Zac made it through his first year of college at Lewis pursing a degree in Computer Science with a minor in Computer Security. He was in a creepy play in the Winter which Aunt Judy reported was “really weird”. Zac spent the summer working for the Wartburg IT department doing odd jobs for them. It wasn’t especially challenging, but it allowed him to stay at home and earn some money. They have made it clear they would love for him to return. Zac left in early September to spend a semester abroad in Japan. Zac’s best friend from Lewis, Zeke, convinced Zac to come out with him for the semester. He enjoyed the many excursions around the country and the opportunity to make friends from around the world. He developed a preference for mixed drinks over beer, making use of the Japan’s slightly lower drinking age. He loved spending a day riding a bike all over the streets of Kyoto and relaxing at the end of the day in the local ‘onsen’. Zac appreciated the baths because there were no electronics inside, so you generally had to make conversation with the other bathers.
Kat is surviving high school. She was active in color guard last Winter, built the set for the play (and had a non-speaking part) and in the high school musical this year. She is taking an ambitious schedule with Physics, Chemistry and Biology in the same semester. Kat is really enjoying those classes, but no one else seems to believe her. Kat spent another year in Scouts and enjoyed the summer camp trip to Colorado but has also decided not to return in 2023 and just plans to do more individual camping trips. Kat did get to spend another two weeks in Massachusetts this summer visiting Jeri, which Kat enjoyed immensely. Every Sunday evening Kat, Zac, Jeri, and Nat would get together to play Stardew Valley (an online video game) as a group and chat. They were able to do this even when Zac was in Japan with a 15-hour time difference.
Mariah has been very busy with work and Wartburg. She was the chair of an ad hoc committee redesigning the college general education plan. It took last year and this year combined, but it was finally approved by the full faculty. Mariah was also elected to another term on Faculty Council, so she expects to be involved in the implementation of the new education plan as well. Mariah continues to stay busy with maintaining her COVID data and is one of the few sources of archival COVID data for the state of Iowa. She continues to look for new ways to redesign her classes and make them more humane to the students. She’s quite proud of her scientific literacy course based on the book “Calling Bullsh!t”.
Brian has been busy continuing his work on city council. He also joined the Board of Director for the Iowa Geocachers Organization and has been working hard maintaining their financial records as the treasurer. He also volunteered to help plan next year’s annual Hike and Seek event in Bremer County. He skipped RAGBRAI this year but did complete the TriByKnight sprint triathlon. While he didn’t manage to finish in under 90 minutes, he did improve over his previous time without hurting himself, which met two out of his three goals. At the end of August Brian and his brothers gathered in Southern California for the first annual Birgen Brothers Birthday Bash. We have decided to make an annual event of the four brothers gathering to celebrate one of our birthdays. This time we celebrated Bill’s birthday by hiking to the Hollywood sign.
At Kat’s request we adopted a second cat. He is named Zeus and has the same coloring as Storm, although their eyes are different colors. Zeus is energetic and friendly in contrast to Storm’s lazy orneriness. Neither of them interacts with Maggie yet, mostly because Maggie is not allowed in Kat’s room. So the cats live in one part of the house and the dog in the other part. Eventually they will need to come to terms with each other though.
We had an exciting Christmas vacation. With Zac returning from Japan, we made plans to fly out the next day on Christmas Eve to spend the week in Massachusetts visiting Jeri and Nat. Our trip became a little exciting when a blizzard arrived the same time as Zac’s international flight was scheduled. Mariah, Brian, and Kat drove out early to avoid the snow, only for Zac’s flight to be cancelled. He was rescheduled for the next morning, so we were able to retrieve him and still make our flight to Boston, although Zac had a very long day that started early in Japan and lasted until late in Massachusetts about 30 hours after he left. Jeri and Nat did a wonderful job of organizing the meal and we all had a fun time gathering as a family.
As our children age, we acknowledge that it gets harder to gather as family, so we treasure these moments when we experience them. The future continues to hold tremendous promise for us. May the new year bring you peace and happiness. May you find yourself surrounded by the people you love and the people who love you.