Merry Christmas 2025 (Late!)

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year All! We are pretty late with our Christmas cards. In fact, as I write this they are not yet complete… but the plans is to get them out this week. We hope you have had a nice 2025. Ours has been pretty busy with Homeschool and the usual life activities.

Alexandra is now 7 and David 5. David started Kindergarten at home with me this year. He’s on his way with reading and addition. Alex is in Second grade and doing well. Besides their normal subjects, both kids are working on piano with me.

For Extracurricular activities, the kids have been involved several different things. Alex sang with a children’s community choir group this year. Earlier this year, Alex was on the “pre-team” for gymnastics and eventually decided to try out soccer in the fall. David played “Coach-Pitch” baseball in the spring and then also tried soccer in the fall. David’s team didn’t have a coach, so I ended up coaching his team the “Cheetahs”. The kids both took swimming lessons this year and I hope to have them do more with this in the future. We are also involved in two different homeschool Co-Ops. Our days tend to fill up with school and our other activities.

Zach has had his usual work, but has also began preparing for a Sabbatical. Our church has given him a three month sabbatical this next year. We plan to travel for some of it. His focus will be on photography in Civil War sites. (Two of his hobbies). We purchased a travel trailer to camp in while we travel around. We are looking forward to this time together.

I have been staying busy with the kids as well as my musical endeavors. I am still the “Associate Director” of the Haywood Community band and Choir Director at church. I also volunteer with Alex’s choir as needed. This year I also started a new “developmental” band for the community. This group is geared towards folks who haven’t played their instrument for a long time and need some basics. There are also a couple of folks who are complete beginners in the band. It has been a new challenge for me to work with adult beginners (rather than child beginners). It’s a bit different in some ways, but not in others. I hope to continue the group in the spring with the Haywood band starts back up.

Well, here was our year in a nutshell! We hope you have a great 2026!