Howdy y’all – Merry Christmas! This year I “decided” to do something different: write the annual Christmas letter on the day itself. So far, that’s working great! Monica and I slept in today and opened our gifts to each other just before noon. It was a small affair and the exchange was nicely sized. 🙂 We are both very excited about the new addition to our household, the Ninja Creami that we got a preview of at her brother Matthew’s house over the summer. Soon the guests will trickle in until it’s time to barbeque the steaks, this year’s Christmas meal. So much to be grateful for and so little time to jot it down, so here goes.
Despite our relatively advanced ages (!), Monica and I continue to work full-time (and more) as we navigate the ending stretches of our respective working lives. No significant changes this year: I am still with the A&M System IT team and Monica has found a good home with the Chemistry Department at the university. On the job, toil, trouble, and turmoil seem ever-present, but that’s really rather relative: We are fortunate to have good management and colleagues to work with and at least some of the stresses are self-induced.
One way to deal with the drama of daily life is to chill out with man’s best friends:
With one notable exception, we mostly spent the year in the pattern of those before it: visiting our children and riling up the grandchildren, dining at our favorite places in Bryan, and seeking out good live music in the area. For those who know it, we were happy to see Fritella open up again as it was and is again one of our go-to restaurants. Mr. Hamburger closed – twice – and that’s a bit of a bummer. But life goes on and there are always a new place to try – if we can break out of our traces.
Obviously, Bryan/College Station is a college town and that’s led several people to tell us that it should have a good music scene. I can’t agree more – it should. But as locals know, B/CS has long been a bit of a dud in that regard. I will say that TAMU had Lyle Lovett on campus and the local Hi-Fi Band is pretty good – we saw them out at Lake Bryan again. And toward the end of the year, the City of Bryan re-opened the Palace theater in downtown and has had some live music events there, so it seems like things are starting to happen locally. 🙂
As a rule, though, most of the good shows we go to are in other towns an hour away. We saw a good ZZ Top cover band in Plantersville and caught Sparky Parker in Brenham twice this year, and London Lawhon as well. Another notable local musician is Randy Pavlock, who we saw in Navasota twice, at Rail & Rye and at the Navasota blues fest. He’s a great guitar player and singer in the vein of Stevie Ray – highly recommended.
During Spring Break we made a trip to Baicliff, home of Katie’s Bar, for a couple of good shows there. While we were there, I noticed a potential opportunity for Miss Monica. 🙂
Strangely, despite the completed application I provided for her, she has not availed herself of the opportunity…
Our big event this year was a trip to Isla de Mujeres (near Cancun) in Mexico, where we stayed at an all-inclusive for several days. This was our first “real” vacation in several years and the days flew by as we lounged at the pool, interrupted only by the occasional swim in the bay or by the need to order another mojito from a passing waiter.
Here I am poolside, before I started working on my tan whilst bike riding over the summer – a month late and several shades of pigment short on that one! And one of Monica and me on the Atlantic side:
In August we said goodbye to Mitch, BethAnne, and their boys – Mitch’s career with the military took him back out of state with his latest posting to a more traditional unit.
They are doing well and BethAnne is taking on the Home School Challenge with the older boys.
Monica and I had the chance to take a short trip to Indiana where we dropped in on my mom and step-dad Tom and my dad and step-mom Sharon. We also got to see a couple of my buddies from high school, Greg Jackson and Randy Houser, who I got to take a run with.
Jake continues his law enforcement career and Amberly is working part-time at a local church when Andre is in school and Henson goes to the Mother’s Day Out program. Here’s a pic with then from the Big Event at Lake Livingston where we AirBNB’ed a lake house:
We had a good time there and I tried paddleboarding for the first time. The main takeaway was that there’s a big difference between a cheap board – unusable – and a good one, which makes it easy and fun!
I don’t know that David will take up writing an annual letter so I’ll tattle on him a little bit too. He recently moved to a new place with Olivia and they are expecting MD 13, another little boy!
In conclusion, 2023 was another good year for the Moore Dynasty. We have been blessed with good fortune and try not to take it for granted as we go through the daily struggles.
