Merry Gruenbaum Christmas 2017 (New Years 2018 version)

Merry Christmas from the Gruenbaum household!! The chicks are slowly leaving, but they are not all gone yet!

The year has been one of a great deal of change in the world. Not wanting to let the world outdo us, we have also been encouraging as much change as possible. The residents of our household have now been cut to 4. Tim, Jackson, Rowdy (Tim’s Dog) and Dylan have left the nest. Tim, Jackson, and Rowdy have moved into an apartment together. Jackson’s brother, Dylan, left in April to head back to South Africa.

The girls are both in the high school home stretch. Abby has made visits to Abilene Christian and Baylor. Her academic efforts have provided nice scholarships. She plans to study nutrition and possibly go on to become a Physician’s Assistant. Her Aunt Debbie arranged a two-week “nutrition internship” at Duke University Hospital over the summer. Abby’s driver’s license has allowed her to become more of a social creature. The local coffee shop has become one of her weekend homework haunts. Rachel’s name could be synonymous with “robotics”. She loves the teamwork, the competition and the social side of the program. In the spring last year, her team competed around Texas and then went to the World competition in Georgia. She LOVED it! When not doing robotics, she is working very hard to survive her junior year of high school. (aka – homework on steroids). She’s starting to think about college and planning to study pre-med. Both girls did cross country this fall, and they are doing basketball now.

The boys are embracing the challenges of adulthood in their individual ways. Tim has turned in his Chick-Fil-A name tag. He now works at a very nice Mexican restaurant where fajitas are king. He is also glad to work extra hours on the restaurants catering team. His girlfriend, Madison, also works there. They have been dating for about 6 months. Jeff is in his senior year at Oklahoma Christian. He continues to be involved in residence life as an assistant resident director. He is looking forward to finishing up college next fall with a degree in computer science and vocational ministry. We enjoyed having him near this past summer as he had an internship at a local church. His goal is to find a programming internship for next summer. As parents, this fall we enjoyed a trip to see Jeff being crowned Homecoming King.

Both Judy and Andy started new jobs this year. Andy’s new job started in August the same day the girl’s started school. Judy started two weeks later. Andy works for Techway Services. He is a computer technician with a couple of decades on most of his fellow techs. His schedule is 6 AM – 2 PM which makes the mornings a little rough, but the rest of the day great! He still has his sign business, but it has slowed considerably. Judy does a similar compliance job to what she did at Chase except the people are nicer and more patriotic. She loves it! She works for USAA and travels to San Antonio almost every week. Her work schedule has kept things interesting at home.

Travel always gives us something to look forward to. This year was no exception. In June, Judy, Andy, and the girls went to Europe. We enjoyed London and Copenhagen before hopping on our Baltic Cruise. Weather complicated our stop in Estonia. We did visit the German coast, St. Petersburg, Helsinki, and Stockholm before ending the cruise. When sunset is after 10:30, you know you are pretty far north. In July, we made a trip thru Ohio, Pennsylvania and then North Carolina. We visited Andy’s family, some old friends, attended the wedding or our nephew, Mark, and visited Judy’s parents for a few days. We enjoyed our French exchange student, Emma, for a couple of weeks before school started.

Let us be reminded this Christmas season of the One who came as the Savior and Light of the world. The world is in chaos because of sin, and Jesus is the only one who can give you true peace. We are so thankful. He would love to be invited to your celebration.

Merry Christmas!

Andy, Judy, Tim, Jeff, Abby and Rachel