December 2018

12/31 - We slept in some.  Grammy came over to get few gifts while Gramps was at physical therapy.   The kids went to piano and Greg and I went to lunch just ourselves.   We hung out most of the afternoon.

We actually hung up some stuff in our house :)   We hung up several pictures from around the world in the dining room, Paris pictures in the hallway, and hung up a few things in Kasey's room.

Greg made hamburgers for dinner then we watched the Aggies beat NC State.  After the game we went to our friends house for New Years party.   We enjoyed some wine and hung out then brought in the new year for both New York and Dallas.  The kids were tired so we went home after that.  Fun times.

12/25 - Kasey woke up about 1am and got sick.  Ugh.   Then they woke us up around 8am.   Kasey was super excited to get a keyboard for her ipad from Santa, and Landon got amazon and itune GC to go with his new phone.  

We spent the afternoon with Greg's family.   Great food and we had 4 generations there.  Kasey had a great time playing with her new toys as the adults visited.   Landon mainly played on his new phone.   It was good to catch up with the family and I got some good pictures of Nanny and families

12/24 - I got to sleep in some.  Greg and the kids were cooking away in the kitchen.  They were making pecan pie, chicken enchiladas, cookies for Santa and chocolate cake.   I was finishing wrapping gifts for everyone.

We went over to Grammy and Gramps for the afternoon and dinner.   We had a few snacks and drinks.   We all opened our presents and the kids played for a little while.   Then we started getting dinner ready.  We have tacos and Greg made enchiladas for dinner.  So good to hang out and enjoy food and good company.  Great Christmas Eve.

During the evening Kasey kept asking Alexa where Santa was.  Alexa would tell us and see if we wanted a fun fact.  At one point she said Santa liked to sing and so did she and she started singing a Christmas song.  Pretty funny.  Kasey decided Santa was real because Alexa knew where he was and you could track him online.

We got home and put cookies out for Santa.   We read the Night before Christmas.

12/23 - We had a fun day.  We had an early lunch at Even Stevans which is a cool non profit restaurant in Richardson.  Then we went a few doors down to try Pop bar.  Basically popcicles that you dip in chocolate and a topping.  Yum!

After that we went to see Phantom of the Opera at fair park.   Greg and I have always loved Phantom.   Kasey was a little scared, but they both enjoyed it.

12/22 - Kasey and I went to the salon, did some shopping while Landon did service project with Scouts.  Kasey had fun getting me a Blue Ray of Mama Mia, getting Landon fortnite monopoly and she got Greg a 2 foot leg lamp like the one from Christmas Story.  :)  We have fun shopping together.  

12/21 - We took Kasey back to digestive Dr.  He thinks the medicine is working but that she's growing out of her dosage.  We'll see how it goes.  That night we went out for Hibachi and then some Pacuigo for dessert.

12/16 - Today was our 18th wedding anniversary.  Landon was gone.  We got up and made it to breakfast by 9am at Eggquisite.    We did some stuff around the house and Kasey and I watched some of the CW crossover while I did laundry and worked on calendars and other stuff.

Greg went to get Landon after his campout who really needed a shower.   Greg took Kasey and a friend to ice skating with Santa.  Landon and I cleaned scout stove top and did laundry and got stuff in place then watched a little TV before dinner.

Apparently Mi Cocina was closed for their staff party so we went to Mexigo for a margarita and mexican food.   

12/15 - We had a small party for Kasey today.  We had pizza from one of her friend's restaurant, Greg and I made unicorn cake, the girls got Kasey awesome unicorn presents.  They watched a movie, hung out and played on their devices together.  They also all exchanged info so they can text each other.  So fun.  A few of the moms came over near the end to have a glass of wine which is always fun.

12/14 - Landon left for Scout campout.  They were driving down south, going to Nasa on Saturday and heading back sunday.  Landon helped plan and lead this campout which is good.  Hopefully he didn't get to cold.

I got there in time to give Landon a hug before they left.  Greg, Kasey and I went to bowl place for dinner together.   Greg had made cake for Kasey and when we got home he made icing and I started decorating, with wine of course.

12/12 - Landon found out that they want to move him up to symphonic band 1.  He was really excited about it.  His schedule will have to move around but its a good opportunity for him.

12/11 - Today was Landon's Holiday band concert.  Fun to see and watch.  They wear all black and got to wear santa hats if they wanted.  Landon didn't.  They played well.  All 4 middle school bands played.  

12/9 - we slept in some, cleaned up the house, had simple lunch, worked on girl scout.   Landon and I went to see Potted Potter which was great.  Parody of all 7 Harry Potter books in 70 minute.   I thought I was going to pee in my pants a few times I was laughing so hard.   It was 2 guys playing parts and going through the books.  Lots of comedy in between.  Very fun.  Landon laughed out loud several times as well.  It was fun

We didn't get Thanksgiving food over Thanksgiving so Greg and Kasey made mini thanksgiving for dinner and Kasey bday celebration.   Grandma and Pops came to join us as well.  After dinner they cut Patch's nails.  Poor puppy 

12/8 - It was so nice not to have to focus on cleaning or being somewhere early.   Kasey had a party, but thew a fit and ended up losing it.  That night we had dinner with friends.  Grandma and pops came over to eat dinner with the kids and watch them.  We went to Cowboy club to have a drink  (saw Dat Nguyen and Moose Johnson :))with Doug then met friends at D Lincoln's restaurant at the Star.

12/3-7 - This was a crazy week.  I had my WW team in town.  Tuesday night we had dinner at our house.  We ordered Zorbas and had wine and beer.   Greg made his chocolate cake, cherry cobbler and homemade whipped cream.

The dinner went well, we had 17 people over and all of us stayed in the kitchen.  We decided to put food and drink along the edges which worked well so we could all stand around the large island.

Wednesday night we went out with a partner 3P and had some good mexican food.

Thursday we started with doing Day of Impact or volunteering at Big Brothers, Big Sisters.  We worked on their mailer which mom used to do a lot when she worked there.  Then several from my team went down to the basement to help organize and clean out their storage room.   The whole team took a big picture then they realized we were missing.   We finished up a few things and all headed to lunch.  All of us had lunch together in our TI shirts, and then my team stayed a little longer because we didn't have to be back for meetings until 2pm.    That morning at the office someone tried to break into the site, hit someone who called 911, broke a window and got tackled in courtyard.   Little scary but everyone was ok.

That afternoon after 4 days of meetings I had a holiday party with my contractors.  It was raining and I was tired, but I went for a little while.  I'm glad I did.  It's good to get the team out of the office sometimes.

Thursday morning Kasey got sick in the morning, and ended up with a little bit of fever.  She stayed home for the day.  Friday Greg had Dr appointment Friday.  I came home from work mid day to watch her.  Because she still had slight fever Thursday night she stayed home Friday too.  She felt fine other than getting sick and a small headache Friday morning.

12/2 - I have a work dinner at the house on Tuesday so we are really trying to get ready for it.   Kasey and I also had Allen parade that we walked in with girl scouts.   Its fun to walk and hand out candy to kids who are attending.

Kasey took the lead and started putting Christmas lights outside.   Kasey kept asking us to come help her but it took a little while.  Greg and I went out to help her and we got them up.  We decided after dinner we needed to get new blow up decorations for this year :)

12/1 - We spent a lot of the day working on the house and getting Christmas stuff up.   Kasey and went to the salon for our nails while Landon and Greg went to ring the bell for SalvationArmy.   Kasey and I weren't thrilled with what they did on our nails.

That night Grandma and Pops came over to watch the kids.  They had pizza and Greg and I went to friend's house for a Holiday party.  We had a good time visiting with friend, eating good mexican dinner and having a few drinks.  We were also outside watching the Ohio State football game.  Greg spent a good part of the day watching football conference games.

Christmas letter 2018

Hello family and friends:

I hope this letter finds everyone doing well.  We’ve had another blessed year and hope you have as well.

I'm still at TI but my job has recently changed.  I have taken on additional responsibility and I'm now the director for training and technical documentation across the company.  I'm very excited about this new challenge and look forward to what it will bring in the coming years.  I traveled to China for almost 2 weeks this year, Houston to meet some of my new team and I'm headed to California and Tucson for a few days to meet more team members.   Next year I will travel some more but mainly domestic.   I still did a lot for PTA that was very heavy in the fall.  I did spirit wear at the middle school which was interesting if nothing else to be allowed there during lunch for a few days ;).  At the elementary school I did fundraising, took on corporate sponsorships,  and still helping with the web page.  I'm also still co-leading Kasey's Junior girl scout troop.  Its been fun this year because we are having the girls plan the badge work and then present it and get the other girls involved.  We even did some badge work at TI this month which was fun.   I'm still enjoying working out at the gym in Plano - such a fun group and working out always makes you feel better.

Greg has gotten a lot more involved in Landon's Boy Scout troop.  He's in charge of adult training (administrative side), he works with all scouts and adults to set up board of review - each scout has to talk to group of adults in interview type format before receiving their next rank.  He's also taken on being clubhouse coordinator for our neighborhood.   Its been interesting :)  Most of all he's home helping get the kids where they need to go, making sure we have dinner during the week, and helping out where he can.  We've still been going to A&M football games this year at least home games.  We enjoyed renting houses for games we went to which makes it nice to get kids to bed and let the adults hang out with some football and a few drinks.

The biggest thing from this year is that we remodeled our house this summer.  We completely redid the kitchen, redid all floors, painted most rooms and redid the kids bathrooms.  It was a major project that took 10-12 weeks.  Since it was summer we were very fortunately to have several friends who let us stay at their house while they went on vacation.   With this project we haven't traveled anywhere this  year as a family.  That's been weird.  

Over the summer, both kids went to sleep away camp for a week at Pine Cove. They had fun.  Landon also went to Tennessee with Scouts for summer camp.  Afterwards he went to Knoxville to visit with a friend that moved away for a few days.  Needless to say Landon was gone most of June.

In October, Greg and I went to Napa for about a day and half to get away for a bit and go to an allocation party at one of our favorite wineries - Allora.   We needed to fill up our new wine fridge that was part of the kitchen remodel :)  We had fun at the allocation party.   One of the activities was wine stomping - competition between most of the people.  We stomped grapes, filled up a jug and took turns helping.  Somewhere along the way I lost my Aggie ring.  We tried to find it on the grounds that night and the next morning but no luck.  Later that week we heard back from the grape stomping company.  Luckily they had not gotten rid of the grapes and found my ring.   It took a little while to get back but I was very thankful to have it on my hand.

We are looking forward to traveling somewhere next year as a family

Kasey is now 10.   She's in 4th grade.   She's taking hip hop with one of the other girl scouts and still taking piano.    She's still doing Girl Scouts and is a Junior now.  She's been helping since last year to plan and give some of the badge work which is a nice change for the leaders, and good for the girls to take on more responsibility.   Kasey has now decided she doesn't like Hallmark movies anymore, but she's watched the entire series of the Flash and really likes that.  She loves unicorns, has been encouraged to believe in the magic of Christmas, and puts a lot of importance on her friends.   There is definitely more drama with girls, but we will get through it.  Kasey is very spirited and will be a good leader some day.   This year she was pretty vocal that Christmas music and decor should not be until after Thanksgiving - I think mainly because her birthday is around there.

Landon is now 12 1/2, and in 7th grade which is the first year of middle school for us.  Landon played football this fall - he played right tackle and linebacker and he enjoyed it even though the team didn't win to many games.  He's also in band which is a big deal in Allen. He's playing french horn and was just notified that he'll move up to the next band starting spring semester.  He was pretty excited about this but will cause his schedule to move around a bit.   Landon has made a lot of progress in Scouts this year.  He is done with his Star (after Star he will have Life and Eagle) requirements and working to finish up scoutmaster conference and board of review.   He was patrol leader for his patrol the last 6 months.  Now he will be one of the quarter masters working to take care of equipment and trailers.  Landon and I really enjoy watching superhero TV shows and movies together.  He plays Fortnite and online games with his friend likely to much, but he enjoys it.

We hope that everyone has a wonderful Christmas and Happy New Year.  May God Bless you this 

coming year.

Love,     Dana, Greg, Landon, Kasey & Patch Myers