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Hi all, It's been quite an eventful year for our family. A biggest change for me occured when Lotus/IBM decided to cancel the project I was working on and lay the whole group off in an effort to save money. This was not totally unexpected and Lotus has very generous severance benefits so it was not as bad as it might seem. We also decided to take this as an oportunity to see if we could live off of just Lawrence's salary and so I am now a stay-at-home Mom. Cocoa 
Another big change was our new addition to the family, Cocoa. Cocoa is a sable and white Papillon. That's a little, bitty dog with big ears and lots of hair for those of you that don't know. He is a lot of fun but a lot of trouble, very much like having a baby in the house. Needless to say, Cookies (our indoor cat) was not thrilled with him at first though they now seem to enjoy playing together sometimes. He sleeps a lot and likes to spend a lot of time in our laps. He has us pretty well trained and all of us, including Pepper and Cookies let him get away with just about everything.
Larry 
Larry is currently in 7th grade at Dean Rusk Middle School. He plays the Saxaphone in the concert band, takes algebra and will be taking the SAT in January as part of Duke University's Talent Identification Program. He was the top science student in 6th grade last spring and 2nd in math. He continues to play soccer and scored a goal this past fall season.
Ky 
Ky is in 5th grade at Mountain Road Elementary. She made it into AIM, the gifted program in Cherokee County last year. She loves it. She plays the clarinet in the regular band and the festival band at her school. Ky also plays soccer and moved up the U-12 this fall. She did well last spring at U-10 scoring 2 goals that season. U-12 is a lot different than U-10 and she is smaller than most of the other players, but she still plays hard and seems to enjoy herself. I coached her team this fall. Ky also had braces on her 4 front teeth for about 9 months this year. She recently got them off. She will probably have to get them again when the rest of her permanent teeth come in. She also got her ears pierced at Christmas.
 I've managed to keep busy even though I'm not working. I volunteer at both of the kids schools a lot. We all worked on the paddock, rebuilding the fence around it. I added about 8 inches of insulation to the attic this fall and we took down the old deck this summer. We've not had time to build the new one yet and that turns out to be fortunate. I had entered a contest for a new deck in the fall and amazingly enough, won. They are supposed to start in February. Lawrence Lawrence keeps very busy though he doesn't have to cook supper every night now like he used to. He has been doing a lot of consulting work which has taken up a lot of his spare time but has brought in some extra money. Last Christmas he got a new car. My uncle Jerry gave us a 1947 MG TC. It needs lots of work but Lawrence is really excited about it. Dolores Lawrence's mother, Dolores, moved in with us in July while his sister, Linde, builds their new house in Elbera, AL. The new house will have a mother-in-law suite for Dolores to live in. There have been numerous delays in getting the house started so it looks like she will be here until the summer. Pictures Ky won a JamCam, a digital camera, at the school carnival this spring. Some of the following pictures were taken with it.
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My Dad on the left and Uncle Jerry on the right, taken at Thanksgiving.
Ky and Alannah just before Thanksgiving
New deck goes here!