Merry Christmas 2008

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

A note to our online visitors: Each year since 1997 our Christmas holiday cards have gone out with a CD containing photos and text about our vacations and trips we took. Now, for the first time, I am able to include our 2008 Christmas CD on the website. Last year my web hosting company doubled the available space on which CowboyFrank.net resides, giving me enough space to temporarily post our full card. We hope you enjoy our presentation as much as we enjoyed putting it together. Our previous year's cards are also available from my private server, but you'll just have to look for the link hidden amongst all the other stuff on this card.

Hi All,

We hope this finds you and your family well. We have had many life changes this year. Most positive and a few were negative.

We began our year by visiting the Phoenix rodeo and then IGRA University in Las Vegas, where Tom took some classes on managing rodeos and Frank taught website design as he did last year.

Later in the spring we visited Florida, seeing Everglades National Park, Frank's sister, and the Florida Rodeo.

On May 2nd Tom retired from Science Applications International Corporation after almost 24 years there. The adjustment was a little painful for him because he liked what he was doing, and enjoyed working with the staff there.

Our next foray was a trip to Oklahoma City and their rodeo. What a great city Oklahoma City is. But they seemed to have severe thunderstorms every night we were there.

In June we began a marvelous two month trip with our great fifth wheel trailer. We visited Tom's family in Ohio, then traveled on to Denver, the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone, returning via the northern tier of states through Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Indiana. For the fourth year in a row we attended the Chicago rodeo before returning home.

Once home we both volunteered in putting on the Washington, DC rodeo, but ran into a problem called Hurricane Hannah. Hannah decimated the rodeo on Saturday causing a cancellation. Hannah produced over seven inches of rain and high winds. Simply stated Hannah hurt.

In October we started out for New Orleans on our second major trip with our trailer, a five month long trip to the great southwest. But as we said, some events this year were not so good. On the third day out Frank had a heart attack which ended with two stents in his heart and a major delay in our trip. We slowly plodded our way back home, trying not to drive more than 100 miles a day. This second trip planned for five months lasted only two weeks. We hope to begin again sometime early in the new year.

Frank is recovering nicely and even using a new exercise bike we got. But enough of our diatribe. Scroll further down to the links for this year's photos and descriptive text.

Once again have a very Merry Christmas and the Happiest of New Years ever. Strive to live each day and value every moment.

Tom Lott	Frank Harrell

This year's photo travel log

Part one         Part two         Part three         Part four         Part five         Rodeos

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