Anyway, my wife Pam and I got a somewhat late start on our family and I was in my mid-thirties when our son was born. I still had a little pep in my step, so I found it pretty easy to begin my vicarious journey. From an early age I encouraged my son Landin (Lan to me) to play sports. His initial indoctrination came on Sundays when he was just an infant. I’d put him in his little battery operated swing beside me in the den and turn on the Saints game (in retrospect I’m not sure that was such a good idea).

As he got older I made him try baseball, football, golf, tennis and soccer. He certainly had the talent but not the interest. He tolerated me until he was about 12 years old, then let me know flat out that he had no interest what-so-ever in sports, and wanted to concentrate on school. He never played another non-computer game. Instead, he studied, participated in academic competition, debate, youth legislature—stuff like that— and he excelled.

No matter what I tell him, I believe he thinks I’m disappointed in him on some level because he quit sports. He could not be more wrong, for at least four reasons. First, I love him no matter what. Second, he’s never been in trouble (or at least not caught). Third, I became addicted to all the free time I had to play golf and generally be lazy because, unlike the other parents, I wasn’t spending all my time at practice or driving to out-of town games. Fourth, he became a star student—as in Student Teacher Achievement Recognition (There are a total of 263 in Mississippi). He’s never made a B, scored 35 (twice) on his ACT and was recently named a National Merit Finalist. OK, I’m bragging, but remember I was trying to turn him into a mediocre shortstop.

Now the interesting part. When I turned 45 (Pam was 41) we got a surprise visit from the stork. It really put me in a funk because just as parenting was getting easy, I was back at the starting blocks. Patrick was born and from the start he was fascinated with balls. In fact, I think “ball” was his second or third word. Any ball he saw he had to have. So guess who, at an advanced age, ended up with a little ballplayer, and a good one at that. He’s obsessed with sports, and I have never once so much as suggested he try them. I’ve never coached a team. In fact, I’ve been guilty of trying selfishly to discourage him. It hasn’t worked, and just to teach me a lesson he’s also fanatical about hunting, which I gladly quit 25 years ago, (By the way, my brother used to say “not all hunters are rednecks but all rednecks hunt”.)

Why the Lord chose for these boys to come in the order they did is a mystery to me, but let me tell you a couple of things I’ve learned. From Lan I learned that you’ve got to loosen your grip on the club sometimes. Give a kid room to become who he was going to become anyway. The result might just be way better than you ever imagined—it was in my case.

With Patrick, I learned that some things in life are just out of your control—accept them and move on. For the most part I’ve stopped saying “if I were only 10 years younger.” Also, I learned that something that starts out as a burden can turn into one of life’s great blessings.

You may not be able to understand how these parenting jewels of wisdom make me a better money manager, but I do. And I hope some day my boys do to.

Barry C. Smith

National Guard Association

Annual Conference in Biloxi, MS

Danny Williams and Senator Lee Yancey, Business Development, had the distinct privilege to attend the National Guard Associations’ Annual Conference in Biloxi, MS. Colonel Roy Robinson, Executive Director of the Association, hosted a group of current and retired General Officers of the Mississippi National Guard to a reception and dinner at the Vibe Restaurant. Remarks were presented by the Adjutant General of Mississippi, Major General William L. Freeman, Jr. NGAMS is not a military organization, but an organization of military personnel. It is an organization that fosters and supports the role of the National Guard in Mississippi and the National Guard of the United States in providing for and assuring the military security of our Nation. NGAMS was formed in 1932 to further the National Guard in the State of Mississippi and to provide a strong, united voice in which the needs of guardsmen can be heard on the State level in legislative affairs.

It doesn’t happen often, but when Jack Frost
visits Woodridge Capital it’s quite majestic.

The George Tabor azaleas are a little more reliable.

As with most things, we have to take the good with the bad. We have all heard there are trade offs that need to be considered. In a recent client meeting, one of our clients told us that he wanted the good returns of the market when things were going well but wanted to avoid the market declines. I must say that we would like to provide nothing less, but it’s difficult, if not impossible, to have the best of both worlds.

Take a look at this.

If you believe in buying an investment and holding for the long term, then you most likely have participated in some of the above market declines. In our opinion, most investors are not willing to ride a market down to any of these levels.

A large number of mutual fund and portfolio managers’ investment objective is to stay close to market returns. This may be alright when the market does well, but if their strategy is tied to the market then significant declines will also be a part of the experience.

You may have focused on some irrelevant information regarding your investment decisions. One is “average annual return.” Follow this example. If we start with $100 investment, and it goes up 50%, then we have $150. Then the next year it goes down 50% to $75. If we average the up 50% and the down 50%, we have a 0% average annual return, BUT your investment is 25% less than what you started with.

I have pointed out a couple of important points. If you want what the market generates, be prepared to take some large declines in your portfolio value. As you can see from the chart, the recovery period can be rather lengthy.

One of the keys to avoiding a “lost decade” type experience is to have a solid plan for the management of your portfolio. I have spoken to a number of people who have told me their portfolio value is about the same today as it was 10 years ago.

There are many other factors that play a part in the success of your approach to investing. Think about how you may have felt in the fall of 2008 and the spring of 2009. Many investors experienced more pain in their portfolios than they could stand, so they pulled out of the market. This was just in time to miss a dramatic market rebound.

We don’t know what the future holds for the markets but do know that there will be markets a lot like the weather in our part of the world. Some will be like beautiful spring days while others will blow storm clouds our way.

Our investment strategy has taken into consideration many of the factors that I have discussed in this article, and I encourage you to take a proactive approach to these important decisions, rather than taking whatever the market does during the next decade.

Danny C. Williams

One thing that I have found fascinating about this project is that I have become a fan of the Boston Red Sox (of course the St. Louis Cardinals are still my favorite baseball team).The reason that I have become a Red Sox fan is that of the parallels between the work that we have had done and the owner of the Red Sox. His name is John Henry, and he not only owns the Red Sox but is also a trend follower in the capital markets. When Mr. Henry began managing client accounts, he did a similar study to the one that we have done (I have no idea what his rules are as he obviously keeps that information to himself) and after buying the Red Sox he implemented a similar methodology to the baseball team. The strategy has not only been successful in his money management business, which allowed him to buy the Red Sox, but also in baseball with Boston becoming one of Major League Baseballs most successful franchises.

Here is a quote from John Henry:
“People in both baseball and the financial markets operate with beliefs and biases. To the extent that you can eliminate both and replace them with data, you gain a clear advantage. Many people think they are smarter than others in the stock market, and that the market itself has no intrinsic intelligence as if it’s inert. Similarly, many people think they are smarter than others in baseball, and that the game on the field is simply what they think it is, filtered through their set of images and beliefs. But actual data from the market means more than individual perception/belief. And the same is true in baseball.”

This is an example of the type of thinking that Henry took to the Red Sox when he bought them and an example of this can be found in the 2003 American League Championship Series. In game 7 Pedro Martinez of the Sox was pitching in the 8th inning with a 3 run lead. Grady Little, the manager at the time left his ace pitcher in the game thinking that the percentage of innings that a pitcher gives up 3 or more runs in an inning is very small and his gut told him to stick with his ace. Had he been a numbers guy he would have made a different decision as the numbers show that after having thrown 105 pitches in any given start, opponents batting averages against him rise to .370. He ended up throwing 127 pitches in that game, and the Yankees won the pennant. Little was fired after game 7 and the Sox went on to win the World Series in 2004 for the first time since 1918.

Having some numbers guys do a tremendous amount of work for us has shown me which of our rules were very useful and which of them needed to be modified, as well as allowing us to put forth what we expect to be much improved portfolio management. After all, the value is in the data, not in perceptions or beliefs.

Clark Smith

• 3/10/2000, NASDAQ peaks at 5,134 before dot.com collapse
• 9/11/2001, World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks
• 2/1/2003, Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrates over Texas Crocks and Ugg boots for feet
• 12/26/2004, Indian Ocean Tsunami
• 8/29/2005, Hurricane Katrina makes landfall in MS and LA
• 2007, Mortgage crisis with appearance of sub-prime mortgages
• U.S. retains world’s largest economy at $14.2 trillion
• Michael Phelps, swimmer, wins 8 gold medals in Beijing Olympics

This makes me think about a couple of things. The first one is, who would have ever predicted these events? The 9- 11 tragedy stunned our nation and caused widespread damage and has come with a high price tag. Our nation’s economy continues to pay the price of this event today.

Early in the decade, many were riding the wave of the dot.com boom. It was an exciting time and many investors thought this period of rapidly rising stock prices would continue indefinitely. The reality is, if you look at the NASDAQ index you’ll find it’s still off the 2000 high by over 50%.

I listened to the State of the Union address recently, and heard how we need to change our health care system, reduce our national debt from the current $12 trillion, and expand credit for small businesses. These were just a few of the issues that will be addressed by our national political leaders.

Our global economy and the different interest groups around the world will offer many challenges for us in the decade to come. In addition, like in years past, there will be unfathomable events that totally surprise us, some good and some not so.

Changing times will require you and us to make adjustments along the way. Most of us don’t like change, but like Jack Welch, former Chairman of General Electric said, “Change before you have to.”

Let’s go back to the NASDAQ index performance since 2000. If you experienced any of that downward spiral, you may have made a few changes to your methodology. We definitely stood up and took notice, and started asking a lot of questions about why and how we make investment decisions. This has led us down a long road of what we think works and doesn’t work.

If we go back and take a look at some of the world events, and think about what is in store for us in the years to come, we need to have investment parameters that will help us adjust for these opportunities and challenges. The world is so interconnected and information flow so fast, it makes me wonder how anyone can understand or predict what impact events will have on the price of a stock or bond.

There may be money managers that get their analysis’ interpretations correct more times than not, but our experience tells us that market trends help us recognize changes that are occurring in the markets. Through the use of fundamental and technical tools, testing what enhances performance, implementing risk management and tying this together with our client’s expectations, we believe that our investment process will make the necessary changes to navigate the new decade’s opportunities.

Barry C. Smith

It’s amazing to me how quickly we forget. This can be both good and bad. Obviously, we can learn from history. Last week, I was reading about Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke. It may be a good thing for the U. S. economy that his memory was not short. While a professor at Princeton he was a leading scholar of the Great Depression of 1929. He used this extensive knowledge of this period to navigate our economic system away from a collapse.

As we enter into a new year and a new decade, we need to take note of recent occurrences in our economy, and dedicate ourselves to learning from these difficult experiences. During the Christmas holidays, my son and I were having a conversation about one of his friends that had a bad experience. Surprisingly, my son recognized that he would attempt to avoid that bad experience by not doing what his friend had done. Learning a lesson from another’s bad decisions is much preferred over learning it on your own, the old adage, learning from the school of hard knocks.

How you were feeling when the markets was getting tattered and torn on a regular basis, for days, and months on end? At times, did it feel like the sky was falling? No one really knew what the ultimate outcome was going to be. I have talked with investors recently about their bad experiences and am surprised at how the only change they have made has been to move out of the markets. By the way, most markets were up significantly during the final 3 quarters of this past year.

You know the phrase, the more things change, the more they stay the same? I am reminded about this when I listen to Kenny Chesney’s popular song, “Summer Time”. Most of us resist change, and feel threatened or frustrated when it happens. Although we are feeling better about the markets and have seen a nice recovery, things will change and our results will be the same unless we actively make course corrections.

In the recent past, I have heard more and more of the traditional money managers and professional associations touting tactical money management. Maybe some of the believers in the buy and hold camp are rethinking 50% plus account value declines. We hear talk about risk management.

What does that mean? Some seem to think that means being diversified. After 2008 and early 2009, I believe there may be less of those than before. Asset-class correlations, in the same markets, are generally very high. This means that if the market is going up, most of your account’s investments are going up as well, and vice versa. We have not seen this approach help during market declines.

So if moving out of the markets and asset class diversification have not proven successful, then what is one to do? Change something. Otherwise, once we get down the road a bit, and the memory of the past fades even more, you will go through difficult times again. The next time may be at a more critical time in your life, i.e. during retirement. You may have friends or acquaintances that had catastrophic results from the last market decline and resulted in them changing their future plans, i.e. retiring, traveling, legacies, etc.

Some money management strategies can and do have time tested rules built into the system that helps reduce a portfolio value decline, while providing acceptable returns. It seems that many investors chase past performance, and there are studies that prove the expected results are generally not achieved. As we enter into a new year, I challenge you to learn more about how to incorporate effective money management rules into your investment plan.

Danny C. Williams

“Everyone gets what they want from the markets.” Does this mean that if you say you want to double your money every year that you will be able to double your money every year? Of course not… Though this is the type of response that I typically get when I mention this statement to someone. Does this mean that if you say that you want to make a certain return every year and have no losses that you will be able to? Once again, no, it does not hold that meaning. The meaning I do believe that it holds is that you get to decide what you want and then have your money managed accordingly. To help me demonstrate, I am going to use two fictitious investors–Anne Teak and Brock Lee—and a hypothetical time frame.

Mr. Brock Lee has done a lot of research and understands modern portfolio theory very well (he thinks) and is determined that what he wants is to out perform the stock market. He has also been shown that the market performs at an average rate of about 10% over the long term, and he is fine with that; even a little bit excited by the prospects. After the first couple of years, Mr. Lee has had what he considers to be an ‘ok’ experience. His account grew by 22% the first year while the market was up 21.5%. But then in the second year he was only up 6% while the market was up 8%. He decides he will give his broker one more year to see if he will truly be able to out perform the market. In the 3rd year the unthinkable happens. The market drops by 52%, and his account drops by 47%. Now after 3 years his account is down over 31% from where he started, and even more important to him, it is down 47% from its highest value ever. He is furious and calls his broker who allowed this to happen to him. His broker looks at his account and looks at the market and tells him that over the time period his account is down just over 31% while the market is down slightly over 37% so he has out performed the market by just over 6%. This is certainly not something that Mr. Lee wants to hear. In his mind, he has lost 47% of what he once had. What Mr. Lee does not realize at this moment is that he has gotten exactly what he wanted; he has out performed the stock market.

Mrs. Anne Teak, on the other hand, does not care the least bit in the world about out performing the stock market. What she wants is a way to compound money over time regardless of what the stock market is doing. She has seen everything written about the market having average returns of around 10% over the long term, but she also believes that it is the compounding of money that is more important than average returns. She does not know what it is that she does not trust about the average returns of the stock market, but she knows that it is something. Mrs. Teak does a little studying on how to compound money and comes to the conclusion that she can either compound things at a very slow rate in bonds and CDs, or she can find another way, which is what she opts to do. After talking to enough people, she finds that most investment professionals use a buy, hold, and hope method of investing based primarily on work done in the 1950s that contains many assumptions that she believes to be invalid. She also finds some that employ what is called an absolute return strategy that is not tied to the performance of any market or benchmark. She knows that there will be up years and down years and that the experience should be smoother than just having her money tied to the performance of the stock market. After the first year, she looks at her statement, finds that she has made 9%, and is very happy. She pays no attention what so ever to the fact that she could have made over 20% in the stock market, because that is not what she has set out to do. The following year she looks at her statement again, and is again happy because she has made 22%. She is not overjoyed that she has made 22% while the market made only 8%. She simply does not care about the comparison. In the 3rd year, we all know from Mr.Brock’s experience what happened. Mrs. Teak and her absolute return strategy were not immune to these happenings and the value of Mrs. Teak’s account dropped by 15%. Mrs. Teak is not happy about this and of course does not care that the market has declined by 52% over the same time period. She does notice that she has made 13% in total over the 3 year time period and is happy about this because she has gotten what she wanted from the markets. She also feels badly for her friends who have out performed the markets and therefore gotten what they wanted.

I write about Anne Teak and Brock Lee because they are very typical investors. One is what is known as a relative return investor and the other is what is known as an absolute return investor. At Woodridge Capital we spend vast amounts of time (and money) refining and back testing both our relative and absolute return strategies. However, when asked to answer the question of which is better, I would say neither is. Both strategies can be appropriate in a well designed and executed investment strategy. The problem is that investors want the best of all worlds. When the market is in the tank they love absolute returns but as soon as things heat up they’re seduced by big relative returns. That’s human nature, but it’s more often than not a mistake that undoes the design of the investment plan. That’s why it’s critical to evaluate performance over various time frames and various markets.

If you have questions about either of our primary investment strategies, we encourage you to give us a call to discuss the exciting work that’s being done at Woodridge Capital.

Clark Smith

Two generations of Americans grew up under the constant threat of war with the Soviet Union. Anyone old enough to remember President Reagan’s demand, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall”, and its eventual destruction two years later, also remembers the decades of tension that existed, sometimes just below the surface, between the United States and what was then, the other super power.

In the 1984 film, Red Dawn, the story is told of a band of brothers defending themselves and their town against a communist invasion. It is a David and Goliath tale that captured the imagination of many a teen age boy.

You may remember that Patrick Swayze and company successfully disrupted the efforts of their attackers – but not without real personal loss and sacrifice. But even at that late stage in the Cold War, our victory was no foregone conclusion. We have a tendency to look back at situations through the lens of positive outcomes. Courageous leadership, effective diplomacy and military and economic strength all contributed to our eventual Cold War victory. The people involved made the difference.

Many of the details of how this war was won are unknown to us today. We simply can’t know all the critical real time decisions that our leaders made between the conclusion of World War II and 1991. In this epic battle between good and evil, our leaders were tasked with winning a war without firing a shot. How is this done? Here is the story of one contribution to our victory.

In the mid 1980’s a group of Christian pastors from around the world made a visit to the former Soviet Union. During the course of their two week “information gathering” trip, the group had the unexpected opportunity to meet with Premier Mikhail Gorbachev. In preparation for what was scheduled to be a fifteen minute meeting with the Russian leader, one of the dozen pastors learned that Gorbachev’s mother was a converted Christian. The group, that included the pastor of what became the largest Christian church in the world (in South Korea), determined that, if God gave them the opportunity, they were going to pray with and for Mr. Gorbachev. At the appointed time, the preacher from South Korea said bluntly, “So, Mr. President, I understand your mother prays for your Christian conversion daily”. At this, the Premier’s face became very red and the Kremlin was absolutely silent.

After a moment, Gorbachev softens and admits that his mother had become a Christian when he was a young boy, and then changed his name to Mikhail, after the angel, at the time of her conversion. Several hours into their meeting, Dr. Maxie Dunnam, a member of the group, prayed, asking God’s divine hand and blessing upon Gorbachev, the Soviet people and the leaders of our great nation. The meeting ended with hand shaking and the sincere sense of fellowship.

Dr. Dunnam and his wife, Jerry, told this story to my wife and me a few weeks ago. He was reminded of his meeting and prayer with the 2nd most powerful man in the world, while reading an article about Mr. Gorbachev’s recent salvation experience.

Roger C. Davis

I recently spoke with a prospective client about managing their investments. Just a short time ago, this individual and many others were in a state of panic about the market meltdown and more specifically about how their account value had declined dramatically.

It’s amazing to me how short our memories are sometimes. Now, we are seeing the market being up significantly from the lows earlier in the year. This very well may continue to be the case, but somewhere along the way, we will have to deal with more market volatility, and a declining market.

If you are feeling good now, you may ask yourself these questions:

• Is it because the market has recovered and your account value is looking better than it did in March 2009?
• Do you think the improvement is because of something your advisor has changed related to the management of your account?
• Would you be ok going through another painful market cycle like the one we have recently been through?
• Can you anticipate when being down significantly in your account could hurt you even more than it has
• recently, i.e. when you are retiring or in retirement?
• What risk management techniques do you have in place that you didn’t before?
• Why should you expect different results during the next market down turn if your account continues to be managed the same as before?
• Do you think now, while the market is up, is a better time to see if there is a different way to proceed; one that can reduce your down side experience when we go through that difficult market in the future?

These are just a few questions that come to mind when I think about what has happened in the most recent market cycles. I have seen, and maybe you have experienced, panic and uncertainty about what to do.  Some of you may have sold at the absolute worst time. And some that sold at the bottom or near it, are still wondering when to get back in.

We feel that there needs to be a disciplined set of rules that guide investment decisions. There is no one right strategy, but one of the keys is to take as much of the emotions out of the process as possible. Another important element is to know when to be in the market and what is the “state” of the market that is being utilized. One thing that many investors overlook is that there are multiple markets that need to be reviewed.

I’m going to encourage you to talk to your current advisor and ask how they plan on doing things differently next time we go through a difficult market. It’s not a matter of if, but when. Ask them specifically how and when do they decide to sell an investment, and how they determine when to either exit the markets or how they determine a favorable market that works with their strategy. After you discuss this with your current advisor, then talk to another advisor, preferably us, and get a second opinion. We know health related matters are often worthy of second opinions, and we believe your financial well-being is of utmost importance.

Danny Williams

Today I am sitting in my office watching it rain again. It seems like it has been raining every day this fall, which is normally the driest time of the year. Oh well, not this year though. My prayers are certainly with the farmers during what I know has got to be an awful time for them. I can only imagine what it is like to have crops in the field and not be able to get them out due to the excessive rain.

Is it just me or does it feel like everything has been excessive in the last decade or so? We have had an excessive bull market followed by an excessive bear market; not just in stocks but in real estate too. Look what has happened to energy prices in the past few years. It does not seem that long ago that it cost me over $90 to fill up with gasoline.

Today, we are in one of those very rare time periods in our nation’s history in which bonds have actually out performed stocks over the past 20 years. Yes, that is right. Bonds have actually out performed stocks over the past 20 years, and this is something that, until now, had only occurred twice since 1920. The thing that is of note to me is just how massive stocks out performed bonds over the subsequent 5 years the two previous times that this happened. Now I certainly do not know if this will be the case this time, but I do know that retail level investors continue to pile cash into fixed income and that every study that I have ever seen points to the retail level investor as being the best example of doing the absolute wrong thing at the wrong time.

Although flows into equity funds have picked up recently, money is still flowing into bond funds at a rate that is 5 times greater than the flow into stock funds. This is not only interesting but also scary when we consider that the U.S. currently has over $11.7 trillion dollars of debt outstanding and no clear way of paying it back and that we have recently implemented economic policies that are clearly inflationary.

Recently I read a quote that goes something like this:  “Maybe no harm will come to the income seekers, but I have seen more money lost chasing yield than has been lost at the point of a gun.” After 20 years of the bond market out performing the stock market I certainly do not believe that there can be a happy ending for bond buyers. I believe that our nation will eventually inflate away our debt and that will crush bond holders.

On another topic, since this is our last news letter of the year, I believe that I would be remiss if I did not include a market update. The stock market as measured by the S&P 500 is currently in a positive trend with low volatility. The current bottom of the market was put in place on March 6 at a level of 671. This low followed the high put in place on October 11, 2007 of 1575.2. Currently the S&P 500 is at a level of 1074.4.

Therefore, we are still 500.8 points from the 2007 highs. In other words the market has another 46.61% to rise to get back to the 2007 highs.

The current trend (call me if you would like to discuss our trend measuring tools) of positively trending and non volatile was put in place in July of this year about 4 months after the bottom was put in place. Of course, we would have all liked to have gotten back into the market at the bottom but there is too much risk in attempting to do so. The only way that we know of to be in at the bottom is also to ride the market down all of the way, and we know that nobody wants that. We are in sync with the market’s current trend and will stay so until the trend changes at which time we will change with it.

The current state of the bond market is a non trending environment. Major currencies (Euro and Yen) are in positive trends that are non-volatile while the Pound is non trending and non volatile.

I would also like to share some information about things that we are currently working on for introduction in January 2010. We are in the testing stages of some new portfolios that are designed to take advantage of the following market states:

• Positive trend with low volatility.
• Positive tend with high volatility.
• Negative trend with low volatility.
• Negative trend with high volatility.
• Non trending with low volatility.
• Non trending with high volatility.

To help with some of the technical issues we are collaborating with some mathematicians, PhDs, engineers, and code writers to create portfolios that offer the potential for exceptional returns during all parts of the business cycle with low levels of risk.

Please have a safe and happy end of 2009, and I look forward to what I believe could very possibly be a very nice multi year run in stocks.

Clark Smith

Summer Diversions What do you think of when you think of Kansas? Let’s see… maybe Dorothy or Toto… the Wizard of Oz? Well, those things come to mind, but the last thing I thought about was hills. Flat, rolling plains was what I was thinking we would find, but didn’t. This is the perspective of a cyclist when one travels. Anyway, on to more important matters like where do you eat? In Lawrence, Kansas, home of the Kansas Jayhawks, 2008 NCAA Basketball Champs, we discovered a couple of excellent places to eat. A great breakfast café is WheatFields Bakery Café. They had all the good stuff you would expect, and the omelet of the day was spinach, tomatoes and feta cheese. It was prepared differently from any I have had in the past and was excellent! They served this with some of their fresh homemade bread and all the sides. We visited this place twice in three days.

While in Lawrence, we had dinner at one of their renovated downtown hotels, The Eldridge, located on “the most historic corner in Kansas.” It was originally built in 1855 and was called the Free State Hotel. For you history buffs, you may enjoy reading more at your leisure. Their restaurant, “Ten,” was really outstanding. Of course, the Kansas City strip was a must, and it was delicious.

In late June, we always attend the Mississippi CPA Convention in sunny Sandestin. It was another excellent meeting. The problem with this event is that there is just too little time, and there are too many great places to eat. Our conference was at the Baytown Village Conference Center, Sandestin Resort, which has its own great restaurants and shops to explore. One place we ate in the Village was Acme Oyster House, of the same famous New Orleans restaurant. If you like oysters and poboys and a casual atmosphere, this is one of the best. The next evening we took a short drive down to the Grand Boulevard shopping area. It’s about a mile or less just east of Sandestin Resort. It has lots of neat shops and restaurants to try. We dined at Mitchell’s Fish Market, which we had tried last year. The fish is very fresh, and you may have it prepared any way you desire. I had grilled scallops, with steamed vegetables and mashed potatoes. My wife and a friend had grilled halibut and grilled grouper. Everyone reported freshness and good taste. Another evening, in the same area we tried Cantina Laredo. One of their specialties is the guacamole that is made fresh tableside. It was bowl scraping good.

I hope you have an opportunity to try some of these places in the near future and enjoy them as much as we did. Happy and safe travels this summer.

Danny Williams