Here's What We've Been Up To In 2013

…..Picture taken on top of the Sleeping Bear Dunes, Michigan 

 Merry Christmas 2013!

We cannot believe another year has flown by, but here we are at another Christmas season. We are hoping that the year finds you blessed and that the start of a new year will bring even more blessings your way.

Some highlights from our year: A self-employed musician’s family means that we are really working all the time, so any free time to spend with each other is a treasure to us. This year, we have enjoyed a few trips to the K-T bicycle trail near our house. We also have designated Friday, Saturday, or Sunday nights (depending on when daddy isn’t working) as movie night. Our latest favorites have included watching TV classics of I Love Lucy, the Dick Van Dyke Show, and Leave it to Beaver. We also really enjoy a good Phineas & Ferb or Good Luck Charlie.

The biggest adventures we’ve enjoyed this year included a whole bunch of travel with some big events of a dance trip, an anniversary trip, and a four-week musical tour.

A Bunch of Travel:

• The last weekend in May and first of June, our oldest daughter performed with her new dance studio in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. During this Milwaukee journey, we saw:

   o The Chocolate Museum in Burlington, WI

   o The Jelly Belly Factory Warehouse Tour


   o Port Washington Harbor, Park, Lighthouse, and Beach

   o Sheboygan Beach where we took pictures of the girls in their dance dresses



   o Discovery Center in Milwaukee (where our oldest daughter danced and John got to conduct a virtual guitar lesson with Les Paul)


   o The Safe House Restaurant (it’s a spy theme, really cool!)

   o While we were gone, a tornado hit just miles from our house, but thankfully we were unscathed other than an electricity surge that burnt out our refrigerator’s main computer controls.

• In June, we celebrated Tere’s parents’ 60th wedding anniversary. We all gathered for a week at a beach house in Gulf Shores. Well, most of us anyway. One of our nieces and her family were not able to join us because she was busy bringing her third child into the world. ON THE SAME DAY as my parent’s 60th anniversary, though miles away, we also welcomed her new baby. In addition to the amazing time with family, we drove through states we have never seen before, Mississippi and Alabama and saw:

   o The US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, AL
   o Graceland (Tere’s first time here, John’s 2nd. It was really fun and a musician’s dream! And, other than it being a beastly hot day in Memphis, the kids enjoyed it too.)

• In August, we began the longest on-the-road trip we’ve ever taken. We spent four weeks in Wisconsin and Michigan on tour with John performing 31 musical shows while Tere and the kids enjoyed the hotel, water parks, beaches, dunes, thrift stores, and all WI and MI has to offer. We made the most of every town we stopped and saw:

   o Walked out to a lighthouse in Marinette, WI/Menominee, MI
   o Tere experienced kayaking in Green Bay for her first time while the kids paddle boated




   o Enjoyed a classic Drive-In theater in Door County where we saw Despicable Me 2
   o Ate at Al Johnson’s, a restaurant where there are live goats on the grass roof
   o Green Bay’s amusement park on the Bay where rides are 25 cents
   o Had ice cream at the soda shop where the ice cream sundae was invented

   o A trip to Menominee Park in Osh Kosh: a small zoo and amusement ride train and carousel
.....Tere and the kids walked to the EAA Museum while John gigged out one day
   o Book Worm Gardens in Sheboygan

   o Toured a World War II 1943 Submarine

   o Took the S. S. Badger ferry across Lake Michigan. It is the last operating steam ship on the Lake, is the size of a cruise ship and took about 5 hours to cross. We had gorgeous weather, too.

   o Climbed Sleeping Bear Dunes The kids started school a week after we returned home, but already had quite a few on-the-road learning hours logged for the year.

On our last night of the trip, we went to some sand dunes overlooking Lake Michigan in Holland, MI. This beautiful sunset was the signature on our final night before driving back home.



Thought you might be interested in a brief summary of what each Scott family member has been up to since the last letter:





John – is loving performing, singing, playing guitar and saxophone, for audiences and has played more than 270 shows this year. He performs classic standards and does great impersonations of Johnny Cash, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Elvis, and others, at retirement centers, restaurants, and corporate and private events. He thoroughly enjoyed the 4-week MI/WI tour where he performed 31 shows on the road. He is also playing guitar and singing some background vocals up at church and is still teaching guitar lessons at Mozingo Music.



Tere – doesn’t know what free time is as she wears many hats, never feeling as if she truly fulfills any of them entirely. She homeschools the three children, feeling the age/grade range even more this year with two in middle school and one in early elementary years. Tere also still writes for online sites like CBS local, Believe.com, Examiner, maintains three blogs, and also ghost writes for other websites. She was chosen this year to be part of the Old Schoolhouse Review Crew social media team which means she helps to promote the magazine as well as writing product and curriculum reviews. Oh, and she’s still attempting to clean out and sell the contents of our basement on eBay.


G-Man – became a teenager this year and is in the 8th grade. He is our resident IT tech computer/electronics help. He loves Sonic the Hedgehog and Minecraft, the latter of which has even become a part of his schooling as he enjoyed a study of the Middle Ages Minecraft style. He is most often found in front of his computer, Xbox 360, iPad, Wii, or his newly earned PS Vita, which was payment for his hard work helping John put together a promo video DVD and transferring music onto John’s iPad. He has been taking a film maker’s class but much prefers editing, animating and coding in various computer languages to being in front of the camera or coming up with story lines.



G-Man was responsible for editing the entire 25 minute montage of video clips from one of John’s performances. He got braces this year, but you probably wouldn’t know it if you saw him because he got the kind that attach to the back of his top teeth and clear ones on the bottom.


J-Girl – will be 12 in February, is in the 6th grade, and she never lets us forget she’s in a hurry to grow up. At 5’ 2”, she is rapidly approaching her mother’s height and has already surpassed mom in shoe size. She is a huge help around the house as she actually enjoys the laundry, especially the folding. She also still loves to dance. She got to experience her first out-of-town dance show this year and began tapping in high-heel tap shoes this year as well, like the Broadway pros. She is also often found with her iPod Touch in hand or quietly enjoying a good book. She also now has two new accessories: She got braces and glasses this year.



 

 E-Girl – turned 7 in September, and we cannot believe our baby is growing up so fast. She loves to dance, and takes dance lessons at the same studio as her sister. She has become a pretty good reader and loves American Girl Doll books or any book about an elephant. She is still our elephant-loving girl, or perhaps we should say she is our elephant-obsessed girl. She spots elephants everywhere we go and has mommy take pictures of as many elephants as we encounter. She has worked hard on learning how to ride a bike this year and does really well with her training wheels. The last night of the 4-week tour, she surprised us all by swimming on her own without her floaties.

 We wish you a very Merry Christmas and an even happier 2014! Please keep in touch throughout the year. If you are computer/mobile device savvy, we’re easy to find and check Facebook regularly (You can find John and I on Facebook as ourselves or on our fan pages)! (Hint: See links in the sidebars of this blog. They also link to John's blog, or find his website at: http://johnscottmusician.yolasite.com.

Our Year in Review

The Scott family enjoyed 2012 which seemed to rapidly whiz by.  We were fortunate enough to be blessed with some nice memories for the year that we’d like to share with you.

  Disney World

One of the most exciting happenings we enjoyed was a family trip to Disney World where we also celebrated our 20^th wedding anniversary with a meal inside Cinderella’s Castle at the Royal Table, and the night before at the French Café in EPCOT where we had enjoyed a meal 19 years ago on our last Disney trip. Half the fun and adventure was planning the trip while keeping it a secret to surprise the kids, which we pulled off with a jumping-up-and-down squeals of excitement reaction we caught on tape.

We decided to go ahead and do the Disney vacation this year because Tere’s parents once again provided a beach vacation for the extended family to the Isle of Palms in South Carolina, which when you look at the map is just a “few short” hours up the Atlantic Coast.  Since we were already on that side of the world, we decided to extend the trip a bit.

Musical Working Vacation

The other big trip we took this year was another working vacation musical tour in Wisconsin.  John played 18 gigs in Sheboygan, Milwaukee, Door County, Marquette and Appleton while Tere and the kids enjoyed Lake Michigan, Sturgeon Bay and a hotel’s indoor waterpark.

Concert of the Year

For a couple who hardly ever gets time alone, to the point of sharing their 20^th anniversary with children and planning a Wisconsin vacation around work, John and Tere got to actually have one date night to see former Beatle Paul McCartney in concert when he came to St. Louis. The kids enjoyed a sleepover with grandma and grandpa.  The concert was amazing, though someone has forgotten to tell this very energetic, youthful McCartney that he is 70.  What a talented entertainer he still is.

John – This year John has begun to see his solo music career take off.  It is growing, and he has added solo live musicianship to his disc jockey jobs as well.  He is also still teaching guitar at Mozingo.  John sold and traded his two 1994 vehicles for a new-to-him 2007 Kia Sedona which he absolutely loves, and the kids enjoyed the built-in DVD player on our trip to the east coast.  Another highlight to his year was when, during a break while on tour in Wisconsin, he got the chance to kayak in Sturgeon Bay in Door County.

TERE – In the picture she is enjoying two of her favorite things:  Coffee and the beach.  She is still writing for online sites, some of which she provides ghostwriting for so she cannot share the website names.  Her most recent claim to fame is writing for the Food & Drink column on the St. Louis CBS Local site.  She still homeschools the three children, adding our full-time first grader this year.  Of course, she is still attempting to sell the remaining contents of our basement and John’s childhood toys on eBay.  She continues to hope it begins to make a dent in the clutter, but it never seems to happen.

G-Man – He is on the verge of teenager-hood, but is still hanging on at the age of 12 and is in the 7^th grade.  His latest talent has become fixing Xbox 360s.  He is John’s main technical support crew and works to load music onto John’s laptop and keep up with other technical aspects of his dad’s musical career.  When he is not busy animating his own hand-drawn cartoons or working on learning programming languages, he is very funny and quick witted which makes us laugh.  He is also enjoying gymnastics this year and has successfully made it to the top of the YMCA rock wall during climbing classes.

J-Daddy's Girl – She is 10 (if you ask her she will say she is almost 11)…going on 37 we believe!  She enjoys keeping her room neat and is a big help around the house.  She loves to sit in bed in the evening and read and still loves horses and lambs.  She is enjoying the 5^th grade this year and loves school.  We finally found a new dance studio we’re happy with that is providing new opportunities for her after her dance teacher, which this girl has known since she was a little two year old dancer in this teacher’s class, resigned during the summer.  This was a hard emotional journey for her and for mom.  She, thankfully, also likes to make us laugh and is an expert at making hilariously funny face expressions and doing really good impersonations of funny voices.  She is also enjoying gymnastics this year and can still make sideway splits look as if they are as easy as breathing.

E-Baby – (E stands for elephant-lover) She is newly-turned 6 years old and is loving the 1^st grade.  She celebrated her birthday at the new American Girl Doll store in Chesterfield/St. Louis after visiting the local zoo’s new baby elephant, whom she is a zoo parent to, a couple days before.  Losing teeth is her latest endeavor.  She’s singing “All I want for 

Christmas is my two front teeth” and looked like a Jack-O-Lantern after losing two bottom teeth and then one top front tooth on Halloween.  She continues to love elephants, though our goal has shifted from trying to collect and rescue all of the elephants in the world to taking pictures of every elephant we find.  And, believe me there are tons (pun intended) of toy elephants everywhere we look.  She was in pure delight at Disney World where she rode the Dumbo ride several times.  She is full of energy and often runs through the house skipping and singing or tumbling or dancing – so long as she’s moving, drawing, hugging a toy elephant or entertaining us, she’s a happy girl.  She is starting to warm up to the new dance studio slowly and loves gymnastics as well.

Thanks for sharing the highlights of our year!  We hope this letter finds you happy and healthy and filled with the peace that only comes from a Savior that was born, crucified for our sins and rose to give life to everyone who believes.

May God bless you this Christmas season!

          The Scotts –