Merry Christmas Family and Friends,

Bobette and I are well into our empty nest stage and starting to realize how important relationships with friends and family is compared to so many other things in life. So, for the next year we will start to try and make friends, Bobette will get rid of all of her crafts and I will stop wasting so much time on chores around the house.
Nicole is now 19 years old and a sophomore at Oregon State University. She is quite an attractive young lady and of course I worry about her with all the boys swarming around her. Fortunately, she inherited my razor sharp wit and is just mysterious enough that sheintimidates many of the young men. Also like her dad, she’s very athleticand can outrun most of the girls. She finished second while nearly maxing the Air Force physical testing; she then beat her professor doing pushups in front of a class with nearly 500 students. Dude! You’d better watch out! Sheis majoring in psychology and premed, plays, coaches and is on the board of the Lacrosse team and is active in the Air Force ROTC. I’m afraid she is allowing the Air Force to turn her into a real military person. When she comes home she writes operations orders and declares herself Commander in charge of Christmas operations.

Joseph still works at Radiant Optics as the operations manager and keeps pretty busy building, cutting, trimming, digging, burning and planting at the farm; taking my new boat out; playing football; volunteering for church activities and looking for other generally dangerous things to do. Loading 2.5 tons of gravel in a one ton pickup, riding his dirt bike, or building huge fires on his farm are just a few of the dangerous things he does regularly. He must be maturing because he has backed off on some of themore dangerous things he used to do, such as saying “Dad, I can beat you up”. Meanwhile, Katie is busy doing amillion riding lessons per week, buying more horses(up to 6 now), fixing up the house, landscaping and trying to get Joseph to eat something besides French Toast (a full time job in itself). We occasionally see glimpses of Katie as she is on her way doing things…kind of reminds me of Bobette.

On a hot Phoenix day (110 degrees) Michael and Heather started their trek to Portland in the great Northwest with all their possessions in tow behind two small BMWs. The intrepid movers broke down two blocks from home. Of course Michael had a spare alternator somewhere in one of the trailers and a few hours later with the use of someone’s carport, they were again on their way. Unfortunately, they were not able to take all their stuff

and left two of their cars behind in a friend’s yard. I wonder if the friend knows that the only way to get rid of a car without a title is to cut it up witha saws-all and turn it in for scrape metal. I’ll try not to tell them.They still can’t decide whether or not to get married so they are going to act like they are married for 30 or 40 years before committing. They have new jobs (as a BMW mechanic Michael only lithimself on fire once so far), a new place to live (they are going to start raising chickens, so there’s a gift idea), and a new perspective (boy is living in Portland ever expensive)

Derrick and Biz are working harder than ever – man, can that Adrianna ever crawl fast. The only thing that seems to slow her down is the wind friction on the ear-to-ear
grin

permanently pasted on her face. Bella the dog seems a little nervous with Adrianna’s speed and usually sleeps with one eye open so as to not get loved to death. Biz has been occupied riding and taking care of her horse, trading horse stuff on the internet, and managing Adri who has risen to rock star status as the

only baby on either side of the family. They have outgrown their house and are looking at building a new house as soon as they can get the environmental weenies in the county go

vernment to let them build a road over a ditch that had water in it back around the time of the last ice age. I was lucky enough to go to a couple of Derrick’s sermons this year. He is very good. In fact he is so good he made a lady pass out in one sermon. If you go to one of his sermons, expect something to happen.

This year I finally put my foot down and forbid any further bazaars at our house. Bobette complied immediately, or right after she was abandoned by her partner

and two main attractions. She still has plenty to keep her busy. The charity she runs, Christmas Stockings for Homeless Children, is growing

every year and is starting to spread beyond the local area. We will all miss Bobette’s Mom, Marguerite, as she passed away last Spring. Bobette was fortunate in that she had the chance to spend some good quality time with her mom in the weeks before she passed away. Bobette just gets better looking every day to this grandpa.

I’m working a lot harder than I want to on my PhD program.

I’m finding that going back to school is really a great motivator to do anything but school work. It seems

that anything is more fun than homework or reading and writing philosophy. School makes even mowing the lawn or doing the dishes seem fun. But going

back to school has not kept me out of trouble. I had the bright idea a while back to tell the kids I would buy a boat if they provided a grandchild. Derrick and Biz provided the grandchild, but Joseph insisted that I keep my word. I intended on buying a canoe, but ended up buying a brand new 18ft inboard outboard.

My idea was to have a toy for the family to rally around. To a large extent it works, of course it is too dangerous for the grandchild for whom I purchased the thing. All in all I have no complaints and life is great even if I am sleeping with a grandma now.

Best wishes to all and please keep in touch, Ma and Pa Scheid December, 2007