Greetings from the Schumachers! We have been remiss in providing much of an update here for quite awhile, so we wanted to share a bit of news of what is going with all of us:
--Jack is 19 and a freshman at Abilene Christian University, he is majoring in Finance and his roommate is his first cousin Lukas. He has a new job on campus this semester. We do not have pie chart on the amount of time studying versus playing intramurals and hitting the golf course, but it looks like he is keeping those things in the right proportion most of the time (except for the intramural playoffs of course). He is participating in one of the freshman acts for Sing Song (only ACU folks will really understand this reference). He also has a girlfriend who is beautiful on the inside and out who we have really enjoyed getting to know. Suffice it to say, he has continued the Schumacher men's unbroken streak of outkicking our coverage on that front.
--Johnny is 16 and a sophomore at the St. Anthony's School in Carrolton. As many of you know, Johnny is on the autism spectrum and completely awesome. The St. Anthony's School specializes in helping kids with various learning or social challenges, so we are so glad to have found this school and this community for Johnny. Johnny completed a title run on his school's kickball team in the Fall and has started his basketball season. Johnny loves sports generally and especially college football. He became a Georgia Bulldog fan many years ago, so this recent national title run has been something special for him this year. He also may have mentioned the victory a few times to certain a member of our family who is a University of Alabama fan. We are not sure the parenting protocols of preventing your son from talking smack to his grandfather about the outcome of a college football game. If anyone knows a parenting book that has a chapter that addresses this situation, please send us the link.
--Annie is 14 and a freshman at Richardson High School. She has noticed the big jump between junior high and high school in the amount of homework that you have, but she has been up to the task and is doing well. Annie is also in the choir and a member of the freshman cheerleading team. Annie has been in cheerleading for a couple of years now, so as a cheerleading parent, you want to be supportive and help the cheerleaders out. That means actually doing the cheers along with the cheerleading squad. We parents have down most of the cheers and follow along pretty good - for example, the ones where the crowd spells R-H-S for Richardson High School, we got that one down. However, this football season, the Richardson Eagle Freshman Team was on defense. And the cheerleaders led us in a cheer where we - the crowed - needed to spell D-E-F-E-N-S-E and the cadence of the cheer had us doing it pretty fast. We are not sure how often you have ever tried to verbalize the spelling of D-E-F-E-N-S-E at a quick pace, but we found a little prep and practice on that one would have been helpful. Alas, us parents may not helped our defenders' spirit much on that cheer, but we know what to work on in the offseason.
Since the last we posted, we have three updates to share:
(1) We made a massive 0.3 of a mile move in 2018 within our Spring Creek neighborhood in North Dallas. If you need our new address, let us know!
(2) Jason has become a partner at O'Melveny & Myers at the start of this year. He is helping start the Dallas office of this law firm along with four of his partners from his prior law firm Locke Lord. The departure is bittersweet as he has good friends at Locke Lord, and it was a great part of his career, but he is looking forward to this new opportunity and working alongside four of his really good friends and partners. For those at all interested, he would be happy to tell you all about it. Including our mothers, tens of tens of people have viewed the press release regarding the move which you can read here and you find out more about Jason's experience here.
(3) The dog count is up to three. Pepper, our Shih Tzu is the senior member of the dog committee. She is pretty much all business and believes in tight perimeter barking enforcement. Clifford (photo credit above) is a full bred poodle and was purchased and trained to be Johnny's service animal. As it turns out, Clifford is basically not trained much at all at this point (something about lesson reinforcements or something may have gotten overlooked), but he has definitely become everyone's emotional support animal. Sadie is the new dog in the family, as she was our replacement for our sweet Shih Tzu Angel who died last year. Sadie is a poodle-mini poodle mix. She takes her French heritage seriously as she attempts to kiss us right on the lips from time to time. Meals times are pretty well full guilt sessions with three dogs, as our dogs look longingly at us and seem to ponder their existence and will to live if they do not get to share in the bounty. Perhaps you know the feeling.
Our family still attend The Branch Church in Farmers Branch, so any of those looking for a church home in Dallas, we would love to have you join us!
For Both of Us,
--Jason
