December 25, 2008

Dear Friends and Family,

             Merry Christmas from The Jacobs Family in Round Rock, Texas.  We hope this finds you all well, healthy and happy.  It's Christmas morning, about 3:06 AM and we're just finally getting around to our annual letter. This year's excuse is Josephine was in the Philippines almost 3 weeks here in December so Tim's been too busy to get to this. Better late than never! We’ve had a fun and exciting 2008.  This was the year Jack started his final year in high school and Jillian is finishing up in elementary school so some real transitions going on around our home. As always there's a ton of pictures on our website and we've done a fair job keeping it updated throughout the year. From the main page you can link to pictures from camping trips, school outings, boat trips and so forth. Here are just a few of the other things that have happened this past year.

    Jack turned 18 a couple days ago. This kid never sits still. Some days he's out the door before Tim and then gets home last. Between school, work, cross country, music, working out and his many other activities he's in constant motion. This past summer he took two college classes and is knocking out more college credits in his senior year. While many seniors are going half days he has a full schedule including fun stuff like statistics and economics. Over the summer we toured Texas A&M, UT and Texas Tech campuses. Unbelievable schools and we'll consider ourselves lucky if we get into any one of them. We should know more in the spring. Jack recently spent his first real recording session in a studio and he finally has some quality tracks of some of his songs. Hopefully one day you're buying his 1st CD but for now here are three free songs. He plays and sings everything you hear. We couldn't be more proud of him. You can let him know what you think at triplej@austin.rr.com.

Stop It

Semi-Automatic 84

So Are You

Camping March 2008		Touring Texas Tech		Cross Country		Homecoming Dance
Jack & Tim Nov 2008	Fishing at Inks Lake		Doing What he does Best		New Dell Laptop!		18th Birthday Dinner

    Jillian is 11 now and big kid on campus in 5th grade.  She’s an awesome student and has made the "A" Honor Roll every semester the last couple years.  She loves to sing and just completed the fall season for school choir. For her birthday she got a karaoke machine and it was the hit of her party. Other big events for her included getting the dreaded braces, a school field trip to the Alamo and our three camping trips this past year. She's a tough kid and has to be since she's the only girl on our block. It's a common sight on our street to see Jill playing with a half dozen boys out front. I think they out number her 14 to 1. So we make it a point to try and get her girlfriends from school over whenever we can. In case you're wondering where 12 inches of beautiful hair went, she cut it off and donated it to Locks of Love for cancer kids. Lastly, when you get this letter next year, she will be taller than Josephine.

Alamo Field Trip			Camping March		Camping October		The Braces		Camping November
Cousin Ashley	Birthday Party						Halloween with the Powell Boys		Trick or Treat with Classmates
4th Grade		5th Grade				Gift Wrapping		Birthday Dinner

    Josephine finally returned home to the Philippines after 12 years since our last visit. A couple pictures from her trip are included below. Big thanks to Tom & Riechel Thomas in Manila and Tom Myers in Olongapo for all their help with her trip!  Tim just went over 10 years at Dell and is currently in a Global Engineering and Quality group for commercial services.  Things are well, we celebrated 20 years together this year, we’ve been fortunate and hope the same for you in 2009.

In Manila with Riechel Thomas, Beth Westfall and Nanay		In Manila with Riechel Thomas, Nanay & Theresa Cannulas	With Riechel & Beth		Riding the Jeepneys		Tom Myers & Jimbo	Tom Myers and Kids
	Boat Trip Sept 2008					Christmas 2008