of Bengaluru, our home has a producing banana tree, and we’ve developed a garden on the roof. The "boys", Jac & Ti joined us at the end of Oct and, the “girls” are living large in Butte with Al’s folks. Our sea shipment arrived in early Dec - we are complete!

We have visited a few spots close to Bengaluru. Our first sojourn was to Mysore to see the palace. We have also visited Banerghatta park and Nandi Hills. Please read about our experiences in India in our blog KarnatakaTabbies. Also, please follow the PicasaWeb link for our photo albums.

Our family celebrates the holiday season by connecting with our families and friends to celebrate the joy of living that is human. This year we will be apart from family and friends for the first time. We will be spending the holiday in the state of Kerala in Southern India. It’s a little hard to get geared up for the holidays when it’s 75, sunny, the palms are swaying, and the doves are cooing.

As you are aware, human kind across the world are suffering. Financial recession, war, and terrorism are in the headlines each and every day. All the more reason to keep in touch and to share with each other our experiences so that we celebrate how we have lived. We have sent email to all of our acquaintances.

So, if you haven't heard from us, please send an email to

Note: WE HAVE A NEW EMAIL ADDRESS: ThorneInIndia@gmail.com

Let's make sure not to lose the most precious of human connections, our family and friends!

Happy Holidays From the Thornes In India

Allison, Jessica, Larrie And (of course) the boys, Jac & Ti