With Dallas completely shut down for 3 days under ~1" of ice and snow, (yes, that completely shuts things down around here... ) I'm finally getting our holiday email done.
These trips around the sun are whizzing by! Here are highlights from 2025...
Never having enough band activities, Katelyn joined the Indoor Drumline so we all enjoyed Spring semester weekends at drumline competitions before the UIL concert season got busy. Luckily for us, she's part of the show but not actually playing drums, so no-one in our house is practicing drumming :-)
Spring break had us back on our snowboards... Always a great way to spend the week.
John did his usual caving trip in Mexico. He managed the surface logistics for the expedition, so his longest stretch underground was "only" a week.
Katelyn and I still aren't even remotely tempted by anything we hear about those trips.
I fell in love with Crossfit this year, so any day I don't have tennis plans, I'm working on dead lifts, burpees, box jumps, push ups, etc.
If I would've tried Crossfit 10 years ago when John first suggested it, I'd be doing strict pull ups by now. :-)
In June, Katelyn and I joined 13 of my family in Italy. We ate and explored the towns of Tuscany and Umbria, and ate, and ended the trip in Rome, where we ate more. Another incredible family vacation orchestrated by my parents (Thanks, mom and dad!)
On the last night in Rome, right outside our hotel, a street musician and his daughter played the Cotton Eyed Joe, and Katelyn and my nieces drew a crowd with their line dancing. Can't say I ever expected to hear the Cotton Eyed Joe played by Tunisian musicians in Rome! And they probably never expected 4 girls from Texas to start dancing!
On the way home, Katelyn and I spent a few fabulous days in Amsterdam.
We squeezed in a trip to Colorado before band camp started in July. As always, it was great to get away and spend some time in the mountains.
Katelyn started her sophomore year in the Fall and turned 16! Wow!! As the song says... "Don't blink."
The band had a great marching season in the Fall. They missed making the State competition by 1/100th of a point, so we have high hopes for this year.
In addition to band, Katelyn started playing water polo and is learning to be a goalie. John and I are trying to figure out the rules of this game; the referees are constantly blowing their whistles, and we have no idea why... But it's been really fun getting involved in a new sport.
Winter break was supposed to be a couple of weeks of snowboarding, and we drove all the way to Colorado, only to discover... no snow!
After 3 days, we decided we might as well enjoy the 75 degree weather in Dallas, so we headed home, stopping "on the way" at a ski area in southern Colorado.
We snowboarded for 1.5 hours in sleet before concluding that this winter break just wasn't going to be about snowboarding.
We wish you good health, big hugs, much joy and many adventures in 2026.
Love,
Donna, John, Katelyn and Lovebug
