Christmas past

Christmas is past. It was a wonderful time. We had a lot of packages under the tree for seven people.

We spent a lot of time talking, reading, working on computers, and playing Rockband.

For the first time in my life I sang to rocksongs - Deep Purple, Metallica, Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs, and so forth.

We are waiting for Malone to be born. Marelize is very restless today, and Malone is very quiet. It could happen at any moment.

We'll keep you informed.

Tacoma Washington is very far away

Soon we will have a granddaughter (projected birth day January 18) and very soon after she will be moving to McChord Airforce Base in Tacoma, Washington. Her daddy Cameron has just heard he will be flying C17s out of McChord for the next 4 years.

We'll be racking up frequent flyer miles. I have not been in Washington State, and look forward to visiting often. I found this photo of C-17s at the end of the rainbow on the McChord Airforce Base website (http://www.mcchord.af.mil/). However, that is for another day. In the meantime, we are finishing up the year. Next weekend I have my last class of the semester.

Tomorrow night Christelle will be marching with the Hillcrest High School marching band in the West Alabama Christmas Parade in downtown Tuscaloosa (http://www.tcpara.org/westalxmasparade.php). I will be sure to post pictures of the event. The weather report is forecasting very cold weather. Well, we'll see. We have strict orders from Christelle to be there with our cameras. So we will be there.

More later.

Thanksgiving: family and football

Thanksgiving is not a traditional South African holiday, but through the years it has become special for our family. Thirteen years ago, when we first arrived in Colorado Springs, Thanksgiving was the first big event we attended at the house of friends. I think what made it special was that it had snowed the night before and the city had that breathless quiet that comes just after a heavy snowfall. The roads were quiet and things were white as far as the eyes could see. The other special thing was that Christelle, less than a month old, was dedicated to the Lord that day.

After that, Thanksgiving increasingly became a day of sharing. We love hosting Thanksgiving at our house. For a while there, we regularly had 20 people or more come to our house for dinner at noon. Often they stayed until 9 that night.

This year, special circumstances denied us the pleasure to host Thanksgiving at our house in Tuscaloosa. Instead we had the pleasure of going to Atlanta for the long weekend.

The Engelbrechts have been our friends for a long time. We knew each other before we were ever married and we had our children together. They are our family in this country. We have shared many joys and hurts through the years and this year we anticipated our granddaughter by getting to know their granddaughter.

We also watched football together and played cards, and walked and ate. Every one in the Engelbracht clan can cook, so food was not a problem, unless too much becomes a problem. I contributed my share by taking koeksisters - a marvelous South African confection made from fried dough dunked in simple syrup.

Football was, to say the least, a mixed blessing. I have become interested in college football. Who wouldn't, living in Tuscaloosa, where the biggest building in town is the football stadium. I work across the street from it and in the FAll no one can escape football. They say a home game brings over $18 million into town. I loved the LSU - Arkansas game. It went into 4 overtimes and Arkansas just beat LSU by 2 points. It was wonderful! Then came the Alabama - Auburn game. Our guys looked like they expected to lose and lose they did. It was the sixth straight loss to Auburn - the longest losing streak in the history of Alabama football. Our quarterback, our running backs, inexperienced punt returner with the top 2 guys out with injuries - everything went wrong. And of course Auburn played well, didn't make mistakes and got the job done. Next year! Things will be different next year.