Family news

This year, our family has many occasions to gather together.

On New Year’s Day we celebrated my birthday and Keith’s graduation with a dinner at the Calcutta Grill.

Since January, Celia and Keith have both been studying at Regent College in Vancouver. It's nice to have them closer to home! They live in a basement apartment. Their landlords, a wonderful Christian family, have become their friends as well. Here they are with some friends at their apartment:


Celia and Keith both love to open their home to their friends, most of them fellow Regent students. They love the community at school.

Celia and Keith joined us at Whistler for a few days. While we were there, I presented Celia with her sweater, a graduation present. This was probably the most difficult knitting project I have ever done.

Celia still has lots of opportunities to play her cello and viola da gamba, at school and church. She attended a couple of music workshops over the summer.

Colin decided not to go through the official graduation exercises, so we put on our own! Celia and Keith were there to help us. Colin was staying one last night at the dorm and then riding his bike home. When we expected him home, we put on a very bad continuous recording of “Pomp and Circumstance”. Everyone dressed up in caps and gowns and funny hats and we had a mock ceremony. It was just the kind of celebration Colin could appreciate.

That evening we went to Outback steakhouse to celebrate with the grandparents.

Early in July, Colin left for six weeks in China.

The team spent the first week in Beijing sightseeing and doing extensive orientation, including a lot of study of Chinese history and culture. They spent four weeks in Ningxia autonomous region, where each team member was paired with a Chinese student.

Colin is pictured here with Allen, his Chinese counterpart. the group held classes on their respective cultures during the week and went on outings on the weekends.

The day after Colin left, he received a job offer from Boeing, which he accepted. So now Colin is working for Boeing in Everett, in structural design on the 747-8. For a while he carpooled with Dan; (it's hard to imagine Colin getting up at 5:20, but he did it!) In November he moved to an apartment in Edmonds; our thrifty son found almost all his furnishing free via Craig's list. He has signed up to host an international student at Edmonds Community College, and hopes to have someone in January. Ministry with international students is a growing passion of Colin's, coming out of his experience in China and with his conversation partner at the U, Jianlei, who has joined us for several holiday celebrations.

Here we are at Thanksgiving. Nice to have everyone together.