Puttering in the Study

2009 Christmas Card Letter

2009 was a memorable year for the Smith family, and we'd like to share a few of the year's highlights via this weblog post, which we put up each year in place of including a paper letter with our Christmas cards.

January was the first anniversary of Michael's joining his new law firm, and he reports it's been hectic but he enjoys running his own office and has had a great time working on cases, as well as keeping up his speaking at seminars and work on his legal weblog, www.EDTexweblog.com.  January also marked a big addition in the back yard at home, as we broke ground on a long-awaited addition to the back yard! More on that later.

February saw Grayson win first in his Webelos den in Pinewood Derby with his Star Trek car.  (Didn't do quite so well in district, but was a good sport about it - well, almost).  February was also when Michael and Grayson spent the night at Camp Pirtle at Dad 'n Lad, where they had a great time doing the activities together, but were surprised by freezing temperatures, thus earning Grayson the coveted "Polar Bear" patch.  (He calls it his "Freeze Your Butt Off" patch and wears it proudly on the front pocket of his uniform shirt).

In March we took the boys skiing at Jackson Hole during spring break. The boys took to skiing like ducks to water -it was amazing watching them flying down the slope just jabbering away.   

April included a trip to Austin with the Marshall Chamber of Commerce where Jamie, Michael and Grayson met with our local legislators and Grayson got to serve as a House messenger.  Our state rep Bryan Hughes took him around the House chamber and he had his picture taken with Mr. Bryan and Texas House Speaker Joe Straus.  (He also learned that a navy blazer and khakis do go together - until he saw the rest of the messengers dressed the same way he swore that they didn't since he's so used to seeing his dad in a suit).   

May was a red-letter month, with the premiere of Star Trek.  Michael and the boys went to see it together four times - including a road trip to Mesquite when it came out in Imax on a guys-only weekend.

June saw Collin and Parker graduate from kindergarten, which was a wonderful, uh, memory.  The warm weather in the summer meant lots of time in the new pool, which we enjoyed a lot.  We also enjoyed the annual Kleypas family reunion at Fort Parker in Mexia, where we all get to see our cousins and catch up.  June ended with another family trip to Dallas, this time to see Chitty Chitty Bang Bang at the Dallas Summer Musicals.  The musical was okay, but the souvenir stand was fabulous, Michael said!  We are starting to get pretty good at staying in hotel rooms, although it does sometimes take a bit of firmness on the part of Mom & Dad to get three boys in one bed to settle down and go to sleep.

August meant Camp Fern for the boys - Grayson's third year and Collin & Parker's first, but they had a great time.  Mom and Dad celebrated our first two weeks off of being parents with a week-long trip to Paris where we slept late, went sightseeing with Rick Steves podcasts, and had a very relaxing week seeing about a bazillion museums and historical sites together. My favorite?  Marie Antoinette's gardens at Versailles.  Jamie's?  The Venus de Milo at the Louvre - because it had the only really cold air in all of Paris coming out of the floor vent next to it!

August also meant the first day of the school for the boys, with Grayson starting fifth grade and Collin and Parker starting first grade (separate classes, which has worked great - they both started the year with straight A's in their first six weeks, which made Mom & Dad very proud!).  

August and September also meant our first trips to the new Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, where the boys got to see both the first game in the new stadium (preseason versus the Titans) and the inaugural regular season game.  We have really enjoyed our trips up to see the games this fall, which have turned into little one and two-day family vcations.  (The boys are even getting better at sharing a bed reasonably quietly - have not had the police called since last December).  We saw the Frontiers of Flight museum next to Love Field on one trip, which was memorable for me because of the Apollo 7 command module, but the boys were a lot more excited to see the local Star Trek fan club's table - where they met real Klingon women!  

October brought a big new development when we bought the former Hub Shoe Shore in downtown Marshall to remodel into new ofices for Michael's law firm.  The shoe store dates back to 1897, so there's a lot of history in the building, but we're looking forward to having the renovation done in the spring - you can see before and present pictures in the link to the left.  The boys are helping out a lot with the demolition, as you can tell.

Later in October, Jamie and I went on an Aegean cruise, starting with several days in Athens and ending up in Istanbul, with several ports in between.  Lots of great ruins great food, and chances to shop for rugs (sometimes in combination), which is sort of our idea of a good time.

November meant a new tradition for Thanksgiving, with dinner in Arlington before heading to the stadium for the Cowboys game, where our boys eked out another win over the Raiders four days after beating the Redskins.  We also made a sign in our hotel room, which was a lot of fun!  We took a stadium tour on Friday, then went to Six Flags for the evening, then it was back to the stadium for the Baylor v. Tech game Saturday night (Jamie and Grayson cheered on the Bears while Michael, Collin and Parker shopped at Half Price Books and Barnes and Noble for five hours - seriously).  We were tired headed home that night, but had a great time.

So it's been a wonderful year for the Smiths.  We hope it's been a great one for your family as well!

Jamie files for reelection as Harrison County Treasurer

Today's Marshall News Messenger front page had a special story for our family, as Jamie filed for reelection as Harrison County Treasurer.  A pdf of the article in a convenient one page format (shown below) is here - Download MNM reelection announcement

So far she does not have an opponent, but as she's had three general election opponents in her four races (which is, as far as I am aware, something no other countywide official in Harrison County has had - several have had two but none three as far as I'm aware - interesting piece of trivia for you) and has won the last two races by margins of 15-17% we are optimistic that even if she does get one, the voters will decide she's done a good job and keep her on.  (Harrison County residents will remember that Jamie's mom Marie Noland was county tax assessor-collector from 1976 to 1994, so running countywide is a family tradition - Jamie and her mother even overlapped for two years in countywide office which was and is as far as we are aware a Texas first for a mother/daughter combination). 

I know her boys and I are proud of her, and ready to work hard for her!  They were a big help the last time around, as you can see.  (This picture is special to us for a different reason - it was the first picture of all three boys smiling at the same time, and still don't think they've taken as good a picture since then.  They were so proud of their mom when they saw the new signs!

Rocket Men: The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon - Craig Nelson

I picked this up on audiobook at HP Books in Arlington the Saturday after Thanksgiving and have been devouring it ever since, since I'm currently in one of my obsessions about the Apollo program (posts soon to following on watching From the Earth to the Moon again, as well as a new paperback of pictures from Apollo 11).

The book is not the start-to-finish that Andrew Chaikin's book is, and it jumps around a bit in a slightly annoying fashion.  But even once it gets going in chronological order, it completely skips Apollo 7, then Apollo 9 and 10 as well, which bothered me because I thought they should have been part of the building block approach that resulted in Apollo 11. The story of the next six missions was left out as well, but a lot of time was devoted to the story of the people of 11 after the mission, and where manned spaceflight is going with NASA these days.  It's interesting, but I just had a lot of trouble not getting the story in the linear form I'm used to from Chaikin's book.

One other complaint.  This book uses a lot of quotes from the participants, and it's easy to either miss the narrator telling you it's a quote, or forgot it's still a quote when you don't have the book in front of you.  So sometimes that was a problem with the quote breaking up the story, and leaving you a little unsettled about where you are in the story.

Overall a good book and an addition to a NASA library I would not miss.  But it was a fairly muddy telling of the story, I thought. 

3D glasses at Cowboys game

The 3D glasses were not the highlight of Sunday's game, but (unfortunately) they weren't the worst part either!

The Christmas Tree Is Up! (Decorations, not so much...)

With a major assist from friends Brad and Kelly Morin's son Zach last night, we finally got the Godzilla Tree out of storage in the garage and upstairs closet and got it up.  This weekend will be spent getting decorations up (well, after the obligatory branch-fluffing and lighting and wiring adjustments), but Parker insisted on putting the first up last night - a tiny Cowboys Stadium ornament (he thinks it's so cool that you can look through the hole in the roof and see the field).

The Bible of Clay - Julia Navarro

I picked this up during the long layover in the Madrid airport end of October since I sort of enjoyed Navarro's The Brotherhood of the Holy Shroud.  The premise is that Abraham dictated Genesis to a scribe, who then took it down on clay tablets, and of course there's all sorts of intrigue surrounding an expedition to find them in Iraq.  The story is set in the months leading up to the invasion, which provides the suspense.  It's okay, but as with the prior book, it sort of drains off at the end rather than reaching a climax.  I should probably chalk that up to it being originally in Spanish, where the conventions as far as dramatic arcs are probably just enough different that it doesn't read right as a thriller in English.  What is reads like is a screenplay that needs some work - the concept, characters and story is good - it just needs to be told in a more dramatic fashion to appeal to a wide audience.

But I have to admit, this is the book that has gotten me thinking that I don't have to keep every book on the shelves just because I read it once.  This is one that (with its predecessor) might find its way to a HP Books in the near future.

The Lost Symbol - Dan Brown

Got this as soon as it came out, since I've enjoyed all of Brown's so far (as well as innumerable knockoffs).  It was okay - it gives formulaic a good name since it is well-crafted, but it's better if you don't dwell on the fact that you've seen the same thing before, i.e. the police are after him, there's a nut after him, there's a puzzle to be solved.  This books focuses on the history, symbology and rituals of the Masons, and it's as much of a love letter to them as you could possibly imagine.  So it's hardly a controversial topic, as in his last couple.  But overall a good read - nothing to write home about, but still a good read.