We just made it home from our winter trip to Palo Duro Canyon State Park, half an hour before midnight on December 31, 2018. I pushed our “Titan” into the garage and prepared to open a bottle of Champagne just in time. What a day! We were tired, but happy. When the New Year started, at the mixed sound of firecrackers and fireworks we said thank you for everything that happened with and around us in the Old Year, we wished each other love and happiness for the New Year, and Lexi and I danced for the music of New Year’s Eve Waltz… and 6 AM on January 1st we received the sad news, my Mom peacefully passed away… We will keep her in our hearts and will remember her as she was many years ago.

The Year 2018 was a successful year for us. Lexi and I still work at the same workplace where we started in Houston 29 years ago and where we are ready to retire in 2019. Lexi is a Mohs Histotech at DermSurgery Associates and I am faculty of Baylor College of Medicine, Scientific Director of Research and Tissue Support Services Core. As a contributing author, we published 2 scientific papers last year and I taught my Baylor Medical Students through 3 Terms. As a second profession, Lexi and I, are Photographic Artists. We submitted our images to 56 different Competitions last year, and 30 accepted our works and won several awards. I continued the “Through the Lens” monthly photography workshops at Brazos Bend State Park TX, presented 18 workshops for the Houston Center for Photography, and led 4 critique discussion meetings for the Houston Photographic Study Group. We visited our New England Large Format Photography Collective (NELFPC) friends on their 15th Anniversary meeting in Whitefield, NH, spent a good time in New York City and in the Appalachian Mountains in October visited our friends JB and Susan Harlin, and made our winter trip to Palo Duro Canyon State Park at the end of 2018. Blurb printed my “Inner Peace” monochrome Portfolio book and Snapfish printed our new Portfolio desk calendars.

Hurricane Harvey caused a huge flood in the Houston area at end of August in 2017. All of the houses flooded in our neighborhood. We spent countless hours on the restoration in 2017 and finally, we completed the project at the end of February 2018, and I restored and reorganized the garage to house our new Off-road vehicles “Beast” and “Titan” in November 2018.

I strongly believe, 2019 will be a great year! We are full of hopes, energy, and new plans for the New Year.

My wife Lexi and I are wishing all of our friends a safe, healthy, happy, and prosperous New Year on one of my photographs, taken at Palo Duro Canyon State Park, TX.