Shook News and Notes

October brought birthdays for Tim and Vicki.  Unfortunately we have left the "50 somethings".  We had many Happy Birthday wishes from family and friends.

We visited Erik in Tulsa and went to their acquarium.

We also went to Chicago for Thanksgiving.  Andrew and Katie hosted in their new house.  There were 13 total with Katie's parents, brothers, one girlfriend, and one set of grandparents.  Tim and I were treated to an evening at the opera as our birthday gift from the kids.  Tim said it was more of a musical with opera singing since it also had speaking and it was in English.   "The Merry Widow."
The sets were amazing, a grand ballroom with 2 circular staircases, a back courtyard and a brothel.
We also visited a BaHai temple and the Chicago Educational center

Andrew and Katie were home for a short visit in December and currently James and Hannah and Erik are home for Christmas.  Yeah!

The handbell group gave an amazing Christmas gift.  They all helped make the quilt shown below.

Samuel continues to improve.  He has started the vocational rehab interviews and job assessments and they hope to have a place for him to start work within a couple of months.  He has found a new kitty to join our family.  Her name is Nadia.

Merry Christmas and Happy New year to all

Rivers Ripple

We are enjoying the Christmas season!  Olivia had her preschool program this past Friday and has been off this week, so we've done some visiting, extra Christmas things, and just relaxed some too.

Since we last blogged we enjoyed a trip to Walt Disney World in October!  It was so much fun, a much needed escape, and just a great trip all around.  The girls, especially Kinley, are ready to go back.  Per Kinley we missed visiting a few princesses.

Dan has been busy at work.  His big news there is the sale of KWCH, which is pending final approval.  That's made for a stressful fall.  His band gigs have slowed through fall and he will take a break with the New Year while we adjust to new baby and family life of 5.

Sarah has been busy at home, keeping the girls on track, the house managed, and working on the weekends a couple of times a month.  In between, we've been busily preparing as much as possible for baby girl's arrival in February.  Lots of rearranging, reorganizing, and appointments.

Meeting the princesses was a highlight.

The girls also met Doc, Sophia, and Jake.

Olivia has loved preschool this fall and all her friends there.  She's very social at school, as evidenced by the round of high fives she distributed upon her return from Walt Disney World when I picked her up that first day back.  She's continued in gymnastics and enjoys it.  And her request for swimming lessons was squeezed in Nov and Dec.  She's actually taking lessons at a youth stroke introduction level, having learned front crawl, back stroke, elementary backstroke, and been introduced to breaststroke.  She's been focused on learning to breathe to the side this session.  At home her imagination flourishes and she is often the leader of whatever she and Kinley are playing.  Olivia turned 5 in November and was super excited for her birthday and the party she had for family.  Unfortunately, the day after she came down with a fever and was out of commission over Thanksgiving week and into the week after.   Upper respiratory virus and Strep A.

Rainbow kitty(Olivia's invention) and Crumbs.

Birthday girl.

Kinley playing Sheriff Callie and guitar.

Grammy and Kinley at the pumpkin patch.

The cousins at Olivia's party.

Kinley turned 3 this week.  She, too, was excited for her birthday party and having her "birthday friends" over to celebrate this past weekend.  She loves to play Lalaloopsy's, doctor, and whatever Olivia dreams up.  She enjoys learning activities, and often requests our daily activity time.  She wants to be able to take some lessons and will do so in the spring, once we've figured out our new routine with baby girl.  Kinley started sharing a room with Olivia in November and often talks a bit too much for Olivia's taste at bedtime.  Overall the transition has gone well.  We do music together on Mondays while Olivia has preschool and play together on the other days, in between errands.  She soaks up that time, as do I.

Brisco turned 9 years old in November and Dan pulled one of his teeth a few days before his birthday.  Overall he's doing well, with a small recent allergy flare up.  Maybe the Christmas tree?!??

Our visit to Santa this year.  :)

Anyway, hope everyone is well.  We look forward to Sunday's Christmas celebration!

Chris' Update

Officially, I'm two days late with this post--sorry all!

I guess work is a large part of what kept me procrastinating on this. The last time I posted this, I was probably also late because I was enjoying work. This time not so much. Life in the Education department is tense. We've begun HR proceedings against our boss for what essentially amounts to bullying. So our CEO decided to talk to her on Friday (yay-ish!) before he left for Korea for a week (wait, what?). That leaves us with at least another week of limbo, during which time our boss thinks we hate her as a human being (not necessarily true, we just don't think we can work with her because she's a bully) but still is working with us. Laurie found some depressing statistics about how often the victims of workplace bullying leave and not the bully, but I'm hoping to bend those the other way in this case. Unfortunately that means a long, tense wait.

This is compounded by the continuing work we have to do, so I've been spending most of my time working on a Van de Graaff generator which will make insane amounts of static electricity in a visually impressive fashion. You can read all over the internet how you can basically slap this thing together out of anything. I haven't found that to be true. Very frustrating.

Theresa is still doing poorly--her stomach/appendix has been on the fritz recently causing her a lot of pain and downtime. Doctor's appointments haven't been too helpful and even been lost in paperwork so the one we had the most hope for ended up not being scheduled at all. We're keeping at it though because that's what we do.

Tolleson Tapestry

Hello Family!

We're counting down the days to Christmas break! As always, October and November were packed with many fun-filled events. We made a trip to Bedford, PA for our friend Karen's wedding the weekend of October 17th. You may have met her at our wedding. She married a wonderful man named Kyle in a beautiful Jewish ceremony. Bedford is a historic small town with ties to President Washington and the American Revolutionary War. There are a lot of covered bridges, and being there in the fall meant that the leaves were stunning. We did manage to be there during a cold spell, so we experienced rain, sleet, hail, and snow all on the wedding day :). 

The supposedly haunted 1760s Jean Bonnet Tavern. Excellent ambiance and food a short distance from Bedford!

Our Fall Concert was scheduled for Friday, October 30, but the weather had other plans. We spent over an hour in our tornado shelters that morning and  experienced flooding in the orchestra room (thankfully no damage). The district canceled all after school activities which meant our concert was canceled. We will be playing some of the pieces on our Winter Concert, Monday, December 14. November 3rd was our annual Fall String Festival, which fell on the only sunny day between two bouts of rain and floods.

Austin ISD's Fall String Festival 2015 at Zilker Hillside Theatre!

Thanksgiving marked the end of the very busy Fall semester of recruitment events for James. Applications to the University are up again, which leads to an always-busy season of application file reading. His class, Organization and Administration of Higher Education, will meet for the last time this Monday and then require a final paper. 

A 360 view standing by the creek at the ranch for Thanksgiving.

For Thanksgiving, which also happened to be our 4th anniversary, we drove out to James' relative's ranch outside of Blanco, TX. There was a bridge destroyed by the floods and a few other detours along the way. His relatives were not able to get into their property for over a week due to flooding. To get to their house, you have to drive through a creek, which makes for access problems when the water is high. The house is up on a hill and safe from the floods, so thankfully there was no damage to buildings, just the dam, rocks, and trees around the creek. After a nice lunch at the ranch, we drove back to Austin for the UT football game. It's a good thing we had ponchos! It rained on and off the whole game even during the half time show which featured Jimmie Vaughan (including him famously playing the guitar behind his head).

Pretty good seats! We were on the 55 yard line. Thankful for ponchos!

Before we head to Kansas for the holidays, we have our Cedar Park Winds Concert, which will include a Sousa march, Grainger's Molly on the Shore, the Leroy Anderson traditionals (Sleigh Ride and A Christmas Festival) as well as a few other nautical themed pieces. I will perform with our choir on their concert and conduct on two band concerts in addition to an orchestra concert. Let the concert season begin!

Duncan posing with the pumpkin.

Rimsky helping with Christmas decorations.

Many Blessings to you all this holiday season!
Hannah and James