_{Season's Greetings         Christmas 2018}  

             

         Well, here we find ourselves near the midpoint of one of the most unique and different presidential terms in office in U.S. history. What will the next two years bring, I wonder? On a serious note, it has been a very sad and tragic year for the many victims of the massive California wildfires.

            My son, Johnathan, is moving right along as a CPA. He is taking on more responsibilities at work, such as leading the entire accounting department and becoming co-trustee for the company's 401k plan. Also, he is introducing many sweeping changes in systems and processes throughout the organization. Johnathan also started his own CPA firm, Jarboe Accounting Solutions, PLLC. Johnathan and Carissa purchased two investment duplexes in Columbia, MO in July which have worked out well thus far. For Thanksgiving, they took their family to the San Diego Zoo and Legoland. Carissa is still lead ultrasound tech at Swedish Medical Center. Hunter, 7, is in second grade and doing very well. His main interests are math and science and trying to get a smart phone out of his Mom and Dad and he played baseball and soccer this year. Kennedy, 4, is in preschool and loves hanging out with her Mom and Dad, playing with dolls and singing and dancing. Kennedy played T--Ball this year. In May, Johnathan's family and I went to the St. Louis Science Center when the Apollo 11 Command Module was on display during a months-long traveling tour across the country and I explained to Hunter exactly what he was seeing. (The 50^th anniversary of the first manned moon landing by Apollo 11 is next July, 2019.)

           Dave and my daughter, Holly, have now celebrated two years of marriage.  They also are now a two-car family (so adulting, says Holly).   Holly works at two local New Jersey dance studios and still freelances, setting dance pieces for outside venues and studios. Dave is a head chef at a restaurant in New Jersey called St. Eve’s, where, yes, the hours are long for him, but the commute is now much shorter than it was before their move from New York City to New Jersey! Holly got to come back home to Missouri quite a bit this past year, being involved in many weddings, two of them being of her little brother's, Brett’s, and her childhood best friend, Melissa Greenwald.

           My mother still lives on the farm, but she no longer drives, obtaining help from the four (of her six) children who live between 60 -- 90 miles of her and, also, from her adopted granddaughter, Emily. She moves rather slowly, but likes to say that she's "holding her own well for her age."  But, trust me, my mother still has her keen wit and sense of humor and she works a couple of hundred crossword puzzles in the Moberly newspaper every year.

           We had another very enjoyable family reunion in August at my maternal grandparents' home, made possible yet again by the new owners, Tom and Emily Bowden, who couldn't make it this year. Those attending (besides myself) were my mother (whose 86th birthday we all celebrated), my Aunt Jane, her son, Lance, my sister, Diane, her husband, Mark, their daughter, Tricia, my brother, Chris, his wife, Kay, their daughter, Jenny, Jenny's daughter, Kayla, my sisters, Angela and Alicia, Alicia's husband, Brian, and their daughter, Brooke. Brooke began her freshman year at my first college of choice (my first two years) at what is now called Missouri University of Science & Technology (formerly, the University of Missouri at Rolla when I attended) and Jenny's son, Christopher, began his freshman year at my second college of choice (my last two years) at the University of Missouri at Columbia. Once again, we greatly missed my Aunt Ferne and her delightful charm at our reunion.

           Johnathan and Carissa and their children, Hunter and Kennedy, met many of us at Golden Corral in Columbia, Mo. for a really nice visit in May. Johnathan's and Holly's half-brother, Brett, married Amanda in a beautiful outdoor wedding in May.  In September, my sister, Diane traveled up from her home in Texas and spent about a week with my Mom and helped her around the house and took her on trips to run errands for her and I drove to the farm one day to visit with Diane and Mother.  And in October, a cousin on my father's side, Beth Elkassih, who lives in Texas, included my mother's home as one of her stops during her trip through Missouri and my mother, Chris, Kay, Alicia, and I enjoyed catching up with Beth and also regaling many memories with Beth from many years ago.

              I have enjoyed a fourth year of being "pen friends" with an extraordinarily gifted and talented married woman, Carol Ann, from Ohio. Carol Ann has no idea of the large void that she has been filling in my life that would be there, otherwise. And for the past year, I have also enjoyed corresponding as e-mail pen pals with a woman from Nebraska, Rhonda, who is a hard-working nurse. And in July, I learned that a Facebook friend of mine, Philis Penny Brown (who I really did not know very well, at all), messaged me to admit to me that she had a crush on me when she was a 5th grader when she was in my sister's, Angela's, class at Madison (7 years younger than me) when I was a high school senior. Penny and I have since enjoyed getting to know each other a little through messaging.  

           For the third year in a row, the Cardinals failed to make the baseball playoffs. On an ESPN Sunday night game, May 6th, Johnathan, Carissa, Johnathan's good and close friend, Mark Denk, and I went to see a Cardinals vs. Cubs game that had two 30 minute rain delays and went extra innings and didn't end until almost 1 a.m. Cubs shortstop Javy Baez crushed our hopes in the top of the 14th inning by hitting a home run, but Cardinals centerfielder Dexter Fowler shocked the few fans who remained (maybe about 4,000) with two outs and a two strike count in the bottom of the 14th by hitting a two run homer than barely clearly the right field fence and just barely inside the foul pole for an exciting walkoff victory for the Cardinals, 4 - 3. Holly and Dave traveled to Philadelphia to see the Cardinals play the Phillies on June 18th and they saw a very wild game, but, unfortunately, the Cardinals, after clawing back from a four run, first inning deficit and tying the game in the 9th, 4 - 4, and taking the lead in the 10th, 5 - 4, but lost in a heartbreaker on a walkoff victory by the Phillies in the bottom of the 10th, 6 - 5. (Holly and Dave did have some really great-tasting Philly cheesesteak sandwiches, I am told.) One sad milestone of 2018 for the Cardinals was the passing of Albert "Red" Schoendienst at the age of 95. Red was the Cardinals manager when my brother, Chris, and I began following the Cardinals in 1966 and he managed them to a World Series championship in 1967. One bright spot of this past season is that Dave's Boston Red Sox were World Series champions in October. (Just after Holly and Dave began dating, Dave's Red Sox defeated our beloved St. Louis Cardinals in the 2013 World Series. As a result, unbeknownst to Dave and Holly, our family secretly took a vote on whether or not to keep Dave as a part of our family and Dave just barely squeaked by and he was kept in our family on a close 15 -- 14 vote. I am very proud to say that I cast the deciding vote to keep Dave.  😊 )

            Sadly, two of my Doniphan friends passed away in April: Jack Spencer, who was a very fine gentleman and one of my hard-working co-workers in my Doniphan office, and Sandra Kennon, who was one of Johnathan's Catechism teachers in early grade school and who I have stayed in touch with since I left Doniphan in 1989. (Ironically, I visited with both, Jack and Sandra, during my trip to Doniphan in March, 2017 and I mentioned both of them in last year's Christmas Letter.) Also, we lost three matriarchs of my local rural home area north of Madison and Holliday, Mo., two of them passing away in August: Bonnie Houston and Flemma Unterbrink, and one of them passing away in March: Marilyn Kelly. Bonnie is the mother of Mike Houston, who has been renting out my mother's farm for the past 20 years (and counting) and Mike has taken care of many of our mother's needs around the farm. Many people knew Bonnie by her contagious and congenial laugh. Through 4-H meetings, everyone in our family knew Flemma as a kind and gentle woman. And Marilyn was known for her quick smile and good-naturedness towards everyone.

            Despite my great reluctance to do so, I bought a 2018 Chevy Malibu LT in September as my 2005 Malibu needed about $4,000 of repairs.  Since it was 13 years old and likely to become more repair-prone in the coming years, I bit the bullet and traded it in, my second new car purchase in 31 years since 1987, when I bought my 1987 Olds Cutlass Ciera, which still sits in my driveway with one flat tire and a cover over it to protect the paint from the sun. I simply cannot part with it (which I affectionately call "Trusty Steed") as I spent a full year chauffeuring Denise around in it during the most special year of my life back between August 13, 1988 -- August 11, 1989.

             And I will close this year’s letter with a humorous experience from this past year that I have already shared with some of you. But it is, as I like to say, a story worth repeating. This story happened in July when I took my second-and-last-born child, Holly, now 33, on a tour of my home area in Monroe and Shelby Counties and while I was driving, I told Holly about how we in the family have noticed, every now and then, of how our mother is having a little trouble with her memory. I then thought of an amusing thing to say to Holly to tease her (as I often do), and I struggled for about 15 seconds to get the smile off of my face as I developed this story in my mind. Fortunately for me, Holly was looking straight ahead down the highway from her “Shotgun seat” and I was able to tell Holly in a serious and somber voice, “What’s sad to me is that I was talking to my Mom one time….And she was talking about Johnathan…..And then my Mom says to me (pregnant pause), “And you have a second child, don’t you?”   I then looked to my right out of the corner of my right eye and I see Holly giving me “The Glare,” causing me to laugh very hard. And then I resumed in my best ‘my mother’s voice’ and I told Holly, “She’s a pesky little one, isn’t she?” and I couldn’t help but laugh very hard some more.  It turns out that my Mom thought that this story was very funny as it is very typical of our family’s humor, not afraid to make fun of ourselves. And, as my brother, Chris, pointed out to me after I shared our mother’s remarks with him, “Yeah, especially when it is about someone else.”

          _{I hope that you and your family have a prosperous 2019!        Greg}