Virtual Christmas Letter I - The Early Days (of 2006)

Welcome to the Lowe Family First Annual Dissertation! We wrote a very lengthy Christmas letter to enclose with our Christmas cards (that we are actually planning on sending!) But then it occurred to us that those to whom we send cards fall into three basic categories: 1) they could care less and certainly don't want to read a dissertation, 2) they were there for most of the events and don't need to read about them or 3) they care and want to know. If you fall into categories 1 or 2, skip to the Devil TV below. If you belong to category 3 HELLO! We are glad you are interested! Please read on and, most importantly, share your happenings with us via postings here or e-mail (if you don't want your gall bladder surgery all over the web. We are shameless when it comes to that). We decided to break this newsletter up into 3 parts - Jan - March; Summer and early Fall, and after Thanksgiving. There are 2 posts below this (below the Devil TV) about Thanksgiving with family and our temple sealing so we didn't include that here. So begins our virtual Christmas letter:

We share authorship of this letter to bring you up to date on the extraordinary events of the last year. Carolyn began the year with a conference trip to Portland, OR where she had an enjoyable day with Aunt Beth and reacquainted herself that evening with her lifelong college friends Cindy and Steve. In February, Carolyn was working with NASA on some curriculum for the Explorer Schools in Wash DC, when she awoke dizzy, her eyes out of focus and askew (seriously – it was very strange). Kevin left church when he received her phone call and drove straight through to pick her up. It was pretty scary, but all is well as it was diagnosed as a migraine issue; we spent the next few weeks leading up to Jennifer’s wedding in doctor’s offices determining exactly what had happened.

In March, right after we had returned to school following winter break, daughter Jennifer and son-in-law Robert were married in a beautiful ceremony here in Marquette. The whole family was able to be here and it was a wonderful time. The theme was "snow" and the weather cooperated with a blizzard earlier that week. The newlyweds set up house very near to us and last month they purchased land even closer, right down the street where they will begin building a home this spring. Robert is a master plumber who has one of best work ethics we have ever seen and is extremely kind and generous. Jennifer, now graduated, has several interests and is employed at the Home Builders Association. Below is our favorite picture of all five "kids" (although they are getting rather old to be called kids - what do you call them? We haven't figured that out yet. Do we say "here is a picture of our adults"? That doesn't sound right). From left to right are Chris, Curt, Jennifer, Andrew and Lisa. It was taken the morning after Jennifer and Robert's wedding.