The Year in Review - 2025
Anne & Stewart French

A lot happened this year! So grab a comfy seat, a cuppa coffee, here we go again, another French Year-In-Review.

Family

In mid-January, Anne visited Houston for Ev's 13th birthday. The extended family made quite a crowd including sister Trina, her son Doug and wife Manasi, other son Russell and Glenda (Ev's parents) with siblings Auggie and Sophie, Trina's daughter Melanie and Brad with their kids Charlie and Robyn and Trina's sister-in-law Joanie with her son Josh and Kacey. Wow, Treen is responsible for lots of humans and their whereabouts.

This year brought two "sisters trips". In February, Anne met up with Kath and Trese in Dallas to travel to Costa Rica for an amazing several days of birding, hiking the cloud forest of Monteverde, taking a swing on the rope bridges, and hanging out at the beautiful open air restaurant of the Koora Hotel. They even celebrated the Super Bowl there, with festive margaritas colored to match the team jerseys and a surprisingly American menu including sliders and nachos. Pura vida!

Then in October, Anne, Trina, Trese and Kath gathered in downtown Fort Worth. Having rediscovered that big town with the small town feel at ClarinetFest, Anne couldn't wait to go back and do some of the things she hadn't had time for during the conference. Trina drove up from Houston and daughter Brandi & Lamar came down to see her and have dinner with us at our home in Allen before Anne & Trina headed to Fort Worth the next day. Once settled into their hotel, the sisters visited the Amon Carter and Sid Richardson museums, walked the Botanical & Japanese Gardens and hung out at the Water Gardens all lit up in the evening. Finally they settled in to enjoy the evening outdoor concerts at Sundance Square, watching kids playing in the splash pool and getting photos with the huge cattle drive mural and immense silver cowboy hat.

Back in May, Anne went back to Houston again to hang with Trina and her friend Nancy, Doug & Manasi and Melanie's family at Manasi's parents' neighborhood block party. There had to be 100 people there with food and beverages galore. These folks really know how to party.

Niece Emily and Andrew visited for Anne's 70th birthday. We enjoyed their visit with rousing dice games of 10,000, jigsaw puzzles, hikes, good food and conversation. Emily has been training in the Craniosacral Therapy, a very relaxing technique using light touch on the head, neck, and spine to release tension. She demonstrated on both of us, and we look forward to the next visit so she can show us what new she has learned.

Throughout the year, Anne & Stewart met up with her brother Glenn and Mina several times for birthday celebrations, and Anne & Glenn took separate excursions to the mall for walks and chatting with his friends. At Thanksgiving Stewart serenaded with Christmas carols on the piano while Mina prepared our delicious feast.

Friends

We got a fantastic snow "event" in January. It was perfect snow for building a snowman. We added a snow-turtle when neighbor Ivory suggested it and helped build them both. The other kids were circled in the greenspace in front of the house negotiating the rules for a snowball fight : "You mean you throw the snowballs at each other??!"

Twice this year our friends Mike & Linda hosted parties with lots of our work buddies, a Kentucky Derby party and a Friendsgiving party at Thanksgiving. The food was amazing and the conversation fun, as usual. It's always good keeping up with friends we've known for decades. We also got to see Jay and his band at Jay & Carla's birthday party in their neighborhood party barn. Ron & Sharon hosted their yearly Halloween party with lots of food, music, and Ron's wild micro-controlled halloween decorations. We see some but not all of these folks at our weekly "lunch with buds" that John organizes.

Anne also gathers regularly with work friends from Texas Instruments at monthly DLP happy hours and lunches with Mayra and Kathy.

Maria came over several times in the year, sometimes bringing Ethan and Samantha, for bagels and conversation. We also met her at a local Cinemark to watch fun movies. And we were privileged to see her daughter Samantha get married to Garrett in a beautiful ceremony.

Speaking of Halloween, we had 242 trick-or-treaters this year! Mild weather, fun costumes, creepy music made it another memorable experience. Easy storage inflatables are becoming the decoration of choice.

Newcomer Friends of Greater Plano kept Anne busy in 2025. She continued as co-lead of the Arts & Leisure activity and organized group tours of In-Sync Exotics, a large cat rescue center in Wylie, a bird scavenger hunt, tracking down life sized paintings of birds on random locations around businesses in downtown McKinney, and the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum, which featured Holocaust survivor Max Glauben who, reenacted as a hologram, answered questions from the audience about his experience in real time. The Arts & Leisure co-leads also hosted another "Easy Pace Amazing Race" after months of planning. Anne's challenge was playing simple tunes on a tongue drum (small steel drum) and teams had to guess what they were. Other challenges involved finding the tiny doors painted on businesses in downtown McKinney, a scavenger hunt at the Cotton Mill and a card matching game at Tupp's Brewery. Had it not poured down rain, it would have been perfect!

Music

We continue to play in our community band, Joyful Noise with Anne on clarinet and Stewart on alto saxophone. This year included 3 concerts at The Sanctuary Event Center in McKinney, 3 at The Conservatory in Plano, and our annual trip to the Frisco Roughriders stadium to play the National Anthem before the double-A affiliate minor league baseball game.

Our fall concert had a Broadway theme, with medleys from Hamilton, Wicked, the Music Man and several other shows. We were very happy to have some of our friends come to hear us play, Dave & Vicky, Jay & Carla, and Dan. Then for the holiday concert nieces Mia, Emily & Andrew came up from Austin ready to sing along.

Anne has converted our media room upstairs to be her music studio, a large, carpeted, airy room with it's own sink so she can keep her reeds and mouthpieces clean. Stewart has adapted a closet off the study for his music room, a tiny, cramped space that doubles as storage for his bicycle and Christmas decorations. It's all about how loud the instruments are with the sax being much louder than the clarinet.

Her instrument occupied much of Anne's time this year. Weekly on-line master classes comprised of members from around the world encouraged nearly monthly video submittals which were played along with others' while the teacher in Vancouver provided tips for improvement. Stewart often backed her on piano or sax. She also started taking lessons in real life at a local music store and attended multiple clarinet festivals. In April she joined her online "Wind Sisters", May and Tish, IRL at the Utah Clarinet Festival in Logan. They rented a VRBO and played trios together, attended the festival and recorded "When I'm 64" for the online community's fall recital at the end of November.

Then in July, the International Clarinet Association held their annual ClarinetFest, this time in Fort Worth! Anne met up with Tish and May again as well as many of her other online classmates and teachers. Anne and Tish ate at Joe T's garden/restaurant, watched the Longhorn cattle drive at the Stockyards, and joined May and others walking to meals near Sundance Square between attending rehearsals, concerts, presentations and performances from 8am to 10pm with over 2000 clarinetists! Anne had fun meeting up with niece Emily's mother-in-law, Sharon, who teaches clarinet in Houston. They were able to grab an autograph from Richard Hawkins who performed the headliner concert the final night of the festival and Sharon later gave it to her friend, Susan Housen, who had been Richard's first band director in Houston. Small world.

Theater

Anne signed us up again this year for Broadway Dallas, which used to be called the Dallas Summer Musicals. These are held mostly at the Music Hall in Fair Park with a few at the Winspear Opera House, both in downtown Dallas. The musicals were Sunday afternoon matinee performances which suited us fine traffic-wise. This year some of our favorites were Back to the Future, The Life of Pi, The Wiz and The Outsiders. We also managed to hear Gerwin's Rhapsody In Blue, and a performance by Jazz at Lincoln Center with Wynton Marsalis at the Mort Meyerson Symphony Center in dowtown.

Twice this year we got to see our neighbor Dayton perform in productions of "Oklahoma" and "Our Town". It's wonderful to witness the excitement of these engaged young people as they navigate the plays' story lines.

Bicycle Vacations

Our bicycle vacation last year to Palm Springs with Trek Travel (TT) was so much fun that we signed up for two more in 2025.

In June Trek Travel offered a fantastic bike tour that kept us at the same location all week, this time at the Harmon Guest House in Healdsburg, CA, and routes on lightly traveled roads through miles of vineyards. We had beautiful weather, hikes through the Redwoods, gorgeous vineyards and cafes, and spectacular bicycling. It was great to again bike along Highway 1, the Russian River, and the Pacific Ocean.

Then in November was a Trek Travel Santa Barbara bicycle tour. Santa Barbara was quite different. An atmospheric river brought torrential rain to Santa Barbara, causing streets to flood and leading to dangerous conditions. More than four inches of rain fell on the county. We attempted to visit the wharf but had to have our Uber driver turn around as the streets were flooding. The next morning we discovered that water rescues had happened overnight in that same area. This event was part of a larger storm system that affected much of Southern California and resulted in flash flooding, strong winds, and other storm-related hazards.

Our hotel was way up on a hill, beautiful, with many scenic trails through the grounds. Our cottage was the farthest from the lobby, a 10 minute walk. Turns out it was always through heavy rain. Stewart got a bad cold and completely lost his voice and felt terrible. We were rained out Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, with more rain predicted for Thurday and Friday. We packed it in, changed our flights, and headed home on Monday. Sad. Even in such dire conditions Santa Barbara is beautiful. Trip Insurance is well worth it! We may try again in 2026.

Bicycling

The season started out a bit dicey. We did a local bike ride to Oak Point park in March and Stewart crashed on an uneven section of concrete. This resulted in serious road rash, hip pointer and knee injuries, and a concussion. He remembers nothing about the crash or the trip to the ER. Anne got a lift home with the bikes and met him later at the hospital. He was back on his bike after a few weeks and it seems the crash actually made his knee arthritis better! What's that about?

We biked a lot around Allen, TX, our home town, in 2025. And we headed out for some fun remote biking. "Bike the Bluebonnets" was in Ferris, TX (used to be called the "Lancaster Country Ride"). Good biking and incredible wildflowers.

The "Easter Bike Tour" is one of our favorites. On Thursday we drove to the Hill Country and visited with friends Todd & Kim (and their dog Lovey) near Austin prior to heading to Kerrville for rides on Friday and Saturday. We biked this year with friends John & Linda. This year the biking was super challenging with 50 mile per hour winds in an area that had just survived massive wildfires along Lower Crabapple Rd. It turns out that side winds that strong are way worse than head winds. We sagged in on the first day after encountering the wind at mile 20 and being unable to stay upright. We were able to bike on day 2 even with the threat of wind and rain. This ride is right along the Guadalupe River which had terrible flooding in July, with a tragic loss of life and property. In the photo of the bridge to the "zig zag" ramps up the hill to the library, the water had risen more than halfway up.

Later in the spring we rode the "Head for the Hills" bike rally in Cedar Hill, TX, "Tour d'Italia" in Italy, TX, and the grand-daddy of them all, the "Hotter N'Hell Hundred" in Wichita Falls, TX. We had trained up for the HHH and rode the 100 kilometer route (62 miles). It was breezy, clear, and hot at the end of August, living up to it's name and reputation.

We are avid fans of professional bike racing. This year we watched every stage of the three grand tours: The Giro d'Italia, Vuelta a Espana, and the Tour de France. Each of these are 3 weeks long taking up much of May, July, and September. At each rest day we met up with our bike racing buds Vicky, Dave, Joanne, and Jeff at the local NoSoo restaurant where our server Lee provided "generous pours" of wine during Happy Hour. We discussed the stages so far, the abandons, the winners, the crashes, and toasted everything we could think of so Lee could refill our glasses.

Miscellaneous

In December Anne had cataract surgery and now sports hi-tech multifocal toric lenses. After 50 years of hard lenses she has been converted from near-sighted with irregular astigmatism to near perfect vision. She still thinks before going to bed at night : "I better take these contacts out...", then laughs and shakes her head.

On Christmas Eve we went with our friend Maria to see Tuba Christmas at Thanksgiving Square in downtown Dallas. We have done this many times with Maria and her family. Today was memorable due to the extreme heat (it hit 80 degrees!) and because Anne and Maria got to dance with Santa Claus. That was some serious fun!

Later that same day we had some unexpected carolers drop by, Austen, Ellis, and Emmy. Stewart asked if they would mind if he played the piano while they sang... "Sure!".

Our kittens Marley, Cooper, and SeaBreeze are doing well. They love sitting in the windows and watching birds and squirrels. Cooper enjoys it when people come to visit, while Breezy runs upstairs and hides. Marley doesn't care. But they all three love to be picked up and carried around by neighbors Ivory, Austen, and Ellis.