2007

                                                                                             December 8, 2007


Dear Family & Friends,

The Year in Review

Urban Cowpersons

There’s a natural tendency in these Holiday letters to focus on the kids. Some letters don’t even include pictures of the adult members of the family. Since our kids are no longer kids, I thought this year I would start the letter with news about Suzanne. It was announced last month that Suzanne’s office is moving to Texas.

Here is a photograph of what we expect to look like after a year in Houston.

 Our current plan is to buy a condo or townhouse in Houston, but keep our house in Evanston. All of this is subject to change.


Artist in Residence

Christie is a senior at Evanston Township HS. Some days she retreats to the basement after school and works on her projects or homework for ten or twelve hours without a break. This is usually when the project is due on the next day. This spring she won an award for the oil painting shown here. A few weeks ago she made the mistake of bringing home a work in progress and I took a picture of that also. (I’m not planning on a career in photography.)

In addition to helping her with her art career, I am also teaching her to drive. So far we have driven around the block ten times, making all right turns. We will soon be ready to move on to the next step, which would involve left turns and maybe a traffic light.

Independence Day

In June, Stephen graduated from the University of Chicago with a B.S. in Chemistry. I think it has something to do with the theory of relativity that the time it took for him to go from Kindergarten to Freshmen Orientation was a heartbeat, and then the time it took for his graduation ceremony, where the U of C proudly announces the name of each and every one of the five thousand graduates, was an eternity. At least to Nicole.

Stephen is now working as a Lab Tech at Universal Oil Products in Des Plaines, Illinois. He also continues his work as an instructor for Princeton Review, helping students to prepare for the MCAT exam.

He is considering returning to graduate school someday.



Nicole’s Condo

Nicole is studying Fashion at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago. This summer we decided to buy a condo in Chicago and rent it to her and three of her friends. We timed our purchase so that we could buy at the very peak of the condo boom. I don’t have any pictures of the condo, but the last time she let me inside it reminded me of the DEKE house after Homecoming.

Some Things We Learned On Our Vacation to London

• Shrinking Dollar – This becomes a much less academic subject when you have to actually use dollars to buy things like a pint of lager ($20), or five tickets to the Bourne Ultimatum for $97. (We can’t do cultural things every night.)

• Check-In Times – We had a ton of Marriott Rewards points so we used them to reserve rooms at the Marriott in Regents Park. When they say check-in time is 2 PM, they mean it.

• Weather – All that talk about England being cold and wet, wasn’t some kind of hyperbole to keep tourists away.

• Stonehenge – It’s out in the middle of nowhere and it’s not as big as it looks.

My Work

While Suzanne continues to work eighty hours a week, I am not just sitting home doing nothing. I am sitting at home, but I’m busy. I keep Sammy company, and last year I attended two writers’ workshops, one in Iowa and another at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. I also competed in the Accenture Triathlon in August. This picture is actually from the Finger Lakes Triathlon which I ran in 2006, but I looked about the same in the Accenture, only more tired and a year older.

We hope you all have a great Holiday season.

Len, Suzanne, Stephen, Nicole & Christie

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