Dear Family and Friends,

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! As you can tell by the timing of this letter, 2003 has been another busy year for our family. As most of you know, the big event was Patty's graduation from medical school. We were glad that so many of you could celebrate that with us. She has now made it through six months as an intern at San Jacinto Methodist Hospital in Baytown – a nice medium size hospital about 25 minutes from our house. She has been working very hard, long hours right up until Christmas and is really looking forward to the next two weeks of "independent study" (right after being on call for 24 hours today). Despite the hectic schedule, Patty has still found time to lead Megan's Girl Scout troop and other activities with the kids. Does anybody want to buy some Girl Scout cookies? Seriously, they are coming soon.

We took our family vacation early this year when Patty and the kids had spring break. We went to New York City for a week! It was a new experience for all of us and we enjoyed riding the subway around town seeing all the sites you see on TV and in the movies. We saw Broadway plays, ice skated at Rockefeller Center and had snowball fights in Central Park. It was a great family time and we had a ball!

Around the house, we added a new deck by the pool and enlarged our fenced yard around it this summer. Just recently, we rearranged rooms again to make a better spot for the projection TV and surround sound we got each other for Christmas. Other than that, there were plenty of repairs and maintenance to keep us busy.

Andy continued his musical endeavors, playing piano for fun and in his first paying gig, and by marching in the Clear Lake High School band on trombone. He's not too crazy about the band's new directors, but he enjoys his fellow band members and leads the band's uniform crew. Andy has also continued to design websites and upgrade his computer (it glows now). The website he designed for Dad's Houston Renewable Energy Group is at www.txses.org/hreg.

Megan and Allen also got their own computer this year (it glows too), so now we have enough gigabytes to store the Library of Congress. Allen has gotten pretty good at online shopping too.

Megan has done well in band on the clarinet, including performances at Allen's school and at the City of Seabrook Christmas tree lighting. Megan still loves to read and she and Andy are really into Lord of the Rings (books and movies). She also had fun horsin' around at Girl Scout camp this summer. She will graduate from Seabrook Intermediate at the end of this school year and move on to high school with Andy. Allen will replace her at the Intermediate school, which got a new solar array this year, thanks to Mike's help.

Mike will also be helping Allen and his fellow 5th graders build and race model solar cars in February. Allen continues to have more energy than the rest of us and he used some of that to play soccer again this fall. We'll see if the drum he got from Santa will inspire him to one day join brother and sister in the school band programs.

As you may have gathered by now, Mike's interest in renewable energy continues. Yes, we buy 100% wind power for our house and continue to heat our water with solar energy. However, since we have been so busy, Patty is still waiting for Mike to connect solar heaters to the swimming pool (it's on the Spring to do list though). Of course NASA had a very rough year with the Columbia tragedy. We did not know any of the crew personally and Mike was not greatly affected in his work since he was on a special assignment in the Environmental Office, but many of the fine men and women working around him were very involved, both professionally and emotionally. We look forward to NASA coming back stronger than ever with 2 rovers set to land on Mars in January and hopefully some solid new plans for human exploration coming soon.

We thank God every day for the blessings that he continues to pour on us, not the least of which is healthy families. We enjoy our Saturday family nights going to mass at Saint Bernadette's Catholic Church and then out to eat. Mike also goes to Sunday School at Clear Lake Baptist Church while Megan and Allen are doing home CCE and Andy is preparing for Confirmation.

We sincerely hope that you are feeling God's peace and love this holiday season and look forward to visiting with you as much as possible in 2004!

Love,
Mike, Patty, Andy, Megan and Allen Ewert