The Wilson/Loftin Christmas Newsletter 2008

Welcome to the 2008 installment of the Wilson/Loftin family newsletter! I was having a hard time thinking of anything particularly exciting to mention this year but a quick look through the 4300 photos that have appeared on my hard disk since January 1st shows that this has been a very eventful year after all, regardless of how quickly it seems to have flown by.

Thankfully, 2008 has been a year without major trauma. Our only really bad news this year has been the loss of two pets - Chico, our "brown dog", died after a long illness and is being missed by us all, including companion Sugar who is finding it a bit tougher to get on with our newly adopted and much younger dog, Tony. We also said goodbye to Drew's guinea pig Pepper who had not been with us quite so long but did still receive a full funeral service with burial and headstone.

The boys are both now at Rooster Springs Elementary and having a good time. Cameron misses his teacher from last year but is getting on fine. Drew is loving Kindergarten and has a great teacher and a good group of kids in his class. Outside school, Drew has tried a couple of sports this year. He played on a YMCA soccer team this spring then switched over to playing T-ball (baseball for young kids) when his friend's team was short of players towards the end of the season. He enjoys the T-ball a great deal and is looking forward to playing again in the Spring. Cameron is still playing piano (though it seems likely that this won't last much longer given the increase in fighting over practising recently) and is also enjoying Cub Scouts. Dave has ended up as the leader for Cameron's Bear Cub Den so gets to wear a funny brown shirt with lots of patches on it and pretend to know something about motivating and disciplining 9 year-old boys. Hmmm... Aside from leader insecurity, Cubs is proving a great deal of fun. Pack 101 in Dripping Springs has a great group of boys and leaders and organises some excellent events. This year, we've been camping twice, had a bicycle rodeo, visited a local engineer who has built a life-size medieval trebuchet that fires watermelons 300 yards, gone fishing and taken part in a model rocket competition!

Nikki left her job at First Presbyterian Church of San Marcos in August and is now writing from home. She has produced a wonderful collection of essays and is working on a couple of books, the first of which should be complete very soon. She has joined a writing group who get together on a regular basis to review each other's work, pass on publication recommendations and generally provide mutual support. Look for a few of her stories in various magazines around Austin in the next year and keep your fingers crossed as she starts the search for a publisher for her book! Outside work, she is still very active in the Austin Junior League where she is working as a researcher this year, compiling information on various local organisations which have applied for help from the League. Nikki has also started taking her running somewhat seriously and has run two half marathons this year, one in El Paso and the other in San Antonio. She is also signed up for next year's Austin Half Marathon in February.

Dave is still having a wonderful time working at Luminary Micro. He's been there for 18 months now and is loving the startup atmosphere - a small number of staggeringly competent people (not that he includes himself in the list) working hard to build and sell new microcontrollers and their support software. Outside work, his on-the-side photography business is picking up and was almost cash-flow positive this year thanks in great part to an advertising photography commission that paid for a replacement camera (or, rather, will pay for the camera once the agency actually sends the cheque). He also had an exhibition of 17 prints hanging in a gallery in San Marcos for the first 3 months of the year and has won several local competitions. You can find his best arty stuff on the web at http://photography.webartz.com or http://www.flickr.com/photos/dawilson. He would like to give a big thank-you to Shelley Shroyer, the area's best portrait photographer, for providing the flattering confidence boost and the client referral for the advertising job. If you need your kids' photos taken and happen to be anywhere near Central Texas, please look Shelley up. While you are in the area, look for billboards or magazine advertising for a new housing development called "Tessera on Lake Travis" since the background photo they will be using in 2009 is the one I risked an expensive camera to get (by hanging it over the side of a boat ).

Keeping up the tradition of visiting places which are doomed to be hit by terrible natural disasters shortly after our return, we spent a very wet week on South Padre Island for our summer holiday in July. While the rest of the state is suffering from a terrible drought (we have had less than 50% of our average annual rainfall this year), South Padre was soaked for the week we were there and then flattened by Hurricane Dolly two weeks later. If you send us a large cheque, we promise not to visit your town or city in 2009.

Despite the damp holiday, we made up for it later mostly thanks to Papa John (Dollard, Nikki's step-Dad) who splashed out on a wonderful pontoon boat on Lake Austin and a large red and black rubber ring that can hold 3 screaming 9 year olds and drag them around at 25mph for hours on end. Luckily enough, this was also the year that Drew suddenly and unexpectedly overcame his fear of water, turning from a poolside spectator to a cannon-balling, water nut in the space of about 10 minutes one day in May. Thankfully, this turnaround was very quickly followed by his learning to swim at least well enough to get back to the edge of the pool.

Overall, then, it has in fact been a rather eventful year and the vast majority of those events have been enjoyable and positive. We hope this continues in 2009 and wish you and your family the same good fortune. If you are keen to see how we are doing, please follow our exploits via our family snaps on http://www.flickr.com/photos/wilsonloftin or Dave's blog at http://blog.webartz.net (which is pretty photography-centric but does have family news now and again).

With all the best for the Christmas season and a very Happy New Year,

Dave, Nikki, Cameron and Drew.