This Christmas newsletter stuff is great. No more the tedium of trying to figure out who wants to hear what news, of trying to write card after card of a heartfelt, meaningful two lines of prose, or of trying to find cards that still vaguely resemble Christmas. I remember where the newsletter started, too; my personal start, that is. A friend wrote, by hand, a general letter - in July or something - and copied it off and sent it to all us friends. She called it a �tacky letter�.

I can�t agree. Not only do these newsletters give those of us who love to write a chance to spill out the jumbled words in their brains, but reading the old ones reminds us of stuff. When David turned 15 and tried out for regional band and got 4th. When Megan cut her knee. A chronology.

That being said, I don�t really have much writing inspiration for this Christmas. I didn�t write a post-vacation email, either. I guess all my spilling has gone into geocaching.

So let�s just hop right to the news:
We planned to move to Georgia, but it fell through.
David graduated with honors and went off to college, at the University of North Texas in Denton. *sniff*
Daniel is now in high school. This is getting scary.
Megan wears nail polish and is in second grade. Scarier and scarier.....

Well, maybe one-liners won�t cut it. But really, my memory has been blanking out a lot lately. I plum jes� can�t remember what went on this year. Maybe if I try going back month by month.....but that�s been done....

Well, anyway, in January, our church paid for a flight for all five of us out to Washington to see Mark�s sister before her operation. It was a big ol� family reunion. Michelle is doing better now; they think they managed to get all the cancer.

In March, three little kittens were added to our menagerie - Scampers, Smokey and (the) Bandit.

We attended three event caches this year, two of which we hosted. Caching has really been a thing for us this year - it�s been getting really creative!

Another big slump in health came for me in the first half of the year (see, can�t remember twhen). I discovered that the meds I�m on mightily deplete the body of vitamin B-12 (and I suspect others as well). It�s amazing what the lack of one vitamin can do to your system. Talk about wreaking havoc....Mark had a couple of nasty problems as well, first with that lump near his eye that I wrote about in emails, then later with his knee. The knee is still recovering, off and on.

Mark�s parents came out here for David�s graduation in May - we had them find one cache - then we all went to San Antonio together; the River Walk, the Alamo, and later our family to Six Flags, all the good stuff. But didn�t manage to hunt for a single cache down there.

We moved David in August, as stated, and suddenly the house seems a lot emptier. We managed to find some caches around Denton in the process. ;-)

Mark flew out to California in October to join in the celebration, his parents� 50th anniversary! Whoo! Congratulations! (He only got to do one cache out there. Mom found it, in fact.)

See? It really caught our interest. Every once in a while, something will do that; exercise, NASCAR, now caching. But eventually it will recede, fade. They all eventually do.

Except one thing. Following Christ. While it does fade now and then, it always comes back, and no matter what else goes on, it�s always the basis for everything.