Dear Friends and Family:

I sit, under duress, writing this annual ode to the holiday season.  Due to my recalcitrance in doing so, my lovely wife is at present waving an unpleasantly large carving knife toward my vulnerable regions as a motivational tool.  Therefore, loved ones, expect even greater leaps of verbosity from me than in years past, for, despite my advancing years, I hope to maintain the use of the bodily form that my beloved threatens so meaningfully.  But lo, I see her delicate hand whose finger rests gently upon yon blade begin to tremble in fatigue, the beginnings of rage, or even, perhaps, simple anticipation.   Thus, let me begin…

Mitch and Jake are making their way through 3^rd grade.  They are, by the recommendations of the school principal, which I discarded, and their own request, to which I eventually acceded, in separate classes this year.  Both are doing well enough therein, despite their penchant for too much watching of television and not enough reading of books. 

Mitch enjoys hockey as his sport of choice.  In Texas, we play the roller variety, not the ice, and it is very exciting for the parents to watch as well.  He skates well and is endowed with a sense of balance and agility that has apparently skipped his parents’ generation.

Jake prefers basketball to other sports and is now getting to the age where he can begin to really learn how to play the game.  I coached his YMCA team last winter and had a good time doing that; however, I hesitate to stunt the growth of a budding crop of players any further due to my own limited grasp of the game.

Dave is off to school as well.  He goes all day as a kindergartener, which seems a horribly cruel thing to force upon such a sweet little boy.  Nonetheless, he’s made the transition easily enough and his unwitting sacrifice has allowed Monica to take a full load of classes in her quest to get her degree.

Dave is also playing basketball at the YMCA.  His season is going on even now and I am coaching his team, too.  At 5 years old, there’s still a thing or two I can teach them about the game, such as “don’t wrestle the ball away from your own teammate” and other fine points of the game.

Monica continues to peck away at the mountain of schoolwork required to become a full-time teacher.  Grades are not yet in for this semester, he said with a wicked grin, but she always does well.  In fact, Monica is frequently considered the class “egghead” because of her academic performance.

She is a wife to be proud of, a fact that I usually keep to myself for fear that her head will swell overmuch, but nonetheless it’s true and I must let the cat out of the bag once in a while lest it suffocate.

I, meanwhile, continue to struggle on in harness, bringing home the bacon.  On the 23^rd, I will start my 4^th job of 2002, a quantity that reflects equally the hostile employment market for information technology geeks and my personal stress level over where the next paychecks will come from.  Regardless, I will begin working for Insource Technologies, a smallish consulting company not unlike Akili where I worked in recent years, and hope to be there for a good while.

We all visited Indiana over the 4^th of July and had a nice time seeing most of the Moore and Waggoner clans.  Hopefully we will be able to repeat the trip again this coming year.  While we were there, I had a chance to catch up with Greg Jackson, my best friend from the glory days of Prairie Height H.S., and the twins and I went to a road race in Lagrange, IN not far from my old stomping grounds.  Both boys ran a mile in the low 8 minute range and it shouldn’t be long until they beat their old man for real.  That’s something I am looking forward to in the years ahead.

Happy Holidays,

Marc, Monica, Mitch, Jake, and Dave Moore

P.S.  The web site shall contain some new pictures and perhaps even some family videos quite soon, if I can master the use of the new camcorder.