Happy Holidays 2013!

Every good Holiday letter has to have
a festive-style, artsy-fartsy pic.

This picture is only here cuz it's snowing
and cuz Laura said "this better make the Christmas card."

Sunset in Key Largo, FL

Merry Christmas to all of our cyber-friends, acquaintances and people who found this site by accident!  Once again the calendar has turned, as has the weather (except for our friends in Southern California, who get sun and 72 degrees all year around and are despised for it by the rest of the country) and it’s time for the Castros' self-serving, hey-look-at-us, we-think-alot-more-people-care-about-what-we-did-than-actually-do, end of the year letter.

It seemed like last years letter was a bit lengthy, so let’s just try to hit the highlights this year. Heeeeeere we GO!

Preparing to enter the shark cage, off
the coast of South Africa, near Shark Alley

You clicked the links..
and here's your reward!

A penguin at Boulders Beach,
on the coast of Cape Town, South Africa
Somehow, there's snow on it, and
I can't figure out how to remove it.
But make no mistake, it was NOT
snowing in Africa.

We made a trip to our 5th continent in April, when we took a trip to South Africa. We saw Johannesburg, Cape Town, the southernmost point in Africa (Cape of Good Hope) and survived driving on the left side of the road. We also fulfilled 2 life-long dreams by going on a safari in Kruger National Park, and going cage diving with great white sharks. On safari, we saw lions, leopard, cheetah, giraffe, elephant, hippos, rhinos, birds and cars. We've included a few pics and videos, but there's a ton more in the Year in Pictures. Also you can check out some pics from our shark diving trip here. We didn't take them, but these were the sharks we saw.

He's the leader of the Pride.
And he's probably angry that we took that
other picture of him.

The night we arrived in LA, we were
greeted by good friends, a home-made
sign, and a Double-Double, Animal-style.
As Randy Newman says, "I love LA"

Chris shows off the greatest tattoo ever..
Yes, it's a squiggly line. 

• In July, we took a trip with our church to Hollywood to work with some of the ministries that are “doing work” (as the kids would say…. or at least would have said 4 years ago, when it was cool) to help the underprivileged of Los Angeles including Hope International, Kairos, and the Midnight Mission. We saw lots of our old friends, and made a bunch of new ones, including Chris, who has the coolest tattoo in the history of body art. Take a look at these pictures.
• 

  Go Hokies!

  The football season, as it usually does, brought us work, fun, joy and pain. It’s like sunshine and rain.. Joy (pump it up, pump it up) and Pain (keep it going, keep it going)... like sunshine (what else, what else) and rain… OOOPS! I’m supposed to be keeping this short. - Like clockwork, 2 days after Thanksgiving the Hokies took down UVA, for the 10th consecutive year.  It’s almost getting boring…. HAHAHAHAHAHA who am  I kidding,beating Virginia NEVER gets boring!
• Stacie and I also took an epic football trip to see the UCF Knights beat Louisville in Kentucky, then visit the Big House in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and finish it off with a Detroit Lions game in Motown. We had a great time visiting with family on the trip. Look at the pictures.

• 

  A visit with the Coates family outside of Detriot

  Have you ever heard of the Minus5 bar? It’s a bar where everything is made of ice. Bar; seats; tables; everything. We went to this bar in Las Vegas, but were too cheap to buy the pics. But you can see us on their website here, here, and here. (Mom, if you’re reading this, when I say “bar” I mean church)
• Saw the largest gas station in the world in (where else?) Texas

He is the firstborn Castro son of
a New Generation.

Outside of the Alamo, we ran
into one of the all-time greats:
The Mouth of the South, Jimmy Hart

• Made our first 2 trips to the Florida Keys - it was hawt. (that’s slang for hot, see?)
• We got at dog. No, we didn't. that’s a lie. Look at these pictures.
• Jed started graduate school, and quickly wondered why he did.
• Not our news, but we’re pretty happy to have welcomed Joel Emmanuel Castro, the newborn son of Joel and Leigh Castro. That’s right… I said SON! So the Castro name lives on.  As our niece Jocelyn put it, we’re “off the hook.” (and I don’t think she was trying to say that we are really cool, if you know what I mean)

(I learned to use bullet points in graduate school.) Since pictures tell much more of the story, we encourage you to look at these pictures. I’m nearing the end of the page, so instead of changing the size of my font, (like I would if I were doing an assignment for school) I will begin to wrap up. There’s probably more to say, but you are probably as sick of all this self-aggrandizement (to see if I used that word correctly, read the definition here) as I am. Look at these pictures. Normally, at some point of a holiday letter, you’d read something serious, inspirational, or heartwarming.

Jed & Stacie

HULKSTER: "Whacha gonna do when Castromania runs WILD on YOU??!?"
MR T. "I pity the fool who don't take a look at my Year in Pictures"