Merry Christmas,
To all of our dear friends and family who love these cheesy Christmas letters, I have undertaken to write yet one more. Not sure why, but it just seems like the thing to do, like the one time a year I go to the mall, I write one Christmas letter to all, enjoy or gag, your choice.
As usual we have had another busy year. Don’t you wish just once that someone would write one of these letters and say, “Well, this will be a short letter, ‘cause nothing happened, Merry Christmas.” But I cannot write that because stuff happened at our house.
We had the regular school stuff, and kid stuff and work stuff and all kinds of other stuff, but we did have some unique things occur. My sweet little girl, Taylor, graduated from high school this past June. She is attending our local community college and finding the rigor there much more difficult than the rigor in our public schools. She is in the pre-nursing program, A & P is tough, but she is slugging her way through it. Todd Jr. is continuing with his studies at Midland College, not sure what he wants to do, not sure he is either, but he is seeking, as they say.
Trenton Kenneth is a freshman in High School, hard to believe he is that old already, but he is. He is finding High School more difficult than Junior High, but he too is slogging his way through. He did have an unfortunate event this summer. We were having a lock-in at church and he and his older brother forgot a video game they wanted for later in the evening. So I let them go home to get the game and before they were around the corner they were hit by a drunk driver (I knew video games were no good).
Todd’s truck was totaled. He was T-Boned and TK narrowly escaped being seriously injured. The woman driving the car was arrested for having a blood alcohol content of .18, with Meth in her system and two little kids in her car, ages 9 and 6. We received a settlement for the car, but TK had damage to his knee and was forced to miss his freshman football and now basketball seasons. The insurance company has been less than helpful. I never thought I would sue anyone, but I am. Thankfully TK has been in rehab and will be fine, but the damage has already been done.
Since TK can’t play basketball he has decided to get a job at the place of preference for Freese children: Chick-fil-a. His sister is his boss, makes me laugh, he actually HAS to be respectful to his sister, funny if you ask me. Todd Jr. has moved onto Best Buy (which is great for me because I get discounts on electronics at Best Buy and chicken sandwiches at Chick-fil-a, I knew my kids would pay off someday). So far I only have one child who is not gainfully employed: Tori.
I don’t want to hear any excuses that she can’t work, oh sure she may be in Kindergarten, but there has to be something she can do. Until we find what that may be, she is going to school, playing soccer and going to here second favorite place on earth, church (her house is her favorite according to her). She makes me laugh daily. She came home from school the second day of the year and told me her teacher wasn’t very good. I asked why and she said, “Dad, it is the second day of school and she hasn’t even taught me to read yet.” Well she is eager.
Melissa is doing well, she is teaching with me at San Jacinto Junior High and putting up with apathy, indifference, incompetence and poor attitudes, and that is just from the administration. The students are even tougher. Some days we wonder why we teach. She has had a rather difficult year teaching the lowest performing kids. They say they want their “best” teachers teaching the most challenging kids. Sounds like a punishment to me, that is why I choose to be a “bad” teacher so I can teach the GT (gifted and talented) kids. Much easier. They say things like: thank you, please, no sir, yes sir and my favorite: I need to know when my assignment is due so I can finish it, what a novel concept.
Missy went to school again this summer, teaching and writing new math curriculum at Texas State in San Marcos. They love her and she is such a good teacher, it is great for her to get away for two weeks and just do her own thing. We went down in our camper and visited for a few days. We floated the river and just hung out, it was great. No Hong Kong trip for her this year as she did last year.
We both are youth directors at our church and find ourselves very busy with that. We undertook a cool project this year: redoing our youth rooms. Go to www.stpaulsmidlandyouth.com and check out what we have done, it is pretty cool. We have big plans for the upcoming year, but getting our rooms done was fantastic. We are blessed to be part of a great church.
Much of my year was spent at church as well, being the youth leader takes time, but we enjoy it. I also umpired quite a few college baseball games, but I think this was my last year. Time to move on to the things I really enjoy. I plan to work on some stuff I have wanted to do for some time, I will keep you posted. Of course teaching is a full-time job and then some, but this year I have seemed to be even busier than in the past, tough times and tough kids. Enough about me if you need to kill some time, check out my blog, www.toddbfreese.com I have fun with it and if you do visit, please leave a comment.
We hope your Christmas and New Year are filled with the blessing of God and the joy of family. If you get to Midland we would love to see you, stop by for visit or a stay. Until then, be well and be blessed!
With Love,
The Texas’ Freeses
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