Christmas Letter

Holiday Greetings to all our Family and Friends,
Hope you had a nice Thanksgiving and don’t have too many turkey sandwiches to look forward too. Kurt and I wanted to send you a brief update of our year that has sped by too quickly.
We are both still working at the same places. We both have a few new job duties to go along with our old ones, so we keep very busy. Benji and Bailey still have us trained to play ball with them when we get home, no matter what time that may be. We didn’t get to take them to the river this year, because it was running to fast and full to be safe.
In May, we celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary with a trip to the Gulf Coast. It was just 10 days after the oil spill began. The media was telling tourists not to come, but we flew into Gulfport, MS and got a rental car anyway. From there, we drove to Biloxi and stayed a few days. We got to ride on a shrimp boat and tour the city of Biloxi. The devastation from Hurricane Katrina was still very visible. Our next stops were Mobile/Gulf Shores, AL. Kurt toured a warship and I did some month end work for my job from our motel. We walked along the beach and collected large sea shells. We went to Pensacola Beach to see the Blue Angels and stayed on the Gulf in an ocean view room with a balcony. We decided if we ever stay on the coast again, this is where we will head to. After that, we drove to Slidell, LA and took a swamp tour. We got to see several alligators and thankfully no snakes. Then we went to New Orleans and were not impressed. We took a city tour and left as quickly as we could. We will never go back there for a vacation. During our travels we drove through the sleepy little town of Pascagoula (you know the song from Ray Stevens). We got to see a church but no berserk squirrel. Pascagoula is also where Jimmy Buffett was raised, so you know I had to drive through it. We got the star treatment everywhere we went, because the people that live off of tourism dollars were grateful we came.
In August, we scaled down our vacation and decided to go to Des Moines to Adventureland for Kurt’s birthday. It became a nightmare vacation very quickly. Our car was flooded the first night, so it had to be towed to a dealer and repaired. We got the car fixed and went to Adventureland for a few hours and then headed back for Omaha, as more rain and flooding were predicted. We decided to spend a few days at Mahoney State Park and enjoyed that much more than Des Moines. When we finally got home, the insurance adjuster told us to get the carpet replaced inside the car, so you can imagine how flooded the car was both inside and out.
In November, we made our annual trek to Branson. We planned a later vacation this year to coincide with my birthday and so we could see some Christmas shows. We got to see The Oak Ridge Boys, The Gatlin Brothers with Debby Boone, Andy Williams, Sons of the Pioneer, Joey Riley, and several other shows. We also got to meet Barry Williams, who played Greg Brady in the Brady Bunch Show. We of course played many rounds of mini golf and ate at all the good restaurants.
We send you Holiday Greetings. It’s the most wonderful time of the year (Andy Williams says so!).
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Kurt and Bobbi