Santa Rosa, CA. December 2005.

Hi Everyone;

We thought this year we would send you all a summary of event for this past year along with all of our best wishes for a great Holiday season.

We started this year having a great visit with Bianca and Sake, who visited us from The Netherlands last Xmas and New Year.  We took a trip to our 2^nd home in Arizona, enjoyed some nice weather and scenic daytrips around the area (E.g. Sedona, Grand Canon, Las Vegas, desert areas, etc..).  We did take lots of pictures (Debbie got Marco a digital camera for Xmas), but due to all the hectic times are just now getting to print and post them to the smoorenburg.com web-site (So if you are interested, check the site for the latest J.

For Spring break, we took another trip to Arizona, where we had a very nice time, enjoying some summer like weather and relaxation. This trip was quickly followed by the big event for us this year: Talia and Zac’s wedding. They married May 28^th in San Diego, Ca. Two weeks later, we had their reception at Zac’s parents’ house (Bill and Jan Henderson). It was a wonderful reception with lots of family, many old friends and also getting to know even more great people now part of our larger familyJ.

Immediately after the wedding, we took another trip to Arizona. Unfortunately, we ran into some maintenance issues; most notably a family-to-be of Packrats invaded the Spa and decided it as easier to get to the water by chewing up some of the plumbing. Dealing with this issue remotely was quite frustrating and time-consuming for us. In the end, between this event, the amount of travel it took back and forth, the fact that the house value had increased and our projections that due to increased work and a planned Europe vacation for ’06, we decided to sell the house. We moved our personal goods to Santa Rosa and just recently completed consolidation/disposing of it all and have a semi-clean garage again.

Marco has recently spent some of the additional time cleaning up the computer stuff around the house, in part preparing for a mass migration of all videos to DVD. Coupled with this, in process of getting all of our (now many digital) pictures organized and posted to the web.

Maria had her first boyfriend this summer.  She received her wish for an electric guitar for her 16^th Birth Day and is picking up playing it very well. Maria is growing to be quite the pretty lady as you may be able to see in the dance pictures soon to be posted on the web-site.

During the past couple of months, while somewhat hectic due to work, Debbie and Marco have actually been able to unwind a little and pick up some very much overdue things to take care of here in Santa Rosa. We’ve seen (‘the reborn’) Foreigner in concert & Vicki treated us to a nice recent Christmas show by Johnny Mathis. We’ve been able to take some more walks in the nearby park and hope that, now that we should have more time locally, will be able to get back in shape more as well. We had a nice Xmas dinner recently with Debbie’s work and plan another dinner event with friends soon.

We are very much looking forward to another year with lots of family at the dinner table for Christmas and having Maria, Talia and Zac here to celebrate the New Year with us.  Next year, we are looking forward to our big trip, visiting with family in France and Spain.

So as we get ready to celebrate 2005 Christmas and New Year, we wish and hope that you all will have a great Holiday season.

Love;

Marco, Debbie and Maria