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.

Well, I guess it’s time for an update. After all, I’ve been doing quite a bit of relaxing this past week and you all deserve to be kept in the loop.

I was fortunate enough to be able to take the entire week of Thanksgiving as vacation, so it’s been a great break from school and work for us all. We had another quiet, relaxing Thanksgiving dinner (pictures here) and we’re looking forward to Christmas on the way.

We’re excited as our church is about to move into a new building (first service in the new building is December 10) and we’re cruising into an even longer break for Christmas and the end of the year.

David is bulling his way through his freshman year and Stef is helping him to beat a path. I’ve been doing a mix of managing and coding at work as well as a little software for handhelds on the side (have a look at my results here). We always appreciate some downtime to watch a movie, read a book, or play a game or two.

We hope you had a great Thanksgiving and that Christmas proves to be peaceful and comforting rather than stressful and agitating like it is for so many.

Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas!

There is a new trailer available to see for The Nativity Story. The hype is mounting for it’s December 1 opening date. And, if you haven’t seen this already, it will be premiering at the Vatican on November 26. Quite an accomplishment for a movie that was turned around very quickly.

A quick Google search will turn up no end of stories and backgrounders on all of the principals involved. The bottom line, though, is I think this will prove to be an enduring classic for Christians everywhere. I am looking forward to see what God will do with this film and how He may be glorified by the retelling of His story.

Well, it went nothing like we planned, we were glad to get home, but we still had fun.

We had planned to visit Disneyland the day we flew in. However, we had to fight rush hour to get to our hotel and the park closed at 8pm that day. We settled for dinner at Claim Jumper instead.

We had planned to stay in a Residence Inn so we could have a full kitchen. What we didn’t know was that this particular one allowed pets in all rooms. When David started developing a headache, we moved to a Ramada that advertised that no pets and no smoking were allowed in any rooms. That worked better for us.

The second day was, by far, our big day. We hit Disneyland at about 10:30am. Aside from a short trip back to the hotel for lunch, we were in the park until 11pm. After my obligatory ride on The Jungle Cruise, we found the Indiana Jones Adventure ride to be closed for repairs. We made our way through Pirates of the Caribbean, Haunted Mansion (which was decked out in characters from “The Nightmare Before Christmas” for Halloween) and David’s favorite ride, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. The Indy ride opened later and we were ten feet from getting in before they had to close it again and shuttled us all out. On our third try later that night, we got to ride and then we rode it again. In fact, we ended up hitting Indy, Thunder Mountain, and Space Mountain (which is much improved) twice during that day. We returned back to the hotel quite exhausted, but we got our money’s worth.

Our last day we took rather leisurely and hung around California Adventure. We did all ride California Screamin’ which was David’s first full-fledged roller coaster. He loved it and wants to do more. I think we’ll have to hit Six Flags during our next visit.

Despite some hiccups and the fact that Stef and I don’t recover as quickly as we used to, we still had a blast. In fact, we were having so much fun we took very few pictures. You can see the ones we did snap here.

We are about to take a short family vacation. Fortunately, we did not choose to go to Hawaii. Instead, we’re going to the “Happiest Place on Earth”!

During our last visit over five years ago, the Pirates of the Caribbean ride was closed and David wasn’t tall enough to do all of the rides. This time, we’re looking forward to riding our favorites repeatedly and skipping the boring stuff. David is planning which rides he wants to hit and trying to negotiate his way out of the rides that Mom and Dad like but he finds beneath him.

It’ll be a blast, no doubt, and the weather is looking great! Who would have thought that going to California would mean we were travelling where the earthquakes were not happening?

Let us know if you want a souvenir.

As I’ve mentioned before, we’re all excited to see Mike’s (Stef’s brother) new movie coming out in December. A longer trailer was just posted at the movie’s website and is worth a watch.

Visit http://www.thenativitystory.com/ and click on videos to watch the theatrical trailer. Good stuff.