December 2016
Greetings from Friendswood, TX
It’s the end of the year, and once again we look back and reflect upon our activities and accomplishments. With temperatures outside currently in the 70’s we miss the concept of Winter, but not the reality of it. Photo Highlights
Phelan just celebrated his second birthday, and he’s practicing hopping and a very specific vocabulary. “Go-go” is any and all mobile things, “Hop” is all creatures that hop, “Ruff” is dog, “Meow” is cat, and “Oval” is oval, “Oak” is both artichoke and acorns. He is still completely and totally adorable with his head of curly dirty blond hair.
Megan is now 9.5 years old and small animals remains her primary obsession. She continues to be a voracious reader, and has recently started reading the Percy Jackson, Voyagers, and Fablehaven series of books. She continues to take piano lessons, and performed “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” in this year’s Christmas Recital.
Our cats Pepper and Pakhet continue to divide up the house, Pakhet is mostly upstairs, and Pepper is mostly downstairs. That doesn’t seem to prevent, or perhaps it’s because of it, literal cat fights with chases up and down the stairs in the middle of the night.
Hunter’s doggie GPS system we bought last year has allowed us to retrieve him more quickly when he decides to go AWOL. Which still happens on a weekly basis.
Julie spends the majority of her time looking after Phelan, managing Megan’s homeschool group, gardening and wondering why she’s doesn’t have enough time.
Winston is still working for Boeing on the Space Launch System (SLS) program, the heavy lift rocket he’s helping to design is scheduled for a first launch in 2 years. He still traveling a fair bit to Huntsville, AL but less than in years past.
This year’s home improvement project was new sink fixtures for the kitchen and bathrooms. We refinished a tabletop. We also had to replace our garage door opener switch. We can now remotely monitor and operate our garage door with our iPhone/iPads. We expect our Washer/Dryer units will be next.
Julie and Megan put a bunch of time into our garden this year. Our harvest this year included butternut squash, eggplant, sweet potatoes, bell peppers, beets, carrots, rainbow chard, cucumbers, asian greens, tomatoes, and garlic chives. Our lemon, tangerine, mulberry trees did exceptionally well this year.
Megan’s 9
th Birthday Party was at Houston Party Playland this year, and her cake was a mountain stream.Phelan’s 2
nd Birthday Party was at a local park where coloring and finger painting were the primary activities.In June, Winston’s Uncle Frank and new Aunt Risa got married in Houston, and so we were happy to help celebrate with them and spend time with all the family that came into town.
Travelwise we made three major trips this year, our first was in conjunction with a Business trip to Michoud Assembly Facility/New Orleans. Winston got to tour the factory where they are building the rocket he’s helping design. Julie, Megan and Phelan rode the New Orleans Trolley and went to all the Audubon Society Facilities, the Zoo, Aquarium, Insectarium and the IMAX movie theater.
The second and biggest trip was our 2 week self-drive car tour of Alaska, which was well documented in a series of travelogue emails and web photo albums. But as a brief recap, we visited Denali, Wrangell-St. Elias, and Kenai Fjords National Parks, and saw a whole slew of native wildlife, and all in all an incredible and worthwhile trip. Our third trip was our Thanksgiving trip Virginia Beach, VA, and Ellicott City, MD, to visit our families. We were able to enjoy the good food and company that comes from large gatherings. Not to mention one of the most incredible birthday desserts Winston has ever seen, mochi, and ice cream served over cake with Pocky sticks as decorative candles. We were able to add a side trip to Delaware to add that to Megan’s states visited (she’s up to 31 + D.C.), and Phlean is at 14 + D.C.. We also visited the National Archives in D.C. to see the original Declaration of Independence, Constitution and the Bill of Rights.We had the opportunity to volunteer several times this year helping clean our waterways, helping at the Houston Food Bank, and beautify Galveston Beach by decorating a trash barrel. Boeing chose to use Megan’s design for their contribution.
For Phelan’s second Halloween, he was a turtle where Julie augmented a Frog costume with a cloth and cardboard shell. Winston made Megan a Bat costume with a wooden skeletal structure, and felt ears. Winston carved Megan-O-Lantern X and the Phelantern II. Phelantern II was entered into the Boeing Houston International Space Station Pumpkin carving contest and once again earned “Cutest pumpkin” award. {Mostly due to how cute Phelan than how well the carving turned out, but an award is an award} Megan carved a very impressive “Critters in Cogs” design that she came up with and carved by herself this year.
Megan has taken charge of decorating the yard for Halloween and Christmas, with a different aesthetic that Winston has done in the past, which was minimal at best. And evening walks to look at lights in the neighborhood are quite common.
In the spirit of avoiding the reality of winter as much as possible, for the break between Christmas and New Year’s we’re heading south and visiting South Padre Island and Corpus Christi. We hope to see plenty of aquatic life and warm sandy beaches.
And so passes another year here in Texas, where we're thankful for our health and happiness. We look forward to next year, and wish you and yours the very best.
With Love,
Winston, Julie,
Megan, & Phelan
P.S. As always, we will try to post more photos at http://basil2.homeip.net/~basil/Photo.html
P.P.S. Megan upon reviewing this letter declared it wasn’t humorous enough, and would like to include the following joke: What happened to the Reindeer that lost his bells? He won the No-Bell Prize.