It has been an interesting year for us...in the sense of the apocryphal Chinese (or Scottish) curse, "May you live in interesting times!" However, let me start at the beginning, and we'll get to the "interesting" part soon...

In February of 2015, Gaye and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary! One thing we did to celebrate was to have a video made (see link farther up on this page), which was huge fun for us to do. We also went to Helen, Georgia, to get away for a couple of days...and got to play in the snow, and go hiking and geocaching!

We got to see our foreign exchange student from 2014 one more time! We took Hugo out to dinner in May, to properly say goodbye before he went back to France. We went to the Tic Toc Room...arguably the best restaurant in Macon! We celebrated Pi Day (3/14/15) with some apple pie! We finished teaching "Self-Confrontation." at our church in May 2015. We went to see a couple of families of friends of ours acting in several plays with the Perry Players (of Perry, Georgia).

Then, on the 4th of July, we were in a bad car accident, that left Dan with a broken rib and left Gaye with a broken neck (her C2 vertebra was cracked nearly all the way through). The hospital left Dan alone, and he healed in a couple of months, but it took longer for Gaye: she was fitted with a "halo" brace, which she wore for about 3 months, and then a couple of months of a hard neck brace.

She was a great trouper throughout, though...she even put "bling" on her braces (stick-on rhinestones), and occasionally would even put some battery-powered Christmas lights on her halo! Now, though, she's officially all healed (finally!)...praise the Lord!

As part of Gaye's recovery, a good friend from Ohio came to visit and help take care of her for a week in September (thanks, Marcy!). We still danced at the Moose Club, as part of our Ballroom Dance Society, EVEN with Gaye's halo.

Then, in the fall, our washing machine overflowed, flooding a couple of inches deep through about half of the house! It was pretty stressful, having the recovery company come in, and take our things away to their storage facility, and rip up all our flooring in the affected rooms, and run big noisy dehumidifiers to dry everything out. However, this disaster worked out O.K. in the end, as the insurance paid for new flooring and new paint through much of the house! Gaye's happy now!

In November, Marcy came back to visit again, and this time brought Gaye's mom (Beverly) with her! (Beverly came down to help Gaye and encourage her during her recovery.)

Then for Thanksgiving, we had the opportunity to use a friend's lake house (on Lake Sinclair) to host Thanksgiving dinner! Dan & Gaye & Anne & Allen were there, and Dan's brother Robin, and Anne's friend Jenny, and her husband Colt, and their baby. It was definitely a full house! (As Dan says, it was "cheerful chaos!")

Then, of course, for Christmas, we went to Dan's brother's Christmas concert with Steve Baughman) at Wesleyan College in Macon; held a small Handel's Messiah sing-along party at our house; celebrated at our home church (Calvary Chapel Heartland); opened presents at home with immediate family (Dan, Gaye, Anne, and Allen); then flew to Dayton to see Beverly and Gaye's sister and brother; and then flew to Washington, DC, where we spent New Year's with Dan's parents and brother.

See why it was an "interesting" year?

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When Marcy came to visit Gaye in September, Dan got a break (with Gaye's permission), which he used to go (with a bunch of guys from our church) to a Four Day Defensive Handgun Class in Nevada! He had a great time, and learned a lot, and found it very refreshing (thanks, Gaye!).

In addition, Dan has been shooting a few times locally, with Gaye (in her neck brace...she's a good sport!) and with some other friends.

Dan still enjoys playing bass (for worship services and the Moose Lodge Pickers' Circle!), and he's staying active in our Celebrate Recovery group, and his Parkinsonism symptoms are still well controlled.

Then, in November, Dan was laid off from his job. It turned out to be a blessing to have the time off throughout the holidays...but now (by the grace of God) Dan has a new job! As of February, 2016, he'a a mechanical engineer working on the Air Force's HH-60G Pave Hawk combat search and rescue helicopter!

Again...see why it was an "interesting" year?

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Gaye drove to Ohio in April to take her mom to visit her brothers/Gaye's uncles in the Carolinas, then drove her back home again...lots of miles, but it was a joy for her.

Gaye gave her testimony at a Celebrate Recovery meeting, halo and all! She used the halo as an illustration of God's power to do exceedingly abundantly above all she could possibly imagine (Ephesians 3:20)...as she says, it's by God's grace that she can even walk and talk!

Gaye led her her group of (mostly) single ladies (formerly known as His Angels) in a ministry of writing encouragement cards to many people; still serves in the nursery at our church; stills serves as a singer on our church worship team; and helps with the children's ministry at our Celebrate Recovery program.

Gaye enjoys the new (2006) Buick Lucerne that Dan bought her to replace our wrecked minivan...along with not having any teenagers to raise any more, we're now a non-van-owning family!

And, Gaye is now a college student again! She's taking a course in AutoCAD (a software program for doing Computer-Aided Design) to get herself up to speed on the state of the art in her career field of drafting and design. She loves it (though it's a lot of work...)!

Again...see why it was an "interesting" year?

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

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Anne is doing very well in her Fine Arts program at Columbus State University in Columbus, Georgia. Last semester, she moved from analog photography to digital photography (Dan bought a new (used) camera to lend her)...however, she's been interning with her photography instructor, helping other students in the class darkroom!

She's getting close to graduation -- she expects to graduate in December of 2016! We got to see her for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and she still drives home on occasional weekends.

Anne worked at a local McDonald's restaurant over the Christmas holiday -- she has a good reputation there, and they were happy to hire her back. She has also been working in Columbus, at a place called Brushes and Beverages. You go in, buy a canvas, and pick out a design from many samples hanging on the wall that you want to paint. They provide the brushes and the paints, and skilled help (like Anne!), and the opportunity to buy a glass of wine or the like... We went there once...we being Dan, Gaye, Beverly, and Marcy. We all made paintings (with Anne's help), and Gaye even picked out a sample on the wall that Anne had originally painted!

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Allen spent the first half of the year volunteering at Southside Baptist Church, helping with moving chairs and tables around (in preparation for various events), vacuuming, and the like.

Then, in the fall, he started college again! This time, he's at Middle Georgia State University, studying Information Technology! (He says he likes his IT courses, even if not so much his core courses...) He's back in school now as I write this for his second semester. (Yay! Praise the Lord!)

Allen has begun donating plasma – which helps other people, and gets him a little bit of spending money. He seems to spend most of his weekends hanging out with his friends.

Mom & Dad try to get together with him once every couple of weeks for dinner, either at home when he's in Warner Robins, or we'll meet him near his school in Macon.

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Please pray for our family, as we deal with all the challenges that life has been throwing at us, and continually work to become the authentic individuals God created 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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