Hello Friends!
Just when you thought the holidays were over, along comes a Christmas letter from your friends, the procrastinators, aka the Seamans! We hope you had a great time celebrating Christ’s birth and ringing out what has to be the weirdest year ever.
Even without Covid, 2020 was a very eventful year for us – a death, a birth, a wedding, milestone birthdays, a milestone anniversary, and an epic road trip. And our first empty nest.
Our first grandchild was due in March on our 30th wedding anniversary. Our little grandson arrived a few days early on March 14th. I traveled to Richmond for the big event, but the hospital had closed for visitors when a national emergency due to Covid was declared just the day before his birth. While the world was going nuts, we were enjoying just hanging out and holding our new grandson. He is a very happy and delightful baby, and Joseph and Rebecca are great parents! We’ve also really enjoyed watching our sons become uncles.
In May, Terry’s younger brother, Scott, passed away after a short but valiant battle with stomach cancer. Scott was such a special guy, and we will always miss him. Terry has spent a lot of time grieving, but he would be the first to tell you how the Lord has really met him in his grief.
One July 18th, we had a much happier family event! Caleb married Meredith Hudson here in downtown Knoxville! They had to scale things back a bit due to Covid, but we were very proud of how they handled everything. It was a beautiful wedding, and we are so happy to have another daughter!
Up until this July, our nest was still 75% full. Then in one month’s time, Nathan got his first apartment, Caleb got married, and Noah moved back to college for in-person classes. So we decided to take our empty nest on the road for a belated anniversary trip. We flew to San Francisco, rented a camper van, and spent three weeks on the road in Northern California, Oregon, and Washington. It was a phenomenal trip. And we just missed the fires!
We had a beautiful fall here and got to do quite a bit of hiking. Then we hosted family and friends for an outdoor tailgate for Terry’s 60th birthday, which happened to be the day of the Alabama game. Of course, the game was lousy for Tennessee fans, but we had a lot of fun and won “tailgate of the week”!
We are thankful that Terry’s home renovation business has not really been adversely affected by Covid, and though I did some of my dyslexia therapy on Zoom this Spring, I have mostly been seeing students in-person and have been so busy that I am not taking any more students right now! We are both blessed to really be enjoying what we are doing.
Our kids are doing well. Rebecca, Joseph and Judah are still living in Richmond. Joseph is a helicopter pilot for the National Guard and is due to be mobilized to Washington, DC in early summer. Caleb and Meredith are living in Chattanooga. Their plan is for Meredith to begin travel nursing soon, and Caleb will work on finishing his accounting degree online while they move around. Nathan is a nurse in the trauma ICU at UT hospital here in Knoxville, and he and his cousin, Ben, rent an apartment not far from us. Noah is still a student at Lee University. He has found a passion for directing and hopes to be selected to direct a show for Lee next year.
We all got to be together during the holidays (and even had a White Christmas!), but we actually forgot to document it with a group photo! Instead, I’ve included a collage from our year below.
