Jeri completed her first year of college at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. She is still on track for her Chemistry major and is planning on getting a minor in Physics as well. Jeri is also now working at the library on campus, continuing her streak of library jobs. She came home for what we expect will be her last summer at home in Iowa. She worked at Wal-Mart this summer, but we expect her to get a better job next summer when she stays in Massachusetts. She has already found her future apartment in Worcester and put a deposit down. Jeri is still competing with the ballroom dance club and has found her people among the LGBTQ+ community. We are pleased that Jeri has found a good fit at Clark.
Zac has been taking charge of his own life. He has started meeting with a regular group of friends to play Dungeons and Dragons. Zac had a real summer job this year working at the Four Queens Dairy, where he could be seen making malts and floats all evening until they closed for the winter. Zac was in the play “Charlotte’s Web” in the spring, but opted to work on the sound crew for the fall musical. Zac had a great year on cross country improving his time on the 5K by over four minutes. He worked his way up from junior varsity to the first alternate on the varsity team for state. Zac also saved up his money from scooping ice cream to buy a high quality virtual reality headset. Zac is becoming more computer savvy all the time and is starting to look at colleges with strong cyber security programs.
Kat (the daughter formerly known as Carrie) has made a good transition to middle school. She finished her last grade at St. Paul’s in May, which brought an end to fourteen consecutive years of Birgen children walking to school with their parents. She ran cross-country for the first, and possibly last time, although she has expressed an interest in running track in the spring. She feels she’s more of a sprinter than a long distance runner. Kat has formed her own D&D group of friends. She had a great time at Mock Trial because she really enjoys arguing and being overly dramatic.
Mariah finished her service on Faculty Council, earning her tremendous respect from her colleagues and the personal realization that she is really good at faculty leadership. Many colleagues have warned her that if there is a sudden vacancy in the Dean’s position she may be recruited to fill in temporarily. Mariah continues to be active with the Girl Scouts, managing the cookie sales for the county. It turns out the cookies are the easy part, it’s all the rewards the girl scouts earn for selling cookies that require organization skills. We have also started fostering kittens in our house. When the animal shelter gets full they don’t have good places to keep kittens to keep them from getting sick, so they need families to take in kittens for a few weeks until they are old enough to be adopted. We have had a few litters of kittens in our home over the past year. A few have come to tragic ends, when they got sick, but most have gone on to happy forever homes. We adopted one ourselves, and named her Storm. Mariah is happily looking forward to her sabbatical which starts in January. She has many projects planned including reworking the remedial math courses, learning about Biostatistics and getting our Calculus textbook published. She is also looking forward to a little travel to improve her May Term travel course to the British Isles.
Brian continues to serve on City Council. This city council has set records for productivity and number of resolutions passed. A new bridge was built on the south side of town which was quite an addition to town. There was an election in November after which there will be many new faces on the council, which will be a transition period in the new year, but interesting as well. This year Brian taught his May Term travel course to Germany. Zac was able to attend, which was great fun. Zac travels well and is very responsible and dependable, more than many of the students. He had a chance to taste the beer at the Hofbräuhaus, but found it to be bitter (like his father). A few days before turning 50 Brian had an unexpected surgery to remove an infected cyst in his neck. It looked very bad, but went well and Brian was still able to do his 50 mile bicycle ride to celebrate his 50th birthday.
Brian’s mother passed away on October 10th. Brian was able to travel out to see her when we belatedly celebrated her 90th birthday in February and again when we celebrated his parents’ 65th wedding anniversary in August. All five of us were able to attend her funeral at the beginning of November in Las Vegas. Donna had a better life than any of us deserve. She lived to see her seven children produce fourteen grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, but she will be missed.
We also celebrated another wedding. Brian’s oldest nephew, Jake, married an Olympic swimmer named Chloe in September. They are a great match and we look forward to seeing them grow happy together. Somehow Mariah managed to hyper-extend her toe in the middle of the night so instead of hiking around Denver on the day after the wedding we experienced the Colorado health care system. Brian also took the opportunity to exchange beer steins with his brother Bob, in what has become a recent tradition.
Change comes for us all. We can embrace it or we can be left behind. We don’t know what the future holds, but we look forward to spending it with the people we love. We wish all of our family and friends the very best of holiday seasons. May you find yourself safely surrounded by those you love. May the coming year have only pleasant surprises waiting for you.