Greetings from NW Arkansas. We are still here after one more year. Little has changed, including us. We remain reasonably healthy and happy. Jerry said he believes that the six years here in Bella Vista are the longest he's ever spent in one place. We hope your year has been equally good and that you have many reasons for a joyous Holiday Season. We wish you the Merriest Christmas ever and, as always, a very Happy New Year. We'll have our annual Holiday Party the afternoon of the 27th. You're invited.
Sylvia continues to keep our home and the local Habitat for Humanity Re-Store operational. She has written an end-of-the-year resignation letter for the store. The changes in people and procedures that come with a much newer and bigger store have made it a much less pleasant place to work. Still they grossed well over $500K last year. They'll miss her, but we wish them well in their charitable mission.
Jerry is still pretty much the house husband, stuck with all that entails. There'll be some adjustments when Sylvia takes over again. Jerry also continues to serve as secretary on our village's Lakes Committee and attends to other communal projects now and then. For the past five months he has been looking at local charities to find ways to measure how well they actually do – i.e., how much of your dollar gets to the folks that need it. In the end it seems that there isn't. What he has done is gather the income tax returns for all the charities in our county (about 145) and published extracts on a website. Pretty big learning curve for him, but hopefully useful for local donors. The website can be seen at givingbentoncounty.com.
Our spoiled child, Sadie the Dog, has had a tough year. The toughest was when she realized that her age of ten dog-years equaled our 70 years. She also had three surgeries over the year to remove an unusual and nasty fungus growing in her sinuses. We hope the surgery in late October took care of the problem forever.
Like most other years we enjoyed a special trip with sister Joyce and husband Kenn. This year we spent two weeks traveling throughout Japan. We found a guide on the internet that promised a lot of traditional and historic sightseeing along with a little big city. It was a great trip. We've a few pictures at argets.net/piwigoif you want to see them.We also had a really good trip back to the old country to visit Sylvia's family at Easter.
A very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to You!