Holidays 2002

Merry Christmas to our dear family and friends,

Writing a Christmas letter has been a little easier this year as we are getting the hang of the whole practice of writing Christmas letters.  We hope we are able to give a good snapshot of this year and convey our memories to our dear family and friends.  If you are visiting our website to view our holiday letter, you might want to explore our entire website.  Ronald has updated and refreshed our website this year.  One thing you will notice is that he has included lots of photos! Even though we still haven’t taken the technology leap getting a digital camera, we managed to come up with a number of digital photos from our CD ROM film processing.  Presumably the website will give a good insight into our lives, especially for our family and friends with whom we do not get to speak or see as often as we’d like throughout the year.  We wish you a very joyous Holiday Season as we move into the year 2003.

The year 2002, what a year it has been for our family.  We had the very unfortunate and untimely passing of Ronald’s mother in January, then got wrapped up in the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo in February. Then we set our eyes on California in early May and also Autumn’s dance recital in May.  We started the summer off with Autumn continuing to attend Crème de la Crème. She had two weeks of swim lessons after school and one day at Space Camp in July.  August was birthday month around here, and in September we all took another trip out west to Colorado and then Ronald and Autumn again made it back to Colorado for an Air show in mid September.

The biggest thing happened with Autumn this year was the start of kindergarten at her school ‘Crème de la Crème.’  Her teacher, Mr. Edlin, (Jamie) has made a remarkable impression in her learning development.  We were so excited when we received her very first Student Progress Report with mostly A+ with high marks on her perfectionism on her hand writing and all.  Her favorite subject is still French; apparently she is learning French vocabulary, participating in French conversation, counting and singing everyday. Thank you, Mrs. Giovanna, the French teacher!  Our little “sweetheart” is on the fast track of growing up but her daddy does try to encourage the use of brakes! It amazes us how fast five years can come and go.  She attends and enjoys a weekly choir practice at St. Paul’s UMC and has taken an interest in learning to play the piano.  Autumn and Ronald continue their Friday lunches.  It is a highlight of the week that Autumn really looks forward to.

Several events had Autumn’s excitement running high over the year.  Autumn was very excited about the Rodeo even though the event almost completely wore us out. We saw close to 12 performances this year and with the new school schedule of not providing nap time, it made the events that much longer. This was the last year for the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo to be held in the 8^th wonder of the world, the Houston Astrodome.  Next year they will move into their new home, The Reliant Stadium!  Autumn was shown on TV again this year during the annual Rodeo parade and we actually got to see it, after being told that people got to see Autumn on TV last year: it must have been that Baby Gap cow dress and the pink hat and pink boots! 

Each year we try to get out to the hill country for the bluebonnets to take pictures, and this year had to be one of the best in many years for taking pictures of them!  Of course we try to find the right outfits for taking pictures with all the girls and this year we were lucky to have Kailey’s grandmother provide us the outfits for all the girls: Kimberly, McKenna, Kailey and Autumn.  You could mistake them for 4 sisters in the pictures.  It was Lyssa’s idea blowing bubbles for the girls in the bluebonnet field and the girls truly enjoyed chasing after them and it made us easy to capture them in our cameras.

Our vacations this year included several different trips.  The first trip was out to San Diego, California in May.  Our visits in California started with visiting World-Famous San Diego Zoo and Legoland while in the San Diego area.  Then we traveled up to Los Angeles to visit Disneyland, Disney’s California Adventure, and checked out Melrose Place and the Hollywood Walk of Stars.  Mother’s Day started out having a brunch with Minnie mouse and her friends. Three of us became kids when we were in Legoland, California. Autumn loved the enchanted castle: it was rather a small park, so we were able to cover it in a day.  The trip to Disneyland was different than our experiences to Disneyworld in Florida or Euro Disneyland in France, and indeed we found it quite the cultural experience for us.  Disney Fast Pass service truly helped us make the most of our day especially when we were trying to ride Space Mountain for the third time.  We were a little disappointed about ‘It’s a small world’ being closed down for remodeling; yet Autumn was perfectly happy with riding Dumbo the Flying Elephant.  We ended up spending more time hanging out at Disney’s California Adventure, getting to know this Golden State and experiencing Hollywood Pictures Back Lot: Disney Animation was quite inspirational and in there we saw a snippet of Lilo and Stitch, not knowing Autumn was going to have it as a birthday theme later.  We enjoyed the live, interactive version of the hit ABC-TV show ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire - Play It’ the most.  A few years back, trying to remember the Fox TV show ‘Melrose Place’, we had a vision of that place had to be real, yet never found the place in this trip: around 1:00 in the morning, we were driving around completely lost in the Melrose area of Hollywood.

In May, after a year of extensive preparation, the Banbury School of Dance presented a dance recital ‘Once Upon A Time’ and Autumn was a Rainbow Fish accompanied by the Little Mermaid.  The show was quite a success and we were extremely proud of Autumn’s performance! We were so glad that Jennifer’s parents were able to come down from Dallas and Ronald’s Dad, Sister and Grandmother Watt could come.

The swim lessons I mentioned were at the YMCA in Clear Lake City did not go the way we expected and it ended costing Autumn the chance to see a couple of movies, but she understood and continued through the summer to trying hard to learn to swim but never did seem to really get in to the groove of swimming.

In July we surprised our family in Dallas by coming up for Autumn’s cousin Lauren’s birthday party.  Wow, we thought Houston was hot this summer!  Dallas was in the 105 degree range.  Thank goodness Houston never got that hot this year.

Autumn was the first in her group at Crème de la Crème to lose a tooth.  As silly as it sounds, Autumn didn’t get a visit from the tooth fairy for the first tooth because it was lost and never made its way under her pillow; but not soon after losing the first tooth she lost another one and this time made sure it made its way underneath a pillow. The tooth fairy made up the difference for the loss of the first tooth. 

Autumn got a chance to go to Space Camp next to the NASA Johnson Space center for a whole day of learning about Space. It was an experiment for us to see how well she liked it as they actually have a week long program you can choose instead of just a single day.  Next year we will go for the week long of different activities of Space Camp as Autumn and Kimberly both had a great time.

Work has been interesting for both of us this year, probably more so for Jennifer.  Ronald’s job has been fairly stable with very little changes in their operation environments.  However Jennifer’s work got a jump start of some sort as she spent a lot of time considering a change.  She started exploring other job opportunities in May.  She looked at several different areas in Houston, but ended up taking an opportunity within Baylor, so a transfer was requested and started a new position in September in a new lab.  The transfer was a good career move for Jennifer as she is faced with challenges that are new to her and will continue to build on the skills acquired from her previous employment.

Autumn turned five in August: Autumn’s birthday has been always in the middle of the hot summer and after last year having her birthday party outdoors at the Houston Zoo we opted for a cooler place, a bowling alley, but not just any bowling alley: Autumn wanted to have it at Jillian’s Hi Life Lanes.  Her theme was Lilo and Stitch and she had a Hawaiian style birthday party with lots of her friends at Jillian’s.  Ronald had an incredible idea about what the Lilo and Stitch birthday cake should look like with vivid descriptions.  Jennifer really needed an inspiration and Ronald was able to provide some design input.  Ronald came up with the idea of having the names of each of the invited children written out on little surf boards, it turned out to be a really cool cake that the kids really enjoyed. The kids all had a blast trying to knock down the bowling pins, and it was a fun sight to see a bunch of 5 year olds trying to chunk a bowling ball down a lane!  Not too longer after Autumn's birthday we had to see Lyssa and Kailey move away back to Virginia.

We left the last part of August and went up to Colorado for our annual fall/Labor Day vacation.  We visited Winter Park, the Rocky Mountain National Park, and spent time with our friends, the Smiths, who live outside of Denver in Morrison.  We made our way back to the Denver area again in late August, knowing that this year will probably be the last trip to the Colorado area over a Labor Day weekend; Autumn’s school schedule from here on out will prevent us from escaping the Houston Heat.  So we made the most of it this year.  We had a full day of Winter Park’s summer activities by riding the Alpine Sleigh slide all day long.  In previous years Autumn had to ride with one of us, but this year she got the chance to be her own speed demon and she lived up to it. She loves speed!  She did have one minor bump early on and then one good bump/crash coming down but she bounced back and never wanted to stop!  We had more rain this trip so our visit up to the Rocky Mountain National Park area was kind of hampered by the rains.  But we did manage to find a day where we could do some walking and Autumn was able to see the mountain goats, deer and other wild animals.  We visited our friends the Smiths for several nights.  Autumn really has taken to Melody, Scott and Sherrie’s daughter, each time we’ve visited them.

We got back to Houston and two weeks later Autumn and Ronald went back to Colorado for a long weekend trip to see an Air Show in Grand Junction, Colorado for a long weekend with the Smith family.  They got the chance to see the Air Force Thunderbirds do their flight performance with mountains in the background and temperatures that you could never get here in Houston.  The noise and the sights of the planes were exciting for Autumn.  She has a major fascination with flight: it probably has to do with her desire for speed!

Speaking of flight, Ronald twisted Jennifer’s arm and next thing we knew we had Autumn on a flight to Dallas, TX by herself to visit Jennifer’s family for a weekend.  It was a learning experience for all of us, considering all the new airport security in the last year and getting used to what you can and cannot do and it turned out to be a really good experience for all three of us.  Autumn had a great time visiting cousins Timmy and Loren.

Ronald and Autumn went to several La Porte High School football games and Jennifer ended up going to a couple; one in particular was the Deer Park and La Porte game where two La Porte high school students streaked across the football field during half time.  Lucky for us, Autumn was looking the other way at the marching band and didn’t see the naked boys’ backsides as they ran across the field.  But the high school football games were a good experience for Autumn in preparation for going to a professional football game in November.  Ronald bought tickets for a Texan football game on our “first date anniversary”, November 17, for the three of us to attend.  Autumn probably had a better understanding of the game because of the experience of the high school games

For Halloween, Autumn dressed as Tinker Bell with magic wand and tiara.  Kimberly and her family joined our family to trick or treat around our house this year.  We covered a much greater area this year before calling it quits.  It is amazing how much energy all three of the girls, Autumn, Kimberly and her sister McKenna,  had going from house to house.

Although we experienced the loss of Ronald’s mother in January, this year has also seen many happy occasions and wonderful experiences.  Ronald’s mother will be truly missed, and although the holidays are here, they will be different this year; we rely on our faith and we look forward to the year to come.

Happy Holidays,

Ronald, Jennifer and Autumn Watt