This year we managed to take quite a few nice trips. We started out having Christmas last year in southern California visiting family. We managed to visit such exotic locations as Redondo Beach, Disneyland and the WigWam hotel before taking a long train ride home to Iowa. Our train stopped in San Antonio on New Year’s Eve, so we managed to get out and see the fireworks shooting off over the Alamo.
In May, Mariah took a class of ten students to the British Isles as part of the Historical Roots of Math and Physics course. Brian had taken students to Germany twice in the past, and Mariah wanted to get in on the action. Mariah brought Jeri along as well, because we thought she was old enough to enjoy benefit from the trip without being a distraction. She was certainly less trouble than some of Mariah’s students, who had to learn the hard way that binge drinking before taking a ferry ride across the Irish Sea is a bad idea. While Jeri enjoyed Stonehenge and Westminster Abbey, what she really liked was Platform 9 ¾ at King’s Cross Station.
Before Mariah and Jeri had a chance to get over their jet lag, we were off again back to California for a wedding. Brian’s niece, Jessica Mackey was married on June 1st to Owen Baldrica. This was the first wedding among this generation, so it was a big deal for the Birgen clan. All of Brian’s siblings and all their children were together for the first time, since Carrie was born (that is to say, ever). As would be expected it was great fun to see everyone together. The cousins interacted well and no one got hurt on the dance floor.
We also made time in July for an extended family vacation out to Washington D.C. We spent three days driving out, three days in D.C., one in Williamsburg, VA and then three days driving back home. While we can’t say we saw everything in our nation’s capitol, we had a full and fun vacation. We visited the House of Representatives, the Senate, the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, the Air and Space Museum, the Library of Congress, plus a whole day of walking around visiting the monuments. We saw the outside of the White House, but opted not wait for a tour. Carrie was a trooper for walking all over the Capitol Mall for three straight days without completely losing her cool. We spent one day out at Jamestown and Williamsburg, but due to 100+ degree temperatures, we didn’t enjoy it as much as we could have.
Part of the summer was also reserved for summer camps. Jeri and Zac spent a week at EWALU, a Lutheran camp near Strawberry Point, Iowa, where Jeri has gone before with her classmates from St. Paul School. Zac and Brian went to Cub Scout Summer camp in early July not far from home. Zac was able to complete his Aquanaut swimming requirement, even though he takes after his father in swimming ability. In early August Jeri participated in the Hunger Games camp at Hartmann reserve in Waterloo, Iowa. While it sounds dangerous, this was a week long day camp where the participants learned outdoor survival techniques for the first few days. For the last two days the participants were sent loose in the woods to hide and fight each other. However, instead of fighting each other to the death, they played a competitive card game (a kind of environmental Pokemon) with cards they had earned the first three days. We are proud to report that Jeri was one of the two winners. Her winning strategy was that the other kids got tired of having to always run away, so when they quit, they gave Jeri their extra cards. Soon Jeri had one of the biggest decks, and since she never got tired of running away, she won by default.
Jeri graduated from St. Paul’s in May. She had completed most of her course work early, before she left with Mariah to the British Isles, although she was expected to keep a blog of her travels for her teacher and classmates to follow. Jeri got back to Iowa just in time to get braces on her lower teeth and attend her graduation ceremony the next day. Jeri also got braces on her upper teeth in January. The orthodontist predicted that that should only be on for a year and a half, so she is looking forward to next summer. Jeri started at the Middle School/Junior High in September. It was a transition from the small classroom with one teacher where Jeri had been with the same students for the last seven years, to a larger building where she has to move from room to room with different students, but she has managed well. Jeri needed to get used to a longer schedule, keeping her books in a locker, using the i-Pad which the school provided her and a host of other new things, but she has made new friends and is doing well – especially in math and science.
Zac is in fourth grade and doing well. All three of children are in Karate (Carrie started in October), but Zac is doing the best, having twice won 1st place in his age group for goshen. He also started playing soccer this Fall; his play improved dramatically over the course of the season. He started the season waiting for the ball to come to him, but by the end he had learned to go after the ball before someone else got to it. He is continuing with piano and guitar lessons and still enjoys them both. Like the rest of the family Zac is an avid reader and is considered to be a great student – especially in math.
Carrie finally was in town for her birthday, so that we could have a birthday party for her. In the past her birthday was interrupted by a flood, a family relocation to Iowa City, a family reunion trip to South Dakota, and so on, but this time we were in town and made a real celebration of it. Carrie started Kindergarten at St. Paul’s where her older siblings went and has the same teacher they had. Carrie was already reading when she started Kindergarten and is a little scary in how smart she is. She can get a little wound up and could benefit from not taking things so seriously.
Brian has been keeping busy with his geocaching. Every time the family took a family vacation, he would find identify some geocaches to find along the way. On the family trip out to Washington D.C. he planned one day in which we found geocaches in five different states (Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland and Virginia). In September, he participated in a competition called Hike and Seek, in which geocachers tried to find as many geocaches hidden in a wilderness area as possible in two hours; Brian won first place among the individual men. He has also been busy at work, being elected as the Vice Chair of the Iowa Section of the Math Association, which will require him helping to plan the annual meetings for the next few years.
Mariah has been busy traveling for work. She has managed to take trips to San Jose, Boston (twice), and Chicago this past year as part of her work with the Honor Students and her other work. She keeps Brian happy by finding geocaches every time she visits a new state, provided the weather is nice. She has been keeping busy planning her upcoming sabbatical. Mariah is also pleased to announce that we have a new niece; her brother Torrey welcomed a second daughter Amber into their home in June. Sadly, our trip to California preceded her birth, so we need to make another trip out to see her.
May peace be upon you and those you love. While the world is still shaken by violence, we pray that some day we may live in a world without fear. Remember to tell the people in your lives how much they mean to you. God bless our family our friends and all the world.