Gibson Family Christmas letter 2018

December, 2018

After six months of being in northern Idaho, it started snowing, so we headed south 2000 miles, back to Texas. There will likely be no snow for Christmas. We’re okay with that.

2018 was full, fun, exhausting and challenging at times, but overall we weathered it well, no pun intended. Nobody in our family moved this year - AMEN to that!

Pace and Sarah’s church up in Idaho is in their fifth year and doing great; they were able to move into a building that was once a light factory. We love that it’s still bringing light to a world that desperately needs it.

Jeremy and Leslie are still in Idaho also. He’s our favorite State Farm agent in the country, and Leslie serves at the church, leading a stage team for the kids’ ministry. Our two youngest grands, SG and Hallie, are besties 75% of the time, and started kindergarten and pre-school, so everyone is officially in school this year. Jeremy’s parents travel to Idaho every summer, and it’s fun to see how we’ve grown into a big family. 

Caiden, our oldest grand, is looking at colleges, has a job cooking pizza and a learner’s permit, and we’re thinking it doesn’t feel so long ago he was doing tummy time on our living room floor. Our grown kids are paying for braces, running car pools, sitting in the stands watching swim meets or volleyball or basketball games, and sitting through parent/teacher conferences. Oh my, but how did all of that happen so quickly? 

Grayson, Addie and Landon are like three peas in a pod. They’re all teens or tweens and usually creating messes and noise and such. We find it amusing since we’re not living in the middle of it all, and charged with funding the filling of refrigerators that empty out like they’ve been hit by a plague of locusts.

Dan’s kids are two years apart, but neck to neck in height, which we think means Jae Beth will get passed up pretty soon by her younger brother, D2. This summer Dan and Janae and their kids came up to Idaho, so we had everyone together for the first time in over five years. That’s not so easy to pull off anymore with busy families and 2000 miles to be covered. Dan is still working on his doctorate, but has finished his classwork - hooray! He was ordained as a deacon at our Texas church this fall, and it was so sweet to be there for the ceremony. Janae is in pharmaceutical sales, a job she absolutely excels at. She’s never met a stranger.

We remodeled our house up in Idaho, and have decided the deck is the best place to be any time of day, but morning coffee is hard to beat. We threw apples off it daily to encourage visits from the wildlife and managed to have deer, flocks of strutting turkeys, chirping quail and the occasional visit from a lonesome elk. 

To celebrate Don reaching twenty years of quitting smoking, we flew to Hawaii this summer, and took a cruise that went around the islands. It’s hard to describe just how beautiful Hawaii is. Visiting Hawaii cost about what it would have to smoke all those years, except his lungs are much happier.

Bev’s Dad is still going strong at almost 94; we played dominoes with him and his ‘harem’ (his name for them) when we stopped to visit and he can add domino scores like nobody’s business. He still golfs several days a week. Pace’s father passed away early in the year from complications caused by his stints serving in Vietnam. If you see a soldier, stop and thank them for their service because it comes at a cost.

We went through Yellowstone with Don’s brother and sister-in-law and saw three grizzlies, a herd of moose, elk, & a great horned owl. Watching Old Faithful do its thing while eating a waffle cone is hard to beat.

We threw Lily a 5th birthday party, which the Texas grands immensely enjoyed. Yes, we’ve become those people. That’s what you do when the kids move out, you spoil the dog. Much cheaper and very gratifying. 

We’re enjoying life in our 55+ Texas neighborhood, are getting to know our neighbors and have signed up to take a cruise with 54 of them this coming February. It’ll be interesting, no doubt. We’re planning to encourage the group to do some karaoke….. that would be photo worthy, no doubt.

2019 is sure to have challenges, but God is faithful and his word tells us He is Emmanuel - God with us. He’ll be here in the middle of it all and that should give us all hope for days to come. 

Merry Christmas 

Cub Sweetheart and Bev