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Winter
began with a fun trip to
New York City in January.
Scholastic
invited Linda to serve on a teacher panel and Evan joined her
for the exciting but occasionally "cold" adventure. We
even got to visit
Ellis Island where Evan's Grandpa and Grandma Erickson first
arrived from Sweden back in 1911.
Linda took another trip in
February, this time to Chicago to see Amy perform in
Wheaton's
presentation of the Messiah. While visiting Chicago it's
always fun to stay at Chris and Kara's apartment, even though
most of their time is spent studying because they are in their
third and fourth years of med school.
Spring
began with Evan's exciting
purchase (after saving for a long time!) of a custom made bass
guitar from the
Carvin factory just a few miles from our home. He's
been enjoying the chance to get back to the bass-ics.
 The
end of April brought Jessica's graduation from
Pepperdine
with her B.A. in sociology. We all enjoyed the beautiful
and thought-provoking commencement exercises overlooking the
Pacific Ocean. Josh was a proud husband. After a short break,
Jess was back at Pepperdine
in their MBA program, while still working full-time at
Starbucks.
Josh stays busy Fall, Winter, and Spring teaching
Junior High at his school and playing music for their
church.
Amy's big spring
adventure was having
surgery
on her knee two days after returning home from college in May.
(Of course two days was long enough to get some amazing bruises
while surfing in La Jolla!) She spent most of her summer
recovering...from the surgery, not the surfing.
 Summer
began with more travel, this time to Portland for two
conferences. We enjoyed walking all over the city and especially
loved the paths along
the river that was right outside our
hotel.
In July we headed
to Scholastic in New York again. Amy had just had her cast
removed, so she joined us and kept up quite well with all the
walking. New York is one of her favorite cities and she
lined up a lot of different
music and art explorations
for us all over the city.
 August
found us flying to Chicago again to help Amy get all set up in
the dorm for her second year at
Wheaton's Conservatory of Music.
One special
highlight of our summer was our 30th Anniversary which we
celebrated with dinner and a play at one of our favorite
theatres,
The Lamb's Players on
Coronado Island.
As
we were settling back into our routines at
Pomerado
Christian Church and the
Poway Unified
School District this
Fall we were very saddened
by the sudden passing of Linda's older brother, Jim Beeding. He
was just diagnosed with kidney cancer in August. The extended
family all pulled together to help each other through this
challenging time. We looked over lots of photos and spent
many special hours sharing treasured memories and stories together.
At Thanksgiving we were excited when the Bramletts, and
our local "adopted" grandma, Goldie were able to come to our
house and share in the all the food, fun and wonderful
blessings.
Another special fall blessing was attending the wedding of Rick
and Jennifer. Rick grew up with our kids and many of you met him
when he traveled with us on various vacations and family
adventures during those years. Everyone at the wedding gave them
a very "bubbly" send-off.
Mixed in with all the fun times this fall were
several times of great loss as we
found ourselves saying "goodbye for now" to some dear
neighbors and friends. At times the grief seemed overwhelming.
Saying "good bye" to Todd Kennemer, the son of our worship
pastor and his wife, who died in November was especially
difficult for our whole family, our church family, and many of
our school district teachers and friends. These hard times truly
serve to remind us of what is most important in life and why we
must treasure each day as a precious gift and live it with joy
and gratefulness to God.
How thankful we are that as winter
comes around again, Christmas arrives to remind us of the hope
and joy that was born into human hearts over 2000 years ago, a
hope and joy that can be born in our hearts anew today.
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