Smith Family News

I hope you enjoyed a fun and relaxing holiday season. Our holidays were very quiet following a six-week period that had one obstacle right after another. We've shopped online for years and this year, it was frustrating. Several people in the neighborhood had packages stolen off their porch. Unfortunately, the one that got stolen off of ours was an E-Bay purchase that was sent U.S. Postal Service without insurance so Tom lost $150 on that. We bought software twice from online retailers that tried to pass off upgrades and educational versions for the full versions of the software. Tom sold a guitar on E-Bay and there was a fraud. He worked with UPS to stop delivery but they delivered it anyway. When he finally got the guitar back, it had been opened but not repacked properly and it was damaged in shipment. Fortunately that was insured but it takes time to get the claim filed and processed.

Carrie saved up for a premium Canon digital camera and bought a package from fotoconnection.com and totally got ripped off. The Canon body was the only thing that was right. Tell your camera-enthusiast friends to never buy anything from them. From the bait and switch experience, to the products that were significantly lesser value that what I paid for, to their refusal to take anything back or send me what I ordered, it was a miserable experience. Two of the more expensive items are faulty -- the compact flash card and the lens. They are a very dishonest company. So far, the credit card company and the Better Business Bureau of New York have not done anything to help me. I've exhausted all means with the fotoconnection.com to resolve the issue. The lens is covered under the warranty hopefully and I've had no luck getting the compact flash replaced from the manufacturer. We'll be working on getting all these issues resolved for months.

Tom and Carrie went to a couple really neat destinations this year. In May, they traveled to Mexico City and stayed in the homes of friends. What an incredible cultural experience! We climbed the second tallest pyramid in the world, saw amazing architecture, and visited with Tom's friends from Wal-Mart Mexico. One of the highlights was to attend a series of gatherings surrounding the baptism of  Gary and Zaida's baby girl, Rachael. Mexico City is the most populated city in the world so it's crowded and polluted but it has all the amenities of the large-market city. It was so much different that the usual tourist destinations.

In November, we went to Negril, Jamaica. That might be the most humid  place on earth. Carrie works on the Total Resource Campaign each year for the Bentonville/Bella Vista Chamber of Commerce where she sells memberships and sponsorships. She's earned the trip for three years. The resort we stayed at was about six months old and was all inclusive. About 36 people went with us so it was like traveling with friends.

One of the highlights of the trip was Bob, the flight attendant. Early morning fog settled on the airport in Arkansas as we were preparing to take off so we didn't. Bob is the crusty old guy that seemed more in character to be on an old ocean vessel. He was also married to a flight attendant. He made our two hours sitting on the tarmac pass quickly with his sarcastic humor. He even had his own trays that we covered with his own floral napkins and served us chocolates that he brought on board. I'm sure he broke some law but he served up all the alcohol on the plane before we every even left. There couldn't have been much on the plane because all the flights out of XNA are short flights. It made it nice though. We fly fairly frequently and we normally get surly flight attendants who are jaded because of all suffering they do in airlines which are struggling to stay afloat financially. Crusty old Bob the Flight Attendant was a breath of fresh air.

Tom is still working at Wal-Mart. He's been back in the  People Division for almost three years n the training area. This year, he got to help develop a new department that negotiates all the training contracts and comes up with education benefits for the Wal-Mart associates (employees). He still missed working in the International Division but he's home all the time now. He's been buying and selling guitars and parts on E-Bay this year and he's been dabbling a bit in developing a marketing strategy for his dad's invention, Deck of Chords (www.deckofchords.com).

All Carrie's hard work on the business is finally paying off. You can bounce around the site to learn more about the business. Basically, Soar with Eagles offers consulting, training, publishing, and conference design services which includes Arkansas' only professional speaker bureau. The speaker bureau is really the darling of the company and continues to be the mainstay of the company. The publishing company is part of the growing number of services that we provide for speakers besides just marketing them. We continue to produce our own Soar with Eagles events and training but we're now marketing those services to other organizations as well. We just got a beautiful new convention center here that is large enough for 80% of the conferences held in the U.S. One of the services we offer is audio-visual service management. We stick strictly to business meetings and conferences because we know that format. Tom would like to branch out into DJ services for baby boomer parties but he's not quite ready yet.

We still have the office in our home. Tom and Carrie shared an office and then she had to take over another bedroom in the house for the world headquarters of Soar with Eagles. Two offices and four closets contain stuff for the business. In addition, we use the dining room often too. Carrie had a marketing coordinator for four months in 2005 and his office space was in the dining room. We thought we might buy a house to covert into a retreat facility last year but the business needs to be a bit more profitable first. We still have some equipment to buy for the conference business and then maybe we'll consider it. Carrie would rather have a housekeeper and lawn service more than an office outside the house.

Darcie graduated from Rogers High School in May. It was no easy feat. She's struggled her whole life with anxiety and depression and a chemical imbalance. Junior high and high school pressures just compounded things. The chemical imbalance predisposes her for addition and she can slide under that radar better than any kid I've ever known. Coupled with low-self-esteem and poor school performance, she picks up with every bad influence that comes along. She went to live with her dad in 2003 and that just compounded things. He still doesn't quite admit she  has the problems she has even after being hospitalized on and off in residential psychiatric care for 14 months over three years. Since graduation, she's been back with me and I'm working to try to help her manager her life. We're not out of the woods yet and we have to watch her like a hawk. However, she's beginning to take ownership of her own issues and she's working part-time. She took a class at the community college in the fall and she just signed up to take two more for spring semester.

Carrie does a lot of volunteer work. Most of it has been in ways that support entrepreneurship such as volunteering as a SCORE counselor providing small business counseling services or serving on the business advisory board for Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) at NWACC. She's going into her sixth year working with the Cancer Challenge to coordinate a team that runs their motorcycle poker run and show (and no she doesn't ride). She is also the president of the Northwest Arkansas chapter of the American Society of training and Development (ASTD). However, she's considering changing the focus of her volunteer work to move toward advocacy and change of the mental health services in Arkansas. Arkansas is ranked dead last in most mental health services and our corner of the state, affluent as it is, ranks dead last in the state. She's seen first hand the lack of options available for treating mental illness. She'll be investigating further this year to see what her role should be as she transitions out (or into lesser roles) in some of her other volunteer initiatives.

We adopted Jazmin in 2002 from the animal shelter. She's sort of assumed the loud, obnoxious alpha dog role over the other two dogs, Speckles and Snapper (they'll be 10 years old this summer). Jazmin bites people when they try to pet her and causes trouble with the other dogs, and can't seem to control her barking. Otherwise, she's just the cutest thing with a silly personality. She knows we can't walk past her when she's sprawled out on her back without rubbing her belly. She sits obediently by the door when Carrie isn't around and she licks all the plate before we put them in the dishwasher.

Carrie's parents are still in Tulsa. Wayne works for Motorguide in their engineering department and Phyllis is still working for Wal-Mart. Wayne had quintuple bypass surgery in October and is doing pretty well. He's managing to eat better and get some exericise now. That's good for his diabetes too. He's still selling his Book of Jasher (www.jasher.com/) on the internet and spends time in his music studio composing. Phyllis spent a good deal of time over the last several year's caring for the elderly and sick in her family as well as aging dogs. Now, that they've all passed on, she relaxes some and works around the house.

Carrie's brother Kevin and his family live in Worcester, MA. There are four kids so scheduling and travel make it difficult to see them as often as we'd like. I don't think I've seen all the kids in three or so years.

Tom's dad, Fred, still lives in the Cleveland, OH area. His mom, Florence, died just over a year ago. There still occasional evidence she's still with us though -- normally in the form of electrical problems. Whenever we have an electrical problem, we attribute it to her. Tom's sister, Kathy, and her husband, Dana, live in Pennsylvania. Dana builds log cabins and they are accumulating a lot of horses and other farm animals. Kathy is a substitute teacher.

That's about all we have to report right now. I hope you'll check back frequently as we hope to add photos and updates periodically.