I remember being told when I was younger that as you get older time speeds up.  Am finding out that was a true statement.  It doesn’t seem like it has been a year since last Christmas but here we are.  In January we went down to Palm Desert to visit with Emma Roy and Ted and Patty Roy.  Unfortunately Ted was not feeling well when we got there so our visit was mainly with Emma.  We had a very enjoyable visit with her.  Always great seeing her in Palm Desert. 

We were pretty busy attending High School and middle school volleyball and basketball games this past year.  Miranda [Randi] played volleyball and was the Libero this year and did very well.  Blake played basketball, was voted the academic player of the year, way to go Blake.  He also played volleyball and the team went into the CIF playoffs, eventually losing to a team in Lancaster.  He has really improved as a volleyball player although he likes basketball more than volleyball.  He graduated with honors in May and was accepted at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in the fall.  Scotty played basketball and helped lead his team to another championship.  He is currently in Santa Ynez Valley High School and playing of the JV team as a freshman.  Both he and Miranda are the only ones left in High School.  Amanda is a Junior at Cal State Sonoma, in Rohnert Park, up close to the major fire they had the Santa Rosa area this year.  Skyler is out of school and living in Burbank, CA.  Colby is at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and playing on the baseball team.  This summer he played in WA for the Bellingham Blues semipro baseball team. 

We had a fire close to our place in July [Whittier Fire] and it burned the mountains to the south of us.  Got a little close but we were alright.  The current fire [Thomas Fire], which is now the largest wildfire in CA history, was not a threat to us but the Valley did suffer from the smoke. 

We did very little traveling this year but did make a trip to Tennessee and Kentucky as well as our yearly trip to Las Vegas, NV for the National Finals Rodeo.  We are spending a very quiet Christmas as Scott’s children are out of town with their Mother and Scott will be in Mammoth until Tuesday, the day after Christmas.  We did have our annual Christmas dinner with the Bruhns earlier this week. 

Betz and I celebrated our 51st wedding anniversary by having Scott drive us down to Lucky’s in Montecito where we enjoyed a nice quiet dinner.