Charlotte and Smoot’s 2009 in Pictures

Happy Holidays 2009 from Charlotte and Smoot!

My motto this year was Fine in ’09. Even though Smoot had been laid off in Dec, we tried to be hopeful and it has been a good year overall.

We weren’t able to make any big vacation trips, but we did get to see family and friends who came to visit us. Ralph & Anne and the Blackwells in January. Suzanne in May, Alan in August, Becca and Chad in Sep and who are now engaged! Mark & Kelly in Nov. Smoot was able to celebrate Leonard’s birthday with Jency in Austin in Nov.

We did some special things. Phoenix Comic Con was fun in Jan, esp the Star Trek: Next Gen and Geek panels. We went to the Pioneer Village and met Nazis, well re-enactors! We had help on Free Comic Book Day and met some of the famous Star Wars 501st. We had multi-day celebrations for our birthdays and celebrated the 1st anniversary of having our kittens Bagheera and Cash. I got to go to a beautiful fabric art exhibit and the State Fair . We both went to the pricey but fun Star Wars in Concert. We got together with the Leungs for many viewing evenings from the Superbowl to Star Trek to Harry Potter. Susan, Elizabeth and Katherine Leung also started helping me catalog my collections – a big job! But there’s also been time to play on our Wii.

We took part in several Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Phoenix events such as the installation of our new ministers and Cabaret for which I served as CEO again. The choir surprised me with a St. Charlotte’s Day celebrations. I didn’t know UU’s had saints! Combined choirs from around the district sang Sources at the District Assembly meeting in May. And in Nov I helped organize a talk on Humanism in Star Trek by Gene Roddenberry’s long time assistant, Susan Sackett.

In Oct Smoot began a consulting job for Cort Furniture in Austin. He would work there during the week and have a too-short 48-hour furlough home on the weekend. He’s now able to work for them remotely. He’s also working on two other projects that we hope will lead to more consulting work and he will begin teaching online computer science courses for Rio Salado Community College in Jan. From Aug to Dec, he served as a mentor on the Legos robot project.

Our pets continued to entertain us and I became involved in two animal rescue groups – Tranquility Trail Animal Sanctuary and Paw Placement for which I do volunteer work on a regular basis.

We hope you've had a good year and will have a happy holiday and new year.

Charlotte and Smoot Carl-Mitchell ccm@tic.com, smoot@tic.com

And now, a pictorial review of 2009