Christmas Blessings!

December, 2006
Dear Family & Friends,

Our 2nd full year of retirement has been great, and we have been blessed with good health and the opportunity to travel and visit with friends and family across the United States and Mexico!

We started the new year with our family here in San Antonio then headed "on the road" with our good friends, Fred & Faye Merkel to Arizona. We enjoyed visiting with their family, the Bagshaws, in Phoenix and the trip up to the Grand Canyon & Sedona was beautiful, though cold! Mid-February we were on our way into the interior of Mexico and spent 18 days in Saltillo. For those of you planning an extended stay in Mexico, be sure to get your passports and Mexican insurance ahead of time. We had no problems crossing the border (Piedras Negras, MX) from Eagle Pass, TX with our RV and then got our vehicle permits and tourist cards at the 20 Km checkpoint.

We left Mexico and returned to San Antonio for about a week before driving back to Indiana in mid-March. It was so good to see our son, Dallas, 4 yr old granddaughter Chloe, and family and friends after being gone several months!

On our way to the Grand Canyon for our hike with Jenni & Dottie at the end of April, we stopped for a revisit of Albuquerque and Sante Fe, NM. The hike to the bottom of the Grand Canyon was one of the big "highlights" of the year -- a must for anyone who enjoys a challenging hike! Even though we sent our reservations in early January for this hike, we still ended up having to be put on a waiting list and show up at the Back Country office for 4 days to get our overnight permits. So, if you're thinking of doing this, remember the end of April is a very popular time of year, which was understandable because the weather for hiking was perfect! After 3 days of hiking, we headed further west to Las Vegas for the weekend. We had never been to this wild and crazy city -- what a switch from the serenity of the Canyon! The four of us met up with sis Tara & hubby Wayne. In addition to seeing the sights & lights of Vegas, we toured the Hoover Dam.

On our way back to the Midwest, we drove through Utah & Colorado so including Nevada, that gave us three more states we hadn't been to before. We stopped in Oskaloosa, KS and stayed a week before heading on back to Indiana, arriving in Lafayette on Mother's Day. We stayed from May through mid-September at our son's home in rural Lafayette and spent a busy summer there with numerous projects and lots of fun time with Chloe.

We stopped again in Oskaloosa for a month of projects with Jenni & Dottie before heading back to San Antonio for the winter, arriving just in time to celebrate our 36th wedding anniversary on Oct. 18th with the Blanco family -- Jesse, Barbara, Aaron, Jenee, our 5 (almost 6) yr old grandson, Caelum & our 4 yr old granddaughter, Aden. We became "official" Texans the first of November (no state income tax in TX) so we now have a new address: 2186 Jackson Keller Road, #2123, San Antonio, TX 78213. Don't worry, any mail that may have been sent to our Forth Worth address will still get to us!

We look forward to many more exciting travels as we journey "on the road" in 2007. Our first trip in January will be a visit back through Arizona and on to California to visit family & friends there and then a drive down the west coast of Mexico.

For more details/pictures of our 2006 travels and visits, just scroll on down this page!

God's blessings to each of you for a wonderful Christmas as you celebrate the birth of Jesus. Peace and Love to all in the New Year.

Love, Doug & Elaine