Wishing you all a warm and wonderful holiday season from Montana! We are enjoying living here so much! When we say, “just give us a call and come to visit”, we truly mean it. We weren’t together for Thanksgiving this year, so you’ll have to look on my blog for family photos to be taken when the kids are home over Christmas. My blog is : Messinamusings.com. It is a good place to keep up with our family and travels!
Rich sold his Play It Again Sports business to his longtime manager early this year. We now have a new business and passion, Crown Jewel Cruise Planners. If you want to plan a trip somewhere, whether it be a cruise, land tour, group travel, or a special event, give us a call. Rich joined the Whitefish Biz to Biz group and the Columbia Falls Chamber of Commerce to network and has met a lot of great businessmen and women in the Flathead Valley. He is still playing both hockey and poker a couple of times a week and plans on joining a hockey team in January. Rich has taken advantage of being 30 minutes from the ski slopes and already been skiing a few times. He loves being able to look out the window in the morning at the mountains and decide if he’ll pack up his gear and go snowboarding. Rich is still working as a volunteer firefighter in our rural fire district and will be attending the local fire academy in May of 2025.
Our Joe would have been 30 years old in November. We miss him like crazy, but being volunteer firefighters allows us to feel close to him when we are on calls. Joe makes sure hard days like birthdays, anniversaries, or holidays filled with calls, so we are with him, and he is with us. We attended his best friend’s wedding this fall to celebrate with them on his behalf. This summer we placed a park bench in Joe’s name in the town near us overlooking the fishing pond. We know Joe would love that spot. Michelle has moved to a new place closer to her work. It is a lovely home that seems to be the perfect place for her and the dogs. She remains active in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and even competed in her first meet this summer. We have seen her several times this year and are so happy Lily lives close so we can see both of our girls. We are so proud of Michelle – for the work she does and the woman she is – beautiful inside and out.
Tim is 28 and in his second year at the University of California San Diego, where he is the head sports performance coach for their women’s basketball team. We went to watch him work and his team play in Colorado just before Thanksgiving. It’s fun to watch him do the job he loves. Tim has been out to Montana a few times and seems to enjoy our new home and the area where we live. We enjoy seeing him on ESPN+ when his team plays. Tim is enjoying living in San Diego and we plan to see him in January when we are there for our travel advisor business. He played in a 3-on-3 basketball league with some friends this fall and his team came in 2nd. Tim is always looking to advance, so he may be living somewhere else in my next Christmas letter. We shall see! We are so proud of him and the work he does for his college athletes!
Lily is in her sophomore year at the Kansas City Art Institute and really flourishing there. She is majoring in illustration and minoring in entrepreneurship. Lily and her best friend from high school live in a duplex together and seem to be enjoying life on their own. It is always fun to visit them to see how they have decorated their place. Lily continues to make elaborate costumes for the anime conventions she and her friends go to a couple of times a year. Her creativity knows no bounds! While home in Montana for the summer, she worked at a local plant nursery in production. It seemed to be a good fit for her. She is hoping they will have a spot for her this coming summer. Lily gets a pretty long break over the holidays, so we are going to enjoy blaring the Wicked Soundtrack and baking together. She’ll get to go skiing with her dad a couple of times as well. Lily is growing into such a wonderful young woman. We can’t believe she’ll be 20 the week after Christmas! We are very proud of her!
As for me, I have been busy! I love living in rural NW Montana where Carhart anything, work boots, and plaid flannel reign supreme for everyday wear. I have found my people! This year I decided to use my nursing background at the fire department, and in early 2024 got my EMR. I realized I found my calling, so I went right into EMT training. I am currently the Quick Response Unit Coordinator, in charge of the medical folks at our rural volunteer fire department. It’s a big job, but I enjoy the great group I work with. I have rekindled my love for learning and gone to a lot of EMS seminars and trainings. One of my favorites was the Crisis Intervention Team Academy with the Flathead County Sheriff’s department. I am also lecturing at our Catholic Church and volunteering there when I can. I belong to a group of nine grieving moms I have become close with via zoom and was happy to meet several of them in person this year, traveling to Canada. I also belong to a book club made up of local cancer patients/survivors. I look forward to those meetings! Although I still have stage IV cancer, I remain stable and active and thankfully have the ability to travel quite a bit.
So travel….I travelled to 13 countries between May and October. Rich travelled to 11. We hadn’t planned to be gone so much this year, but the opportunities kept popping up and we took them! Our biggest trip was 5 weeks long. The first half was spent on a safari in Tanzania and Kenya. (So cool!) Trip of a lifetime doesn’t even cover it! I took over 4000 photos on that trip. (again, see my blog for photos!) We are already looking to go back and visit other African countries in May/June ’26. We are going to get a group together for this trip, so let us know if you want to come! The 2nd half of that 5 week trip was a European river cruise. Rich fell in love with Vienna, and I fell in love with Budapest, so we’d like to go back and visit the lower Danube someday. We went back to Europe a few weeks later with Rich’s siblings, going on a central Med cruise and then touring Sicily for 6 days. It was crazy seeing the name Messina on signs all around us! Although we spent a lot of time out of the country this year, we also travelled in the U.S. to Missouri, Florida, South Carolina, Nebraska, Colorado, and Texas. We were able to spend time with both sets of parents this year more than once, which we were happy about. We will be announcing group trips for 2025 and 2026 soon, so if you want to travel with us, keep in touch. We’d love to have you come with us to Africa, South America, to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro with Rich, or cruise with us in Europe. Come travel with us!
As we continue our journey through the Advent season to Christmas, we pray you and your families are well and enjoying a beautiful season. We have so much to be thankful for in our lives despite some pretty rough going the last several years. We truly do want you to come and visit! We would love to show you around Glacier National Park and pamper you in our home. Just give us a call or send us a text and we’ll put you on our calendar! Let us remember all of those who have gone before us who will be greatly missed this season. Let us also keep our military, law enforcement, firefighters, and first responders in our daily prayers. Sending you all loads of love and warm wishes!
Rich & Cyndi
Rich’s info:
messinar@hotmail.com
Rich.messina@cruiseplanners.com
(m) 402-659-2012 
406-215-2115 http://www.messinamusings.com
Cyndi’s info:Huskermomof3@yahoo.com Cyndi.messina@cruiseplanners.com (m)402-686-0975
Messina Musings 