Christmas 2025
Somehow this year went by incredibly quickly and incredibly slowly. Family life has been great, and everyone is doing well. My work was a little more challenging, with many uncertainties in the funding landscape, but so far everything has worked out positively.
Going from youngest to oldest, Dorothy started high school this year. She’s tall and elegant, well spoken, mature, and intelligent - in short, she’s the most 24-year-old 14-year-old I’ve ever known. She’s already on the heartbreak tour, leaving a stream of frustrated and disappointed boys in her wake. It’s nice to have options, you know? She’s progressing steadily on the cello and even made first chair in the school’s symphony orchestra. She is also on the marching band’s color guard line and does very well. So far, there have been no serious attempts on the colors, as she is able to simultaneously intimidate and bedazzle would-be attackers.
Leon is a senior this year. He’s still doing all the activities and hobbies - tutoring refugee kids, donating blood and platelets, scout outings, playing trumpet in as many groups as he can fit into his week, and reffing for parks and rec flag football. He even coached a team that couldn’t find any volunteer coaches. He doesn’t know that much about football strategy, but as a ref he knows all the rules so that’s helpful at least. He can also call the game in his team’s favor, but you can’t prove anything. And to keep himself humble, he works as a dog poop picker-upper (not random poo mind you, apparently dog owners actually pay money for someone to do this).
Quincy had a big year with several major accomplishments. He graduated high school, got his Eagle Scout award, and - undoubtedly his proudest accomplishment - reached 1000 YouTube subscribers. He’s currently in a school district program for work and community transition, learning job skills and stuff like how to take the city bus places. So every day he takes the bus to his job training placement. Almost every day, except for the day he forgot to get off the bus and ended up somewhere across the river in Pasco. Once he realized he wasn’t in Kansas anymore, he sent a photo of his surroundings to the program supervisor and they eventually were able to pick him up.
Felix continues his post-secondary education at Utah State majoring in computer science and minoring in film. He was home for the summer and worked at Hobby Lobby, but I don’t think he sees a potential career there. I’m not really sure what else he’s been up to, I should probably talk to him sometime. There haven’t been any rumblings of a significant other, possibly not from lack of trying but one can’t really be sure.
Calvin has been living in Arizona the last couple years, but this summer he needed to hit the factory reset and move back in with us for a bit. It didn’t take him too long to land a great full-time job with a local organization that provides assisted living services to people with disabilities, and he seems to like that pretty well. His temperament and good humor make him a good fit for it (he certainly didn’t get those qualities from me). His plan is to get a place of his own ASAP. I can’t imagine what the rush is, I thought sharing a room with Quincy would be fun.
Connie and I had a pretty fun and interesting year. Connie finally finished all the licensing requirements to practice independently as an SLP, and she is loving her job. She primarily works with pediatric patients - she gets on really well with people of that maturity level, as 30 years of marriage to me will attest. And yes, we did celebrate our 30th anniversary this year; where did the time go? She also celebrated her 50th birthday. She still looks absolutely gorgeous, hasn’t had any plastic surgery or anything! I’m quite smitten with her. Anyway, to celebrate these milestones, we took a few trips together. In February, Connie and I went to Hong Kong and spent a week with her brother (who was working at the US Consulate there). Hong Kong was extremely cool and a great experience. In April we accompanied the school performing arts program to New York City and enjoyed watching them do a show in Carnegie Hall. And in December we went to Germany to see Christmas markets in several cities and stay with some friends and relatives (the family of Johann, our former exchange student, and relatives in eastern Germany). That was a great time, it’s definitely on the “do it again” list.
We hope you have an enjoyable and peaceful Christmas season and a safe, healthy, and fruitful New Year.
The Jacob Family