WOW! This is gonna change this Christmas Blog, that's for sure: I can now add video!

Just for some teasers, I'll post a couple of sports videos I did for Gina's teams. The first is Gina's 8th grade St. Patrick basketball team (Gina is #24):

For Christmas this past year, Anne Marie bought me a camcorder that records directly onto a digital hard drive in the camera -- no tapes, no memory chips, but right to high-quality digital video. From that, it's easy to produce movies, from the simplist (just putting together the clips into one movie) to the more complex (cutting, editing, setting to music, etc.). It takes a lot of time to produce the complex ones, but the results can be pretty fun.

 
Other than spring break: We took a couple of summer trips, one to New York and one to Destin, Florida. The New York trip found us at the beach on Long Island for a week in late June. Not a "tour" like last summer -- this was just to Pt. Lookout with a day trip to see AM's cousin and family on Fire Island; we didn't even rent a car. It was definitely summer already in Texas, but not really so much up there. The weather was a little iffy and the beach was not crowded at all. The girls were freaked out each afternoon when the school busses brought the kids back home from school: "Oh my God, I can't believe they're still in school! How horrible!" Of course, those kids are still on summer break weeks after the Texas crowd is back in school at the other end of the summer. No trip into the city this time (perhaps a lingering effect of having lost Mary at Disneyland -- doing so in NYC would be a whole lot scarier); maybe next time the kids will be big enough for that. I actually flew back midweek for work, but Anne Marie and the girls stayed until the next weekend and got to see AM's sister Rosemary and her son Connor.

We also made a trip in July to see my brother Shawn and family in Fairhope, Alabama, and for a short midweek side trip with them at the Sandestin Resort in Destin, Florida. That was a driving trip, which was a good thing. Our girls have always been good airplane travelers (each made their first plane trip before their first birthday), but starting with the admittedly horrible flight back from spring break this year, Ellen has some fear of flying. We'll see how she fares over spring break 2007, when we'll be flying to Colorado, but I think it's just a phase she's going through. Anyway, we boated with Shawn and Paula, I did some kayaking, we fished, I played some golf, we swam in the Gulf and in the pools at Sandestin, and had a generally relaxing time. And we ate. A lot. When we returned to Fairhope from Sandestin, my sister Leanne (semi-permanently stationed outside London but on a 9-month assignment to North Carolina with her company) and her dog Dougal drove down to spend the weekend with us (er, I'm assuming Leanne drove and Dougal just rode along). Highlights included shopping for the ladies and my breaking of and rebuilding Katie's birdhouse. And watching the kids play DDR. And checking out Shawn and Paula's almost-not-quite-barely-finished beautiful new house.

 
Oops.

I forgot to post anything here this year.

Yes, people have asked. I'll try to update this later. Check back in a couple of weeks or so.

A short preview: this was the year of the ankle. I first hurt my left ankle a few days before spring break, when I fell off my bike. We went to California, spending half the week in SoCal (did Disneyland, the beach, and San Diego Zoo's Wild Animal Park) and half the week in Mammoth skiing). I was afraid my ankle injury (turned out to be a low ankle sprain, but had me on crutches and in a boot for a while) would hinder my skiing, but interestingly enough, once you put a ski boot on, it doesn't matter if you even have bones in your foot; the ski boot holds everything in place and keeps it from moving anyway. Then, in August, I actually tore my achilles tendon (same ankle, my left) playing softball. Had surgery in late August, was in a cast for 6 weeks and a boot for another 4 weeks or so, and I'm still slogging through rehab.

More later. I promise. Really.

 
This is the birthday card Art sent me this year. As he wrote on the inside:

Dear Father Jeff,

I've gotta find a better card shop. This was the last card in the
place written in English that didn't have some fat chicks or midgets on
it.

Last year, he sent me one with a befuddled-looking cowboy on the cover, and on the inside it said, "What if everyone DID Wang Chung tonight? Who'd watch the cows?" A couple of years before that, he sent me a card all in Spanish with prominent Stars of David on it. I'm still not certain, but I think it was a Mexican bar mitzvah card.

This year will be hard to top, though:



Awesome.

 
Spring Break 2006: This year, the Drummond clan headed to Southern California for spring break; at least, we were there for half the time, staying with the Fees (UD friends Martin Fee and Janis Drexilius Fee) in Orange County for the first half of the week and at Mammoth Mountain in the Sierra Nevada Mountains for the second half of the week.

As is my usual practice, I spent the month or so before the trip working out so that I could ski without much fatigue. Mostly I kept to the gym, but occasionally, when the weather was nice, I'd ride my bike down to White Rock Lake. The Tuesday before we were leave for spring break, I decided to ride my bike instead of hitting the gym, and to make a long story short, I had a wreck and sprained my ankle. After the initial fall, I thought I was just scraped up, but my left ankle was stiff the next morning, and the day after that I couldn't put any weight on it. Initially I thought it was an achilles tear, since the pain was right at the back of my heel, where the achilles tendon attaches, but an MRI came up negative. I was on crutches for a couple of days and in a walking boot for about a week, which came in handy at Disneyland. After hobbling around the ridiculously crowded park for the morning, Anne Marie discovered that people in wheelchairs got to skip to the front of the line for lots of the rides. Next thing you know, ol' Jeff's renting a wheelchair. There were a handful of folks renting chairs whose handicaps were, shall we say, difficult to observe; I'm glad I had the walking boot on, so at least I looked like I might really need the chair. The other Disneyland highlight was when Mary got lost. She was only gone for about 5 minutes, but it seemed like hours. We weren't more that about 100 - 200 yards away from her, but like I said, the park was exceptionally crowded (it had been unseasonably cloudy and rainy the few days before, but sunny and bright that day, which probably really brought out the crowds).

We also spend a day at the San Diego Wild Animal park (the part of the San Diego Zoo norhteast of San Diego), and a day exploring the "OC," particularly the beach cities. The Drummond girls do love the beach, that's for sure. Midweek, we drove through the "high desert" to Mammoth for skiing. On the trip we saw plenty of Joshua Trees, and even took a detour to check out some hot springs, which was pretty cool. Mammoth had benefitted from a huge snowfall this year, and I still don't know what the town really looks like: all the streets were canyons carved through the snow. My concerns about my ankle were quickly assuaged when I put on a ski boot and realized it was doing an even better job protecting my ankle than my walking boot. Ellen was a little under the weather, so she only skiied (grudgingly) the last day, but Gina and I did get to make a few runs with her at the end of the day.

 


Christmas Eve 2004:

(OK, I know what you're thinking: who in the heck starts "year in review 2005" off with pictures from 2004? Well, if you read the blog last year, you didn't get to see these pictures from Christmas 2004. Since we don't get the majority of the Drummond clan together all that often, it's good to throw in some pictures when we do. Anyhoo, back to your regularly scheduled programming)

One of Colleen's kids had a school project that involved getting thumbprints from various relatives to compare for similarities. Or at least that was what we were told. Now that I think of it, ever since that night I'm always searched when I take a flight. Hmmm . . . .

front row: Leanne, Gina, Logan, Colleen; back row: Sydney, Greg, Jeff, Mary, Art.

 

Another Christmas Eve photo: the Drummonds usually get together on Christmas Eve to exchange gifts, rather than on Christmas Day (that's the in-laws day). With six Drummond "kids" (Art, Leanne, Greg, Jeff, Shawn, Colleen) and all the kids in the next generation, it's usually mayhem. Adding to the bedlam is the fact that Christmas Eve is also Mary Drummond's birthday. Here's a picture of her 4th birthday, 12/24/2004

 

Another Christmas Eve 2004 photo: Christmas Eve 2004 was at Colleen and Charlton's house this year, in southeast Houston, and it snowed! Great big flakes of soggy white fun. The kids loved it, naturally, and when we left Colleens about midnight to drive back to Anne Marie's mother's house, the neighborhood was still alive with people. Yes, it was almost midnight, but kids and parents alike were out and about, enjoying the snow. This picture finds Art, Logan, Charlton and Jeff smoking cigars in Colleen and Charlton's backyard shed (OK, I don't think Logan was smoking a cigar, but the rest of us were).

 

Your blogsters at the St. Patrick School auction. Yes, you can dress us up, but it still draws stares when you do so.

 

Here's Mary before her ballet recital, Spring 2004.

 

Yet another "Daddy's girl:" Mary and her Daddy at her preschool spring pageant.

 

Another shot of the photogenic one. I'm not sure if that's a tattoo or marker on her left wrist.

 

Ellen in her first communion dress. What a day. If you want to hear me wax poetic, check out the "secret" blog.

 

Another first communion pic: Ellen with her grandmother (Anne Marie's mom).

 

Grove Parkers: we've gone to the Grove Park Inn in North Carolina with this crowd of friends for a couple of years in a row.

[UPDATE]: I kept looking and looking at this picture, and something just wasn't right about it. I couldn't put my finger on it, but I've just figured it out: nobody's got a drink in their hand. I don't know how that happened; it seemed like there was a lot of liquor involved in that weekend.

 

Our new house: we told you last year that we moved to a new house here in Dallas; well, here's a picture of us on the upstairs balcony, looking back toward the rear portion of the house.

Actually, on the trip to the Grove Park Inn, we also visited George Vanderbilt's estate, The Biltmore.

 

Ellen's "official" soccer photo. Is that the face of a girl who loves the sport, or what? She was a trooper and played, in some awfully cold weather, but all in all, she'd much rather have been on the playground.

 

Gina, on the other hand, is quite the athlete. The St. Patrick School junior varsity (5th and 6th grades) softball team won the Dallas Parochial League championship in a nailbiter at the Dr. Pepper Youth Stadium on the grounds of the Ballpark in Arlington, where the Rangers play. As you can see, the little ballpark (top picture -- that's Gina at the plate) is architecturally styled like the big one (background in the bottom picture -- Gina's the 3rd from the left on the back row, looking at the camera). It was a real treat to play out there, even though it wasn't close to home for either team.

Softball isn't Gina's only sport, she also plays basketball and volleyball for St. Patrick, and this year started "club volleyball," which is the indoor equivalent of "select soccer." I actually coached her school volleyball team, which won the regular season in its division but lost in the semifinals of the playoffs. She's shot up in height in the last year: at 5'6", she towers over her mother, and her feet are bigger than Anne Marie's too. She seems to enjoy sports generally, she's pretty athletic, and her coaches all say that she's very coachable. I don't know what she'll end up focusing on, since her favorite sport has always been the one she's playing at the time, but as long as it's one that they give college scholarships for, I'm all for it. (Hey, the less I pay for college, the more money Anne Marie will have to spend on weddings.)

 

Memorial Day 2005: We had the opportunity again this year to visit the Rivas family in San Antonio and at Julie Rivas' family ranch near Lampasas. This year we were joined by the Littles. I took my kayak to run the Guadalupe and did a little fishing out of it on one of the ranch stock ponds. Karl Rivas and John Little took more fish out of the pond than I did, but I caught the biggest bass. More on the "secret" blog.

That wasn't the only time I got the kayak out. I also took a camping trip the last weekend in April with a client on the Mountain Fork river in Oklahoma. It was my first time taking a trip where we had to pack everything we needed into the kayaks, and while neither of us had ever been on that river before and didn't know exactly where we were or where we were going, it was a lot of fun.

I also took a trip to Las Vegas (my first time in that lovely city) in May. It was Mothers' Day weekend, but it was also the weekend of my birthday, as well the weekend of the 80th birthday of my mother's last surviving sister, Dolores Pennington. My mother was one of 4 girls, and the only one still alive is Aunt Dolores. I had caught back up with her and several of her daughters at the funeral of another of my mom's and Dolores' sisters, Audrey, who died in August of 2003, and my sister Leanne has stayed in contact with some of Dolores' kids. They had emailed Leanne that Dolores' kids were planning an 80th birthday party for her in Las Vegas, where her oldest son lives, and since Leanne was going to be in Dallas around then anyway, Leanne and I planned to heading to Vegas for the party. It was a fun trip, and a big surprise for Aunt Dolores.

 

Another big event in the life of Ellen Claire Drummond: learning to ride a bike. This is in Albany, NY. We visited Tom and Julie Sica and their family this summer; their neighborhood is also where Gina learned to ride a bike. (More at the "secret" blog.)

 

Jersey Girls: Our summer trip took us from Albany to the Jersey Shore. Boogie boarding and rollercoasters on the boardwalk were big, as was the new Harry Potter book (Gina read it in a day).

 

On the boardwalk, outside Atlantic City, looking for Bruce.

 
August 2005: The traditional "First Day of School" photos.


Here's Gina in her St. Patrick uniform. . . .

 

. . . and here's Ellen in her Oak Hill Academy uniform . . .

 

. . . and here's Mary in her reform school uniform. Er, I mean preschool, and there's no uniform.

 

This is Ellen with one of her friends from school, Natalie, taken the morning after a sleepover (check out the bed-head).

 

October 2004: The photogenic one again, this time at a preschool outing at the pumpkin patch.

 

Halloween. Pretty self-explanatory, but check out Mary's ruby slippers.

 

Christmas: Well, that brings us to our family Christmas portrait. We fretted, as always, about what to do for our Christmas card this year. Last year, we had just moved into the new house and our card was just a Christmas-y change-of-address card, along with a note to check out the Drummond Christmas Blog (which was also a fretful matter -- Anne Marie thought it was too wordy [it was, no doubt], so I cut out the wordy part and moved it to the "secret" blog.) We went through that same process this year: we definitely needed a picture, since we didn't have one last year and given how fast the kids grow, if you miss a year or two you won't recognize them when you see them on America's Most Wanted. But we didn't know whether to do a letter or just a card with a picture. Obviously, we split the difference and did a card with picture, but also put the blog back up. That way, if you want the pictures and info and family hoo-ha, you can check it out, and if you don't want to wade through all that, you don't have to feel guilty throwing out an unread Christmas letter. Best of both worlds? Perfect for both the nosy and the ambivalent? You betcha.