Christmas 1998

(Note that our Christmas letter has had and still has a 4-digit, Y2K compliant year)

Well, it seems like yesterday that I was sitting in front of the computer here, ripping my hair out, trying to complete the arduous task of writing our annual Christmas letter. Now here I am again. And here you are, anxiously hanging on every word, standing in your driveway because you couldn’t wait to get inside to open up the envelope that you knew contained the highlight of your Christmas Season. Or perhaps more likely, you are a friend of one our friends or family members, and you picked up this letter that had clearly been tossed aside in favor of more important junk mail and the only reason you are reading this is that you have nothing better to do. Either way, enjoy – far be it for me to cast judgement on my readers.

For the first two months of this year I continued having to travel to California. During that time I discovered that I would never be happy in the role of the experienced business traveler. I will admit that when I first started travelling I looked at some of the savvy travelers with their Gold Medallion and other elite status (“I’ve flown thousands and thousands of miles”) luggage tags with a slight amount of envy. But now when I travel, I look at them with a great deal of pity, and I am thankful that I don’t know all the flight attendants and pilots on a first name basis. Fortunately, the travelling has paid off with more than just some frequent flyer miles – I got promoted and since February, I’ve only had three business trips.

As the weather began to warm up and my business related travel started to taper off, our thoughts turned toward the house. Overshadowing all other projects was our patio project. The goal was to create some useable space in the dirt and weed infested area under our deck. After having decided that the patio should be somewhat removable (based on last year’s septic tank woes), we carefully researched our options, or rather just tried to figure out the cheapest possible way of creating a patio. After determining that some brick-red rectangular stepping stones offered the best coverage for the money we headed off to Lowe’s for what would be the first of many (read “infinite”) truck-axle and budget breaking trips. The first section, after two days of work proved to be a lesson and example in how not to do a patio – it’s hopelessly unleveled. The next two sections were quite a bit better but by the time we wrapped up work on the final sections I was so sick of those stepping stones that I didn’t even enjoy walking on them. Becky has suggested that we might redo the first section, but I just smile and say, “yeah, in three or four years”. As it was, it took us about 9 months to get around to completing the patio, probably because like all good home-project-doing homeowners, we followed the standard homeowner project task-list method of finding a new project or two any time we got even remotely close to completing any of our current projects.

In March, we were able to go visit many of our friends in Ft. Worth, Texas. We had a great time getting to see so many people from our BSU days as we had a little reunion BBQ (what else do you do in Texas where the official state motto is: “If it ain’t BBQ’d, it ain’t food” – which is slightly better known than the other state motto which I have heard is: “BBQ’d makes everything taste better” – I guess to combat the popular cheese campaign).

Something tells me we’re not in Kansas Florida anymore. El Niño or not, we have had some wild weather here in Georgia. In the spring we were surprised to discover that we had moved to a venerable Tornado breeding ground. We had several severe tornado bearing storms pass through our area. Near my office in Norcross, a tornado created a half-mile wide path of destruction. There are still roofs in the area with blue plastic tarps on them that have yet to be fixed. At the north end of our county (Hall) a powerful tornado devastated a several mile long stretch. Apparently, all along the Chattahoochee River and Lake Lanier, tornadoes are quite common in the spring as the warm and cold air masses duke it out about who got to the lake first.

The week after Memorial Day, I had to go to Phoenix on business. By leaving early and purchasing Becky a ticket using some frequent flyer miles we were able to get a quick vacation to Arizona. We of course went to the Grand Canyon and learned that you should not go to Grand Canyon during the Memorial Day weekend, or really any weekend. In fact, you should probably not go to the Grand Canyon at all, since there are so many parking space-stealing tourists there (that’s another story). We also toured around Flagstaff, Sedona, Oak Creek Canyon, Phoenix, and Scottsdale. I was able to take Becky on most of my One Lap of Arizona in a Day trip from last year plus an extra little trip to Tucson. We had the added pleasure of being able to take our time (3 days) covering those 1,200 miles.

Earlier this year we finally joined a church. We had visited several churches in the area and once we visited Chestnut Mountain Baptist, we knew we had found the place God wanted us to be. We’re still getting to know folks but it has been a lot of fun as we have participating in some of the activities there. This October we both volunteered to help with their 7th annual Judgement House. Judgement House is an evangelistic outreach event in the month of October. Becky was a greeter – which meant that she had to help line up and count out groups of people to go through the scenes. I signed up for the Bubba Squad (a.k.a. Parking Lot Duty) – basically a bunch of good ‘ole boys with flashlights who check to make sure people don’t get run over while walking down the middle of the road. It was exciting though as over 8,000 people went through Judgement House, and 499 of those indicated that they had a made a decision for Christ.

For Thanksgiving, we participated in the Bridges Family Ocean Isle Beach Thanksgiving Trip. From the early pioneer days, apparently, the Bridges would all congregate to Ocean Isle, North Carolina for the annual holiday to not only share in the Thanksgiving Turkey Feast Feeding Frenzy, but to also wait in long lines at Seafood Restaurants. In good form, we made the mad trek down to Myrtle Beach for some insane “Day After Thanksgiving” Shopping and to sit in traffic (in case we had forgotten in one day how bad the Atlanta traffic was). While in Ocean Isle, we also got to witness the famous annual lighting of the Ocean Isle Christmas Tree. All involved decided that it would be better named the Christmas Shrub. We skipped some of the additional caroling (songs like “Oh Christmas Shrub”) to go stand in line at a Seafood Restaurant.

Becky is still working at Christian Financial Concepts, and she is enjoying her job. However, she is hoping that something different within the ministry will open up for her for a change of pace. During this past year, she and some of her coworkers have finally been able to scientifically prove (using the very hi-tech Wilcox Rude Caller Scoring System) that Northerners really are ruder than Southerners.

Since the Wilcox Inn Grand Opening, we’ve had lots of guests – even some repeat business. So, we are pleased to announce that we will temporarily be increasing our guest capacity (until we get rid of one of our beds). We’ll still have our economy (air mattress) service available as well. So come on over or up or down or however you get here from where you are– we’ll leave the motion sensing lights on for you (just don’t ask for a tour of Atlanta – ‘cause we don’t want to go there!).

Guess that’s about it from our house! We’ll be headed back to the North Carolina Mountains again for Christmas – hoping for some more wonderful snow like last year. We hope you have wonderful New Year. Merry Christmas and God Bless!