Year in Review.

I have been negligent, and not written anything for 2 weeks. Not a whole lot to write about.

I guess I could do a year in review:

Our exchange student, Chris Hofer, participated in FFA leadership contests as a member of one of the Demonstration teams. He was able to go to the state convention in March. He went on the YFU trip to Florida in February then went to Florida again with some of his Friends for Spring Break in April. He participated on the Track Team, although he didn’t go to State the School did have some representatives did go.

Shonda continued to take classes at Jackson Community College and even managed to get a 4.0 in her math class.

In March, Joyce supervised a very successful Regional Celebration of Creativity Tournament.

Charlie’s horse herd was expanded by one- Storm was born on April 30, in the middle of a storm, just before midnight.

Niece, Michelle wedded Ben Murphy April 21.

Joyce was able to go to Knoxville, TN for the Destination ImagiNation Global Finals Tournament in May.

Chris “graduated” from Springport in June. Charlie and Joyce took him up North to see some of Michigan. At Sleeping Bear Dunes, Charlie amazed a bus full of tourists by going down the dune “cliff” to the lake and climbing back up in about 45 minutes. Joyce managed to break her ankle by stepping on the only twig in a well maintained path through the woods. Which some people found just hilarious, see the comments at

Chris returned to Switzerland in June.

We attended, cousin, Jordan Keeley’s wedding in July. A beautiful ceremony at the lake, even though the weather was HOT

Charlie created a “water feature” in the front yard, that attracted a couple of frogs. Then he went white water rafting in Virginia with the Springport FFA.

Shonda had her birthday on August 15^{th and} boyfriend, Brian turned 25 on the 16^th. It really doesn’t seem possible that she is 20 years old, or that we, Charlie and Joyce have been married 21 years.

A big disappointment this year was the defeat of the library expansion millage in August. That means a really tight budget next year, and no new buildings like we had all hoped.

Anna-Lena Werner, our exchange student from Germany arrived on August 17; we took a side trip to Cabela’s on the way home.

Charlie managed to get her involved with the Springport Equestrian team and she ran on the cross country team, the senior class built their float at our house and the girls practiced for powder puff football.

Shonda just finished another semester with a 4.00

The whole Choate clan welcomed Michelle and Ben's, Benjamin Robert Murphy into our family in October.

That’s our year in about 60 seconds. I guess you could call it the Betz’ minute review of 2007.

Check back, I’ll try to do better with the updates this year. I hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas with friends and family.