Recent Happenings

12-29-05

Hello!  Welllll...it has been quite some time since the latest post here.  Ciin? (why?)  That is a very long story, but the gist of it is that we have had a lot of problems with our phone line, and I finally just cancelled our dialup internet service because I was paying for something we couldn't ever use and nothing was going to change.  So I'm actually typing this update from my brother's place in Tacoma.

Our big news lately is that we are pregnant!  We found out in September, and the due date is May 4th.  Hooray!!  This is a real answer to prayer and a gift from God that we delight in on a daily basis.  And yesterday, Tammy and I learned that the baby inside her is a GIRL!  Holy smokes.  My family is all in a twitter because my siblings have a combined 11 boys and 1 girl (poor Hannah!), and everyone is excited to be able to buy "girl gifts" for a change.  J 

Tammy and I are soooo excited about this!  Yesterday at the ultrasound it was so cool to see the baby moving around and see her little face and hands, arms, legs, feet, tummy, everything. What an amazing "everyday" miracle this is!   To read our Christmas newsletter, with a couple of articles on this subject, click here.  This is a MS Word Doc of about 2.9 MB, so you dialup users may not want to wait for it.  If you want you can always email us and we can you a paper version  via postal service.

OK, so other than this joyful thing, what else is new?  Well, since the last post ...um...  Well, we went to New York City in May to attend the wedding of our friend Melissa, and we got to see James & Liz Severance in Princeton, and my godmother in eastern PA, as well as an entire week with Dan Nguyen-Tan in the city!  Dan was very patient with us as we grappled with the transition from Kasigluk to NYC.  Such as my pitiful failures at getting through subway turnstiles ("um...uh...guys...wait up guys...uh...a little help here!?!"), and our pathological attraction to Gray's Papaya (or was it Papaya King?).  Mmmm...hot dog and a smoothie for $1.50.  Well, ok, maybe not so "mmmmm".  But we did have quite an elevated culinary experience in NYC, as I personally ate my way through the city.  Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Italian, oh and Venezuelan (how could I forget the arepas?  We tried to talk the lady into opening a store in Alaska); you name it, we ate it.  Thanks Dan!

We also attended two other weddings this summer. The first one, in July, was the marriage of our dear friend, Stephanie Miller, to her love Hayami Yamamoto.  This was in Boise, and Tammy got to spend a whole week with her helping to prepare.  The two of us also got to see many Whitman friends:  Dan, Joel Ervice, Anne Thatcher, Trevor Neal, Stacie Nelson, and John & Jennifer (and Matthew!) Weston.  We had a blast river rafting/tubing two different rivers and spending time together.  The wedding was great, and it was cool to see how very much Hayami and our dear friend love each other.

The third wedding was between Miss Amy Jean Erisman and Samuel Girguis, and Tammy attended this Bellevue wedding in August as a bridesmaid.  She really enjoyed the privilege of standing with Amy on her wedding day, and the joy of getting to know Sam even more.  We are confident that the two of them will make a terrific team, and we look forward to seeing how God leads them in the future.

After 1.5 years of pre-reqs, I finished my first semester of graduate school (via distance-ed) at East Carolina U.  This means I have 2.5 years to go!  Believe it or not, I'm excited about this.  J  I really enjoyed my speech science course, learning about the brain, the lungs, the larynx, and a bunch of other anatomical/physiological stuff and how they help make speech or language happen.  Lots of memorizing, but pretty fascinating too.

We are now well into Tammy's 3rd year of teaching middle school at Kasigluk's Akiuk Memorial School (go Grizzlies!).  This year, one nice thing for her is that she working part-time (roughly 85% time), allowing her a little more sanity than in years past.  She is also getting steadily faster at lesson planning and the many parts of her job, which also frees up more time.  We figure she is down to an average work week of maybe 55-60 hours.  Might sound strange, but that is a big improvement!  We really enjoy our kids (or I guess they should be called "the students"), and I still manage to be around her room a lot during the day and after hours helping out.  I taught 2 hours of math during the first semester, but that will go down to 1 class a day starting next month.  Tammy got to teach Spanish as an elective in the first semester, and her students really enjoyed it.  They spent 1 day per week, all semester, making some tasty Mexican dishes and driving the rest of the school nuts with the yummy smell of their cooking.

Quyana for reading our latest news.  We've passed the winter solstice, so summer is coming (and with it, many changes...)! : )