Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Greetings to all. Welcome to our genericized Christmas letter. We're hoping the end of 2008 finds you happy and healthy, if not wealthy. So, let's see what's happening in our Family. The real dilemma in this sort of letter is whether to relate the last year's events chronologically or by family member. We'll try a mixture.

Daughter is now a junior in high school. She's taking the standard college prep classes and continues to play the French horn in the school band and the orchestra. She's singing in the school Treble Ensemble and the youth choir at church, and also takes private singing lessons. She traveled to Boston with the Treble Ensemble last spring to do a little singing. We're starting to think about college a little but not too much. Daughter continues to like to draw, has discovered Facebook and is still fighting getting her driver's license. Go figure.

Son is a senior at Earlham College. After three years, he's decided that maybe he doesn't want to be an economist after all and has decided to double major in math and economics. I think he liked math better all along. He was thinking about graduate school but lately, he's been thinking about working for a while first. He continues to sing in the Concert Choir at Earlham. He also traded off his old girlfriend for a new one, so you can cut out the picture in last year's Christmas letter. This past summer, he worked for local property manager and in the process took over his dad's old Volvo S70, which he took back to college.

Wife continues to use the skill set she obtained in graduate school. She started the year sewing costumes for the church's youth choir spring musical. Then she helped do taxes for her sister-in-law's CPA firm. After April 15, it was back to sewing - this time it was costumes for a Professional Salsa Dance Troupe. Besides getting paid, she and hubby were given VIP treatment at the Salsa Dancing Extravaganza in Durham. In the meantime, she's on the PTA Board, has taken up knitting, vacation planning (see below), and is tutoring math to a Burmese high schooler whose family our church helped relocate from a refugee camp. She does all this and also tries to keep her husband in line. No small feat!

Husband is enjoying another bit of time off. In January we learned that there was a good chance that the small biotech (Serenex) where he worked, might be acquired. Sure enough, in April they were acquired by Pfizer. Pfizer took the intellectual property and dismissed the whole lot of them with some nice parting gifts. We used some of the funds to buy a new car to replace the one that Son took. That was a milestone in our lives since, for the first time in many years, our primary family car is not a minivan. Husband helped with the shutdown at Serenex and left work for good in September. He's enjoying the break but needs to go back to work before too long. He has a few nibbles in a pretty bad job market but nothing for sure yet. He continues to enjoy singing in the church choir and will soon finish his term as a church elder.

To celebrate losing his job, the impending recession and 25 years of marital bliss, husband and wife took off to Europe for two weeks. Wife planned the trip which included BudaPest in Hungary, Vienna, Melk, Salzburg and Zel-am-see in Austria and Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Germany. We had a great time and enjoyed a nice mix of history, art, architecture and nature. We also enjoyed our annual summer and Thanksgiving trips down to Sunset Beach.

Finally, as we close out another year, we thank God for Life, Health and the Joys of friends and family. We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Very Merry New Year.


Husband, Wife, Son and Daughter

Daughter in her Prom Dress


























Sunset at Thanksgiving
















Hiking near Zell Am See with strangers from Isreal



















Our Inn in Garmisch-Partenkirchen

















Some Links:

Ladies in Wife's outfits

Pfizer buys Serenex