Gaye surprised Dan, for his 50th birthday, with a cruise to the Bahamas! We spent five days and nights on board the cruise ship Carnival Ecstasy, and visited Key West, Florida; Nassau, Bahamas; and Freeport, Bahamas. For Dan, it was the first time he had ever been truly offshore (prior boating was always the Chesapeake Bay).

The best thing about the cruise for us was being with each other 24/7, and having someone else doing everything...the cooking, the cleaning...and the driving! (Dan realized the first night that SOMEONE ELSE was in charge of getting the boat to the next destination...a pleasant change from prior vacations, where he, as Dad, always did the driving.)

Our friends Ted and Marcy from Ohio went, too (another surprise for Dan!) (Marcy is an old friend of Gaye's), and we did geocaching together in Key West and Nassau!

Dan led a self-paced walking tour of historic Nassau, and the final highlight was our last shore excursion – a bicycling tour of Freeport and Port Lucaya!

See all the photos, at our Cruise Photos page! (click here.)

The whole family enjoyed getting to see Dan's brother Robin in concert twice in December. We made our traditional trip to Macon to see him in his annual concert with Steve Baughman (with our house guest, Jenny), then we had the rare opportunity to see his Winter Solstice concert in Baltimore with his band, Helicon! (My, how the time flies...this was their 26th annual Winter Solstice concert.)

Which leads us to our trip to Washington, DC. We changed up our traditional sequence (because we had just visited Gaye's side of the family in November for Thanksgiving), and visited Dan's parents before Christmas for a change. In addition to the concert in Baltimore, we got to sing in the choir at Grandmommy's and Granddaddy's church, found a couple of geocaches, and Dan got some nice (cold) sunrise photos!

And, now we have a new cat! Her name is Stryper, and we got her from a friend's neighbor when she broke a rear leg. She had been an outdoor cat, and now couldn't take care of herself out the cold cruel world, but the man of the family is allergic, so they couldn't bring her inside, and so they needed a good home for her...so we got her.

She's a big kitty (a Maine Coon breed), is about 3 years old, and just dearly loves all of us! She's very affectionate toward people, but we're having to go slowly introducing her to our other cat, Purrty.

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Dan is now 50 years old! (Wow...where does the time go?) His birthday presents were the aforementioned cruise (which was a surprise!) and a new (old) rifle, which was not a surprise!

Dan got to dress up in his (very formal) Air Force mess dress uniform on the Bahamas Cruise – for Elegant Dinner night. Gaye thought he was very handsome!

Dan has been working hard as a program manager for the Air Force's Cargo Loader Program Office, but has just been shifted back to doing systems engineering. Sadly, his company had to lay off their other engineers in the office, due to the defense budget cuts.

Dan's still going strong with his hobby of target shooting. The big news this time is that his "arsenal" is growing! His father gave him an antique revolver that he had found in Germany in World War II (it's still shootable!); we inherited a Japanese World War II-era semi-auto pistol from Gaye's Dad (it's not in shootable condition); and then he got a World War II-era Russian military surplus bolt-action rifle (as a birthday present from Gaye!) Check them all out at the Dan's Guns page (click here!)

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Gaye got to dress up in her (very formal) blue sequined evening gown on the Bahamas Cruise – for Elegant Dinner night. Dan thought she was stunningly beautiful!

Gaye hosted a church ladies ministry event at our house, where the group (who had been reading John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress) got together to discuss the book, and then watched a movie version of it. It was slightly odd, too...all the characters were dressed in modern-day "business casual" attire (polo shirts and chinos)...in fact, the main characters all had khaki slacks, prompting one of the ladies to wonder if the costume crew had found a sale...

Gaye also got away for a weekend to work with another group of her lady friends on scrapbooks! She's catching up...having just added a bunch of pages of memorabilia from the year 2000... (It's hard, creative work, but Dan has always appreciated the results!)

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Anne's still doing very well at college! Now in her second semester, she was the only one in her English class to get a 100 on a recent paper! (Can you tell that Dan is proud of her?).

She's still teaching at church (3-4 year-olds), and continues to babysit for our new church home fellowship Care Group.

Anne finds herself coining new phrases – she recently was talking to a fellow student on campus, and they both had to be somewhere at half-past the hour, and when asked what time it was, said "it's five 'til thirty!" It makes sense, doesn't it?

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Allen's doing well in home-school 11th grade – he's already finished German, Social Civics, AND Introduction to Computers...and is now working on Geometry, American Literature, Automotive Science, and Biology Laboratory! (Can you tell that Dan is proud of him?)

He's been shooting a few more times with Dan – and especially enjoys the new (old) Russian rifle.

His driver training continues, and he's doing really well...including interstate driving! He said recently, though, that all cars should be sold with dispensers to provide the driver with meatballs! (He likes meatballs...)

Allen's Christmas present to Mom was special – he made it himself! It's a nice wooden banana hanger, and he actually used Granddad Bullock's woodshop equipment, then upon getting home, stained and varnished it himself.

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Please pray for our sanity, as we raise a couple of perfectly normal teenagers, get one through her freshman year in college, and teach the other to drive.

Please pray, in this time of uncertainty and volatility throughout the world, that God's will be done, and that many will turn to him, put their faith in Jesus, and be saved. It sure looks to us like the end times may be upon us...are you ready?

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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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