What an amazing year2010 was! It is almost impossible to know where to begin!

The Western Jaegers and Carringtons:

Robin Jaeger has had his left shoulder repaired and is now waiting to have the right one done. Robin, who is Dick's first cousin was a member of the Orange County Sheriff's Dept. and as he put it "Thirty years jumping fences chasing bad guys can cause a lot of damage. Once he gets through these surgeries he will be able to enjoy his retirement with his wife Nancy. And if he wants to get involved in something really good he could join the Irvine Relay For Life of the American Cancer Society. (had to get a plug in for Relay and Irvine has an excellent one)

Brian Carrington is doing a lot of traveling in his work for LDS Church. He is in an extremely responsible position and Jo is of course extremely proud of her husband, as we all are. Jo is once more working doing income tax returns during tax season and between that and keeping in touch with her kids and grandchildren is really quite busy.

Speaking of grand kids, or in this case grand (or is it great? have seen it both ways) nephews here is an updated photo of the Carrington Twins, lance and Carter with their mom, Ashton:

And of course there are some other very special kids to Caryn and Dick on the West Coast .Five super fantastic grandchildren. Aby is "almost 12" and recently had her hair redone, taking this picture of a beautiful young lady:

Hard to believe our first grandchild is almost a teenager!

Aby's school was severely damaged in the mudslides that swept through the canyons into downtown Laguna Beach recently (their home was not damaged at all, thankfully) and her classes were moved to one of the other campuses. Note the Michigan State tee shirt - that for any UofM fans reading this :)

Steven and Sarah put together a series of pictures from which they chose one for their holiday cards. It had to be difficult to choose but this is the one we liked most as a group shot of the three kids, Eli, Jacob and Olivia (all of whom have red hair like their mommy) by the way. Eli at five is already looking like a lady-killer. Jacob looks like he could get into everything and Olivia already knows she has two big brothers to look out for her.

Delila continues to grow and absolutely loves her older sister (who by way loves playing that role):

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David and Steven are extremely busy and their business continues to grow without any apparent regard to the economy's swings. Helps having a fantastic product that you designed and marketed yourselves!

The Michigan Jaegers

After almost three months of waiting the day is nearly here! On February 1st Dick will be having a full hip replacement. In a class on hip replacement at Beaumont one of the nurses passed around a titanium hip kit and yes, it really will set off alarms at airports. After recuperation and some physical therapy he should be good as new and able to do things he never had in the past. The replacement weighs over one and a half pounds - which is really surprisingly heavy!

Not much else going on with the Jaegers. A lot of time spent with friends and both Dick and Caryn are avid readers so along with their outside interests they are constantly busy.

This was taken at a Breast Cancer Survivor event at a Lions Game where Dick and 36 women lined the entrance to the field when the Lions came out and P.S. they won the game (we even got to meet Kid Rock):

Brodie - Moss Branches

Lots of news on these branches mostly in the area of family history. Sharon Moss, Caryn's second cousin, brought over a large container of family photos a few weeks ago and Dick went through them and scanned about 100 and put them on Picasa so other family members could see them and help in identifying people. The results were dramatically different than expected. Yes, a lot of the photos were identified (and now the Picasa site is a family album for all branched and can be reached from this web site through a link on the front page). But more interesting was both the number of additional photos sent to Dick and the number of "new" cousins that got copies of the e-mails from other cousins and wrote to us. On cousin said we weren't related but i worked through the relationship and now understand why he said that. Some old mysteries are still mysteries but a lot has been cleared up and the photos really tell a tale about a family's journey through time For example there was one Moskovitch that supplied boots to the Tsar and sent a son to China to try to open up trade there. Think that came from Oscar Schabb and wonder if that was Aaron Moskovitch (Chaim and Samuel's brother). Anyway his is one of the more interesting photos we have:

Aaron as a member of the Tsar's army in what looks to be an officer or NCO's uniform. Shoulder boards were more common for NCO uniforms. In any event it would be hard to envision a Russian Jew reaching a rank of authority under the last Tsars who were notoriously anti-Semitic believing all Jews were Zionists and Social Democrats bent on overthrowing the monarchy.

Among the cousins we "found" Marsha Moss, Linda Ross Moss, Victor Moss (known as "Doc" - not sure why but perhaps "Doc" could enlighten us), Marc and Garrett Schabb (father and son) and of course Oscar Shabb, and a host of others.

Not all the news from the Moss side is good I fear. Milton Pierce, who was married to Sylvia Robinson Moss passed away at the age of 96. Milton was a unique person having to drop out of school in the Ninth Grade to help support his family he was tired of seeing his dad's store robbed and devised an alarm for it. That alarm led to what today is Guardian Alarm, on of the largest privately held companies in Michigan. In his 70's he became a pilot and flew his own plan up north and to Florida. Until recently he still road on a motorcycle and up until very recently he went into his office at Guardian every day. He was a special and a self made man in the best of American traditions. Rest in Peace, Milton

Collins Branch - Worldwide

Lots of things going on with our Collins cousins located seemingly all over the world.

Aron Edwards, Julie (Joolie) Edwards' son is in Western Canada at the moment. as part of a year long vacation starting in Los Angeles and crossing the United States and then back to the west coast via Canada. Aron though known for his singing proved himself a very accomplished photographer and I use of his photos as a wallpaper on my laptop. Many of his photographs - including an amazing number of Aron with his arm around some beautiful young lady, can be found on his Facebook page.

Our other wandering cousin, Andy Collins has just returned from a tour on board a ship in the Middle East. Safely back in England he did not run into any of the Somalian pirates - though if he had he probably would have handled that too!

Julie Collins, daughter of war hero Harold Collins is almost always referred to has "Joolie", we asked about this and found out that when she was 19 and impetuous and a young dancer starting out, she wanted to have a name that was "different", that stood out from the crowd. So she changed it from Julie to Joolie and over the years she became known as "Joolie" and still is today ... a lot of years later. Julie or Joolie, fact is she was a great dancer and is considered a national treasure - though probably no longer dancing in a ballet on a dance floor or stage.

I suspect that the gene that makes a person artistic has been the dominant on for Joolie as almost all of her children and grandchildren also have an artistic bent, either acting and singing or in photography. From Sarah Collins to Sophia Eadie and Aron and Ben The Collins families in Australia are definitely into the arts. And darn good at it.

Completing our world tour with the Collins branch we come back to Arizona where Leslie Collins Kahldon and her husband major Scott Kahldon and two children Josh and Leah live. We found this magnificent photo of not only the two kids but the beautiful countryside around them:

Weissman-Small Fauerbach, Koenigheit etc.

Michael Donovan, whose uncle Carey Singer was married to Gail Small has been ordained and in spite of what you are all thinking he is not a Priest but an orthodox Rabbi. Carey's sister Margo (and I know them well over 50 years and in fact introduced Carey to Gail) had married Gary Donovan and Gary had converted. Subsequently Margo ad a son who grew up and wanted to go to a Yeshiva. He did and eventually went on to become a Rabbi. His parents at some point also decided to become more religious and were remarried in the more traditional ceremony. Both Gary and Margo were teachers and had for years planned on moving to Israel in retirement. They bought an apartment in Ashkelon on the coast in southern Israel.

Michael by the way is married and Gary and Margo are once more grandparents. Michael recently gave a talk in San Francisco and we sent a copy of the announcement to his very proud mother and dad. Gary and Margo are hoping to visit the States during 2011.