I put up a few pictures here from David’s Christmas party at church and his Christmas morning.

Enjoy!

We had a great night on Thursday in downtown Portland. We had dinner at the Macaroni Grill with Tony & Laura Ashton and Clint & Jenni Dickey. We don’t see these friends nearly enough, so it was a fun time to catch up and talk about life.

For those not in the know, I’ve known Tony and Clint since about ‘84 or ‘85 and they’ve known each other longer than that. Anyway, Stef took a quick snapshot to document the passing of time, but we still seem to enjoy each other’s company.

Don’t miss an opportunity to catch up with friends. You’ll never regret it.

So, we didn’t do the Christmas letter thing this year, but we still wanted to give a summary of the past year for those who are new to the site.

David finished his eighth grade year and has started his freshman year of high school. We continue to homeschool him and he continues to do well. This past summer was one of the four times Oregon state law requires us to submit test scores for his progress. Those scores showed him doing quite well in a variety of subject areas. In the individual tests he scored at his grade level or above in all cases. Overall, he was graded as doing as well as the average junior in high school would have done on the same test. We’re very proud and quite happy with his progress.

This year has introduced biology, algebra, and other subjects that continue to ratchet up the time and effort commitment we all need to make. David is working through all of these well, if not always with a smile.

Stefanie is still the primary teacher for David’s schooling. Wyatt handle roughly a third of the subject matter, but Stef handles the rest and sets the schedule. The test scores speak clearly that she is doing a great job.

Stefanie has also started to become more involved with the women’s groups at our church. She participated in one weekly Bible study that recently wrapped up and she’s looking forward to the next session after the holidays.

Both of us have continued our time as chaperones/supervisors with the high school youth group at church. Solid Rock Fellowship recently moved to a new building which has given us much more room and a permanent place to meet both on Sundays and Wednesdays. Just being around these kids has been a great experience and forced us to keep our energy up. We regularly get 50-60 kids each Wednesday and sometimes it’ll push over 70. Our church has experienced fantastic growth, but I’m glad to say that our pastoral staff keeps the focus on our relationship with Jesus and our relationships with each other. Everything else is secondary.

Wyatt has added responsibility in many aspects of his life this year. In January, he was promoted to a managing position at his company, Inspiration Software. He manages half of the software developers on the team and has been helping to switch the development process over to something called Agile development. If you’re interested, Wyatt would be happy to point you to some websites to read about it.

Wyatt has also begun leading his weekly men’s Bible study and has joined the ushering team at church. Fortunately, there are enough ushers that he only needs to work one Sunday a month.

We had our first family trip in quite a while this year, too, as we made a quick visit to Disneyland in late October. You can read more about that here. David was old enough that waiting in line was not a problem, but we were old enough that walking around all day hit us pretty hard. Still, a fun time was had by all.

All in all, we find ourselves enjoying every moment we have together. We continue to seek out more opportunities to be involved with church to serve Christ. That attitude has given us a great year with many blessings and we give all thanks for those to our God.

Merry Christmas!

We won’t normally do movie reviews, but we thought this one was worth doing. The Webb family joined the rest of Stefanie’s family last night to go see The Nativity Story. We can heartily recommend it.

The movie really does make Mary and Joseph seem more real. There’s so much to identify with in seeing normal, good people thrown into miraculous and dangerous circumstances. Mary shows great dedication and obedience in position God has given her. Joseph shows great strength and honor when he could have walked away from it all. People love to see ordinary folks do well in extraordinary circumstances. It’s an amazing story and this movie helps bring it to life for those living in the video age.

Although it hasn’t done well in it’s first weeks, I predict that this movie will have legs. It may not be in the theater for long this time around, but I suspect DVD sales will be strong. I also think it will become a perennial favorite for many Christmases to come. This is a fantastic way to introduce people to the history of Christ coming to earth and leading them to the truth of who He was and what He did for all mankind.

We congratulate Mike on being part of this great movie and we look forward to seeing what God will do with it.

We have David’s picture taken professionally just about every year. We just got the prints of the ones we had taken this year and realized that there is no longer any doubt about the Webb genes. Notice anything similar here?

In these photos, David and Wyatt are the same age. Grandpa is probably a few years older.

Spooky.