Sea to Shining Sea

  Craft Christmas 2022 What a whirlwind of a year! Christ has blest us in many ways. First and foremost; Elizabeth and Kevin had a beautiful wedding in Corpus Christi. It was a wonderful opportunity for the families to get together and the love that Elizabeth and Kevin have for each spills over to everyone else. For our family, this was the real end of Covid; as Elizabeth had to delay the wedding 1 year because of the pandemic. The other great blessing was that Michelle was able to spend more time in person with her veterans that she serves. She is a very committed social worker and wanted to maximizing face time and she often commented on the limitations of telemedicine. Telemedicine was a valuable tool, but nothing completely replaces boots on the ground. The farm was both hard and successful. First, we have near historic wet weather in terms of the amount of ground we were not able to farm and then the year snapped very dry during the summer. This put a lot of pressure on the crop; but we had a reasonable harvest. Grandpa and Grandma really helped keep the details running on the farm when I was flying back and forth between Houston and the farm. It was a big year at the University of Houston; as the research I was doing on Covid-19 led to a discovery of a molecule that is a candidate for a therapeutic for the virus by inhibiting the binding of the virus spike protein to the human ACE2 receptor. We got a patent on my discovery and are exploring future plans for development. Hannah is a junior/senior at Texas AM. She now has moved into her own apartment and she really appreciates that. John Welch had a successful but stressful year in which his company leaned on his loyalty and sent him to Austin as a construction subcontractor to work on the Tesla Giga Factor on the night shift. This was in a sense an opportunity, but really, it was a sacrifice as all his friends and family are here in Clear Lake and he had recently bought a condo and established deeper ties. We are all hoping his company helps empower him to stay in Clear Lake. Finally, Jacob is a senior in high school! That is hard to believe. He enjoys Latin and the Troubadour choir. Somehow time is racing bye; even faster now that society is coming back up to full speed. Batten down the hatches and hold on; I think 2023 will be even crazier!!

 

¶ 7:42 AM

  Wind Change from 80's F to 15 F in 1 day Jacob and I went exploring as the weather changed from summer to winter in 1 day.  

¶ 12:31 PM