MERRY CHRISTMAS

We wish everyone a Merry Christmas. We hope this has been a good year for your family.



We have been blessed in many ways during the year 2010. We have been blessed with a wonderful family. Our children are all doing well in their various careers or schooling.

This year, we have been blessed to experience grandparenthood. We have little Taycee (Amy & Seth's) now 1 year old, Victoria (2 1/2) and Christian (4 months) both of whom are foster children of Katie and Robert. We have enjoyed the times we have had the little ones at our house with their beautiful smiles.

We have been blessed with opportunities to travel this country. In July, the kids and I traveled to Montana for a 100th anniversary Jackson family reunion. Along the way, we stopped in Utah for a few days to sort through and divide my parents estate. We also stopped in beautiful Yellowstone Park, on the road to Cooke City, Montana. Dave stayed home and worked hard to pay for our trip.





LeeAnn was blessed to reinforce her history lessons as she participated in a school sponsored tour to Washington D.C. and Philadelphia PA.



We have been blessed with music in our home as John is learning to play the string bass in the grade school orchestra. LeeAnn and Bethany continue to play the piano.

This year Bonnie was blessed to go back to school, as a substitute teacher. She has enjoyed the many experiences thus far from elementary school to high school levels of teaching. She even landed a 4 1/2 week long term job in a 4th grade near here, which kept her busy up until Christmas time.

Dave loves to cook for big groups and use his cook trailers. His new love is smoking meats, which he has done several times this fall to provide smoked pork for weddings and a local restaurant.



We have a new tradition in our house, and that is making tamales at Christmas time. Dave smoked the pork and then seasoned it to go in the tamales. The family all participated in making the tamales.



Then for Christmas Eve, all the older kids and their families were here to enjoy eating tamales.




On Christmas Day, we veered from tradition abit and went and flew rockets with our Bates cousins. John had fun launching the rockets that we brought out of storage and prepped for the day.