by Dear Family and Friends:
So it’s 3 AM Christmas morning, all of the presents are wrapped, and no one is stirring, not even the dogs. No one save one poor chump with an inopportunely-timed case of allergy-induced insomnia. Earlier this evening Jake released his Christmas letter, no doubt certain that his would be the last to be published. But it is not to be – once again I will be the last to finish what I’ve only now begun.
At a time like this, cheat notes about the year just passed would come in handy, but who saves the little tidbits that make for interesting year-in-review fodder? Actually, it turns out that Facebook is good for something after all – the Timeline! Since FB knows all and sees all, I may as well get some value out of it, for once!
Looking back at 2016, in January Monica and I took up the game (sport?) of Geocaching. Despite the organization’s web site being almost tragically bad, it is a fun game and has led us to a new neat finds, including a super-cool bamboo forest in College Station. Who knew? In all we’ve found 138 caches, which puts us past the “magic snob number”, and hidden 7 of our own. These are in constant disrepair, it seems – keeping one’s caches in working order requires a certain commitment, entropy being what it is, so adding to the Dynasty is done sparingly.
February was notable for the purchase of “The Big Chair”, which has cushioned us during many hours of non-productive butt-sitting!
Contrary to the commentary in the picture, Monica does get to sit on it regularly! I’ll report that 2016 saw us sitting side-by-side through all 200+ episodes of That 70’s Show, among other Netflixed content. We had many a laugh together and often with David, too.
In March Monica and I took a short driving vacation through east Texas, stopping in Nacogdoches and Lufkin to see the sights. Speaking of geocaching, here’s one of us at Mission Tejas State Park:
In April we took a family trip to Austin to see my cousin Kristen get married. While there we were able to briefly catch up with the Moore side of the family at the reception and wedding, including Dad and Sharon, Andy and Vera, Ann and Lee, Kristen and Brucek, Erin, and even Jessica. While there, Monica and I tried Cuban food for the first time and liked it, along with what must be the national drink of Cuba, the Mojito!
May was a very eventful month! First, I turned 50 and the less said about that the better!
Then, only a couple of weeks later, Jake married Amberly Carey and started his new life with this little ol’ gal. She is something special!
June went by in a blur as I was finishing up a 6-month-long leadership class for work and getting going on an Operating Systems development class for academic credit. Meanwhile, Monica worked at IMBC’s VBS and other non-teaching activities and Dave spent the first part of the summer working at Chik-fil-A.
In July, Monica and I took off for another, longer driving vacation. We invited ourselves to the Scattergoods’ in Oklahoma, then stopped for tourist fun in Hot Springs and Paducah. After that we heading up north to visit the Moores and Waggoners in Pleasant Lake and Auburn, respectively.
On the way back we stopped for a visit in Eureka Springs, stayed in a “hobbit hole” hotel room, and went on a short tour of a pretty interesting cave (to say nothing of our Deliverance-inspired guide)!
Upon our return, things got crazy again in August with Monica going back to teach 2nd grade in Iola again and my work schedule getting ridiculous! Dave also worked a lot of overtime at The Steamery, a local carpet cleaning outfit where he’s worked the last two summers before going back to Blinn College with a full load at the end of the month.
In September, Jake, Dave, and I ran the Bulldog Dash again:
And the next week Monica and I took a two-day vacation to Houston, of all places! We stayed at an AirBnB in the museum district and took in a few of the offerings (most of which we’d never seen before despite living north of the city for more than 12 years) including the Holocaust Museum, which was quite sobering.
No pictures on my phone or on Facebook for October must mean that the whole month was a No Fun Zone. That could be true – I have no recollection of the month save for writing a few feeble missives in support of Gary Johnson for president. Obviously that did not work out!
November brought cooler weather, presidential madness, and a trip to North Carolina to see Mitch and BethAnn and meet her parents for the first time. These brave folks let us stay with them for 3 days and it’s plain to see why she’s such a great person!
December always brings birthday fun! First, Monica turned 48 this year. She is catching up to me, as I like to say! We all went to Fish Daddy’s to celebrate and eat cheesecake, the best birthday cake ever!
And tonight we got to celebrate Jake’s 23rd birthday by playing disc golf and eating old school at the China King buffet, just like we did so many times when the twins were teenagers. Mitch was absent this year as he is with his east coast family for Christmas, but all signs point to a full Moore Dynasty in 2017, something we’ve all been looking forward to for a long while.
That’s a quick rundown of the year. It was an eventful one, certainly!! Merry Christmas and God bless you, every one!
Love,
Marc, Monica, Jake, Amberly, Mitch, BethAnne, and David Moore
