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Dear Family and Friends,
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Our weather this Christmas was totally different than last year � warm and sunny compared to last year�s snow.
A Texas Christmas: The view from Andy's dorm room
Our family�s big transition this year was Andy graduating from high school and going off to college at the University of Texas at Austin, so we�ll start there. Andy finished up Clear Lake High School and graduated with honors in May. After enjoying the summer, he headed to UT in August, where he got a National Merit Scholarship and is studying linguistics. He is living at the edge of campus, way up on the eleventh floor of a private dorm. Check out the view past his Christmas tree. He tried out and made the Longhorn Band on mellophone. Band has been great for him! We drove to Austin and enjoyed several football games to watch him march this fall. And, because of UT�s successful football season (GO HORNS!), Andy gets to go to California next week and march at the Rose Bowl Parade (Jan. 2) and Rose Bowl Game (Jan. 4). We are looking forward to catching those on TV, but probably not as much as he is to being there.
Megan and Andy before a UT football game
Patty has moved into her third and final year of residency (26 more weeks!) at San Jacinto Methodist Hospital in Baytown, where she is also serving as a representative on the Residency Education Board. She just recently acquired her Texas medical license and is looking for moonlighting jobs to pay back Santa for all the nice musical instruments and computer equipment he bought for the kids this year. She was lucky to arrange a one month Space Medicine elective at NASA, where she participated in important activities such as Mission Control, meetings with International partners, and daily lunches with Mike. She is still very busy with girl scouts, and band parent activities.
Megan's Girl Scout bridging ceremony
Mike is still at NASA. There have been a lot of changes there with the main focus now being on building a Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV), which will replace the Space Shuttle and serve like the Apollo capsule for going back to the moon. Mike�s job is pretty much the same as before but it is interesting and he enjoys it. He is still playing with his solar gadgets in and out of work, and enjoyed a trip to Orlando for the World Solar Congress in August. He is also working with Andy to build a roof on our deck.
Mike with his solar refrigerator
Since Allen turned 13 years old this year, we are now officially the parents of three teenagers. Allen is in 7th grade at Seabrook Intermediate School. He plays bassoon, and earned a spot in the top band at his school. He got a hamster this year and has been building him a house (picture below). No telling what else he will do with all the tools he got for Christmas. He enjoys computer games and movies, including attending the midnight opening of Harry Potter with Megan, where he ate a Bertie Bott�s rotten egg bean without making a face (you Harry Potter fans know how impressive this is!)
Allen hard at work on a veritable hamster mansion
Megan turned Sweet 16 (well, she was always sweet) and is a sophomore at Clear Lake High. She has lots of friends from band (playing clarinet) and Girl Scouts and is having a great year. This year Megan earned the Silver Award, which is the highest honor a Cadette Girl Scout can achieve. She also bridged to Senior scouting (seems like only yesterday she was a Brownie). She gave up dancing this year because her other activities were very time consuming. She is a huge Star Wars & Harry Potter fan, and highlights of her year included traveling to Indianapolis for a Star Wars convention (in full Jedi attire) with Patty & Andy.
One big event this year, along with all of you who live nearby, was the hurricane Rita evacuation. Our story is a 21 hour car trip to Fort Worth, most of it spent on the freeways of north Houston. But, we made the best of it by staying with Patty�s sister Nancy and visiting with nearby evacuees like Mike�s parents and Patty�s brother. We celebrated Megan�s birthday with a relocated birthday dinner on September 24th, the day Rita hit, or should I say, missed our home. It was lucky for us that the storm veered east and we escaped any real damage. We did return home to a house without power, though, which led to some seriously overdue refrigerator cleaning.
The family on Galveston beach
We are very thankful to have enjoyed such a relatively peaceful year here in Clear Lake. We are thankful for our family and friends, and we thank God for the peace that Jesus brought to humanity at Christmas. We hope that you and your family have a very Merry Christmas and a great New Year!
Love,
Patty, Mike, Andy, Megan and Allen Ewert
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