Christmas 2008 Update

Hi Everyone and Happy Holidays!

We decided to save some trees this year and do a web update instead! We probably will continue to do them on here, so don't get offended if you don't get a card in the mail. :D

We both have finished a very busy and productive fall semester. Adam is finishing his Masters in Computer Science at MSU. He is in the process of applying to be dually enrolled so he can take classes toward his PhD while he is finishing his Masters thesis. He is working with digital evolution in Avida. This summer he applied to work for Debian on Deb Graph as a part of Google's Summer of Code. He was accepted and had a blast working for Debian. Since Deb Graph is an open source project, he is still contributing to it for fun. He also made a trip in July to Ottowa to attend the Linux Symposium and saw Mark Shuttleworth speak about his creation of the open source, linux-based Ubuntu Distribution.

Jenny just finished her selection semester for the athletic training education program at CMU. She spent six weeks working with Central's football team and six weeks with their women's basketball program learning and being evaluated by her certified athletic trainers (ATCs) and student mentors to see if they should recommend her to the program faculty. It was her busiest semester at Central so far and she should hear in the next week or so if she was accepted into the program. For those of you who don't know, the athletic training program at CMU was the first established bachelors program in 1973, is a leading program and is very hard to get into. They only accept a maximum of 14 people each semester. Also this past summer Jenny finished her associate degree in General Business from Ferris State University. She took 12 credits in six weeks and made the Dean's list for the summer semester. Having slightly missed the Dean's list every other semester, she was thrilled to finally make the list. She received her degree in August but walked in Ferris' May Commencement. Her next goal is to make the President's List at CMU. In addition to her summer class work, she also was a part of Stage M's summer production of Beauty and the Beast. She was the Milk Maid, a Fork and a frightened villager who faints in the mob scene.

Despite our busy schedules, we still manage to find time on the weekends to see each other. This summer Jenny won tickets to Rothbury Festival and we went to see Dave Matthews Band perform. Jenny had been trying get tickets to see Dave Matthews Band for a long time to surprise Adam with. When she got the call she had won, she was so very excited, and had to tell Adam right away, mostly because he was with her when she got the phone call. We went and had a great time and look forward to other concerts we plan to go to in the future. We also adopted a cat for a few weeks and called her Zorra. She had two kittens while she stayed with us who we named Snickers and Butterscotch. We eventually figured out that she belonged to the neighbors across from Adam's house then she and the kittens went home. They were so cute!

We hope you all have a safe and happy holiday season. See you soon!

Love,

Jenny and Adam