We’ve already begun receiving holiday greetings from friends. This year we’d like to join the majority of you who send out a greeting before the New Year begins.

Currently Elizabeth and I are living in our three-room guest house. We moved in October right after the last child left. Moving into the guest house was a “move up” in several ways. Its location on the crest of the ridge means we enjoy the bright morning sun flooding our kitchen as we eat breakfast together. Because it is small and tight, we are warmer with just one woodstove in operation than we were in our previous home with two stoves, and of course, we are consuming our woodpile more slowly.

In addition to her work at Washington County Free Library, beginning in January, Elizabeth will be participating in an effort to catalog the Doleman collection. This collection of African-American memorabilia was recently donated to the City of Hagerstown. Elizabeth was recruited to digitally photograph and individually describe each of the thousands of artifacts included in the collection. She brings books and DVDs to Papa several times a week. She recently organized family and friends to feed 70 people at the Reach cold weather shelter in Hagerstown for the Saturday evening after Thanksgiving.

Evan and Jenny moved from Missoula, Montana to Olney, Maryland last June so that Jenny could begin a graduate program at the University of Maryland. She will complete a master’s degree in education and will receive her credentials to teach English at the secondary level in time to begin teaching next fall. She is doing student teaching at the River Hill High School in Clarksville and taking night classes in College Park.

Evan is working 4 days a week as a concierge for the Independent Living community on the Brooke Grove Retirement Village campus. On day five he writes for the corporate marketing department and is reworking the information to be presented on Brooke Grove Foundation’s website.

Ansley is a volunteer nurse at Bere’ Adventist Hospital in Chad. She lives with a laboratory technician, his wife, and their five (soon to be six) children. She has planted a garden and purchased a horse. Thanks to Sarah Appel, the director’s wife, she is learning to ride and care for it. She emails posts for her blog via a satellite phone to Alban who puts them up on the web. You can learn more about her life in Chad at www.howeareyou.blogspot.com.

Alban is a math major at Walla Walla University. He is living in an apartment with his friend, Phil, and calls Elizabeth frequently for recipes. He worked on the Obama campaign in Oregon last fall and is flying back in January to attend the inauguration. Last summer, Alban traveled from Bangkok to Frankfurt largely on trains. You can learn a bit more about that trip at www.albaninasia.blogspot.com .

Ted is thankful to be related to the rest of his family and to have so many loyal and interesting friends. He is enjoying good health, more time with Elizabeth, and daily morning walks with his father. He is working with an architect to create a plan to renovate the main house, and is trying to get up the nerve to begin the actual project early next spring.


Love,

Ted and Elizabeth