The biggest news is that we celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary in February 2015! To help celebrate, we had our special video made, and posted it on YouTube! The point was to show everyone that you can still be romantic, and in love, and have fun together, even after a quarter century of being married! (Dan thinks it's been a great 25 years, and that Gaye is, if anything, even more lovely and wonderful than she was when we got married!)

It was made for us by a young, aspiring, but already quite talented videographer (Thanks, Josh!). We hope you enjoy it, and tell anyone else who might like it!

Let's see, what else has been going on?

Our foreign exchange student, Hugo, moved in November 2014 to a new host family. It was the best thing for all of us...as much fun as it was to get to know him, it made a lot more sense for him to go to a family where they had a kid the same age, who is going to the same school.

We've done a lot of traveling since the last update:

• In October 2014, we (Dan, Gaye, Anne, and Hugo) went to Black Mountain, North Carolina, to spend a few days with Dan's brother Robin. We had a great time seeing all the sights, and introducing Hugo to a new and different slice of American culture! Robin returned the favor for Thanksgiving, and came to visit us again this year. Dan took him shooting, at our local range...and he did very well!


• Dan and Gaye went to Little Ocmulgee State Park for about 3 days at the end of October. (Dan took sunrise photos...you'll see them in the Artistic Photos section of the site.)


• After Christmas (which we spent at home), we drove to visit Gaye's mom and siblings in the Dayton, Ohio area. Anne didn't go, because she was working at McDonald's over the Christmas break...so we included her in the gift-exchange festivities via a video-phone link from Gaye's iPad to Anne's iPad!


• From Dayton, we drove to Washington, DC, to visit Dan's mom and dad (and brother, who was there for a few days, too!). A major event was Dan and Robin helping their dad buy a car! His old 1986-ish Chevy Nova had been damaged...so we were able to help him get a late-model used Toyota Corolla! (He's very happy with it, by the way...)


• And then, in mid February 2015, Dan and Gaye spent three days in the north Georgia mountains, in the lovely lille town of Helen just to get away and celebrate our 25th anniversary! We hiked, shopped, ate (!), and even got to play in some snow!

We're still teaching "Self-Confrontation." at our church, and are on track to finish the course in May 2015.

We're still dancing once a month at the Moose Club, as part of our Ballroom Dance Society.

For Halloween, we took Hugo to an exchange student costume party. Not to be left out, Dan dressed as an Imperial Storm Trooper (from Star Wars) and Gaye dressed as a Starfleet officer (from Star Trek). It made for some fun photos. Hugo didn't dress up...he said he went as a "French male model!"

Dan just celebrated his 53rd birthday (gosh, they come fast now, don't they?), and is learning a LOT about the research into nutritional therapies for Parkinsonism. He takes a lot of pills every day...but all under a doctor's supervision...and his symptoms are still well controlled. In fact, he hasn't felt this good in years!

Dan's still leading a small group in our local Celebrate Recovery group, and is still co-teaching (with Gaye) the "Self-Confrontation" course at our church (which has a small but dedicated class group). He's been enjoying playing his new 5-string bass, in worship services and with the Moose Lodge Pickers' Circle!

Dan has been able to resume his target shooting, now that our foreign exchange student is gone! Come look at the pictures of us shooting our guns (and of us shooting other people's guns, and of other people shooting our guns...).

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Gaye had a great time taking Dan to Dayton, Ohio, for a reunion of her old church singles group (that she was a member of in the 1980's). She got to visit with a BUNCH of old friends...and even Dan enjoyed it, because he knew some of the same people, from when he and Gaye attended that church in the late 1990's!

Gaye gets her "baby fix" by serving occasionally in the nursery at our church, and by helping with the children's ministry at the local Celebrate Recovery program.

She's become an expert at cleaning the house quickly for guests (like when Robin came to stay with us over the Thanksgiving weekend, or when we threw a Christmas party for our "Care Group" home fellowship group). The technique is to hide all the mess in the garage, basically. We all love the results – it's nice to be able to enjoy a clean and tidy house! However, then she has to put up with Dan, for the next couple of weeks, asking, "Honey, do you know where ___ is?"

Please click here to see Gaye Leigh's Rules For Getting Older!

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Anne has been enjoying her new college very much – she's at Columbus State University in Columbus GA. This semester, she's taking a photography course, using the Old Ways (black and white film, chemical developing, printing with enlargers on photo paper in a darkroom). That's stuff that's near and dear to her Dad's heart – Dan lent her his old film Pentax, and showed her how to use it, and he's been enjoying seeing her results!

We do get to see her occasionally – Gaye drove to Columbus in February to give her a replacement iPad (she had broken the screen on hers, and we were able to invoke the extended warranty) and to take her shopping for clothes. She also comes home on occasional weekends.

Anne got a job! Over the Christmas break, she got hired at a local McDonald's restaurant, got trained, and actually worked...for about 3 days, before going back to school. Now she can go back and work there during her summer break!

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Allen is still looking (sort of) for work – please keep on praying for him!

He's been enjoying our weekly pizza night, and has been playing a lot of Scrabble with Mom & Dad – it turns out that he's REALLY good at it, and can form great words very quickly (which Mom, especially, admires!). Yes, he usually wins...

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Please pray for our family, as we all continually work to become the authentic individuals God wants us to be.

And remember, no matter what's going on in our society, in our culture, in our government...that God is in control! He's still on the throne, none of what we do takes him by surprise, and he'll continue to be faithful to make sure that "all things work together for good, for those who love God and are called according to his purpose!" (Romans 8:28)

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Dan likes this web site format, and it seems to work o.k. It's based on a template we got free from someone else (hence the attribution at the bottom of the page), and modified to our liking, as permitted under his terms of use. Dan, as much as he likes hand-coding (yeah, right) couldn't do something this nice by himself.

The artistic photo pages, however, are still entirely Dan's design, for now at least, so maybe he hasn't totally abandoned the craft of manually writing web pages...

The "NIV" in our Scripture quotes stands for New International Version. The copyright requires that notation, as well as the following statement: "Scripture quoted from the Holy Bible, New International Version (R). Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of International Bible Society."

Similarly, "NKJV" stands for New King James Version, and its use requires acknowledgment as follows: "Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved."

KJV, of course, means King James Version, which, having been written in 1611, is public domain.

(Hey, I thought of putting in a FAQ section -- you know, Frequently Asked Questions -- but no one ever asks any questions about the site!)

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