We're alive in '95! Greetings to you all from sunny Texas. We think of you often and pray for you.

Last time you heard from us, we were welcoming Timothy James Aldrich on February 17, 1994. He arrived in the wee hours of the morning at 10 lb. 1 oz. His first birthday is almost upon us. He has been a delightful baby, almost walking... His daycare adjoins my school parking lot and big brother Philip goes there, too.

We have kidnapped Jon Craig's mother from the snowdrifts of Iowa and she is enjoying the flowers budding and little Timothy (alias Tim-Jim, T.J., Teej). She misses her familiar surrounding of home and thinks Texas is flat and paved. Big Brother Donald and Lois came down this past week. We love having company, so please make your reservations at the Aldrich Resort.

We are adjusting to life with Rachel at Baylor University in Waco. She is relishing her experiences, meeting new friends, renewing old friendships--a former first grade classmate is now there, too. So far, she has not declared a major, but she did say that if she did not have to worry about classes and grades, she'd be having the time of her life...

We took another excursion through Arkansas and Missouri this summer, with Don, Lois, their granddaughters Kari and Debbie Jo, sisters Connie from Chicago and Marilyn and her husband Charles from Germany. We enjoyed many shows in Branson--even the Lawrence Welk Show! We cruised the Mississippi at Hannibal, enjoying the caliope.

Before meeting up with them in Hot Springs, we decided to go back to Pine Bluff. We had not been there in thirteen years. Things looked familiar, yet different. The school where I taught my first three years was now a boarded up shell of a building and just down Dollarway Road was a beautiful new elementary school named for the man who was superintendent when I was there...We did not have authorization to visit the arsenal that was home for three and a half years, so we pressed our noses at the gate and remembered.

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