I can hardly believe that another year is almost over. We hope this finds you and your family doing well. We have had another busy year. Don is still contracting with Royal Caribbean and loves it. He is a software engineer in their Linux infrastructure department. He started with a two month contract, but will be there for three years in February.

Raising two daughters has its challenges, but also brings times of unspeakable joy. Our days are filled with carefully arranged Beanie Boos [2], soccer practice [3], and father-daughter dances [4].

Sarah and Rachel finished 6th grade [11] strong, and moved on to the 7th grade this year. We are still homeschooling them. They have been in a group called Classical Conversations for the last 4 years. They do fun things like dress up as the historical characters they are learning about. [6]. They continue to do fun field trips, like visiting a water treatment plant. [8]

They moved up to their middle school program called Challenge A. [18] It lives up to its name! The girls are learning the classical learning model. They have ventured into Latin this year and have done quite well. They are both in the American Heritage Girls group, which is a Christian based scouting group. [10, 19, 20] We have had several camping trips such as doing a canoeing trip down the Peace River digging for fossils. [1] That was such fun. They have both been riding horses this year. [7]

I still keep quite busy homeschooling them. But I have gotten one day a week to myself while they are in Classical Conversations. That has been such a blessing. I have been able to get several projects done around the house. My family gave me a trip to Philadelphia this spring to see my cousin and work on genealogy all by myself. I had such a good time. You would think I had discovered everything by now, but I am amazed what records and information I still uncover each time.

Don enjoyed the fruit of the girls' labor in cake-decorating class [12].

We went on another fantastic road trip this summer. Our plan was to visit St. Louis, including the museum of Western Expansion. Due to trouble with our van, we never made it. Instead we had a totally unplanned visit to Nashville, TN. We saw the Parthenon replica [13], which contains a gold-clad statue of Athena [14]. We stayed downtown and were walking distance from the Country Music Hall of Fame [15, 16].

Don and Rachel went on another unusual adventure - ziplining underground at the Mega Cavern in Louisville, KY. [17]

In October, Don's brother Michael went home to be with the Lord. He had been sick for quite sometime. We were able to visit him this summer while he was still doing pretty well. We all gathered in Tennessee for his funeral, which is the group in the photo on our Christmas card. (The group is missing our nephew Mark's kids though.) I can't remember when we all got together last. It was such a sweet time to remember Michael. He will be so missed by us all.

We had a chance to meet Robert Amaya, the actor who played the hilarious Javier in the movie Courageous [22]. Somehow, Don got bamboozled into letting the girls get a pet rabbit, named Spirit. [21, 24]

This year my brother Steve and his wife Marilou moved to North Carolina. We were sad to see them go. They have always wanted to live in a cooler climate. We got to visit them this summer and love where they moved to. Steve loves to garden. The previous owner was a gardener and he has had such fun discovering all kinds of new plants in his yard. Don's cousin Pam was also living down here. She moved to North Georgia to get out of the Florida heat. So now we don't have any family down here. We miss them all so much!