Dear Friends and Family,

2021 was a quiet year for our family! Not a lot changed, we didn’t really go anywhere, we’re all doing the same things at church, and we just lived a quiet family life. We enjoyed being able to do some things we couldn’t do in 2020. We also experienced all the stress of online school, then going back to in-person school. Even though we don’t have a lot of big news, we still have some fun stories from this year. We hope you enjoy reading!

Back in January, Sam was baptized in a covid-safe ceremony of just our family. Lige was able to baptize him. We were grateful for everyone who joined us by Zoom, so we didn’t feel so alone!

Marriner started building a new wood strip canoe. He built one a long time ago with his dad, but he’s always wanted to build another one. Seeing that covid left him with a little more time than before, he and my brother-in-law in Ashburn decided to do it. Unfortunately, things started opening back up pretty quickly after he decided to go, and his free time evaporated. But he still takes any free Saturday to run over to Ashburn and do a little more work on it. It’s going to be so pretty when it’s done!

Our church had an international music festival, and invited youth from various ASL branches to be in one of the songs. Lige, Ellis and Lillian got to make their international singing (er, signing) debut!

We were really good at recording videos at this point, because at the same time, Ellis and Lillian were recording a documentary in English and ASL "Alexander Graham Bell: The Villain" about his work against sign language for their school National History Day competition. Their video was great - they won the school competition, then the county competition, then the state competition...they didn’t win the national competition, but they did get a special award! It was an exciting journey, but each time they’d win, Ellis would groan and complain, “Now we have to do more work to improve it!” Poor girl, it’s tough being successful. Actually, we missed their special award because we were driving home from girl’s camp and pulled over at a library to watch the awards. After their category, we turned the broadcast off and headed home. We only found out about the special award a week later when a reporter called and asked to interview them. That gave us all a laugh! Lillian also won the county science fair competition - since they didn’t have as much homework or time wasted on the bus, the girls had time to put into their competitions, and they had an amazing year as a result.

This summer had two exciting events - one was the emergence of the 17-year cicada brood. It was fascinating...but after a few weeks, nobody wanted to go outside any more. The bugs are so dumb, they think you’re a tree and fly into you, looking for love. After the cicadas went away, the oak mites (who feed on cicada eggs) flourished, and we spent the rest of the summer getting itchy chigger-like bites on our legs. By the end of the summer, we were glad to see it go!

The other big surprise was Marriner’s brother, Joseph, making the Washington DC professional Ultimate Frisbee team (The DC Breeze) and coming to stay with us for the summer. We bought season tickets to the Breeze games and had a blast cheering for Uncle Joe all summer.

Over the summer, we made a playoff bracket of classic books and movies to read/watch and vote for our favorite. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe beat all comers handily to win the book bracket. The movie bracket...takes more time...and we’re not done yet. But it’s looking to be a showdown between Star Wars and The Princess Bride. The little kids don’t seem to like the older movies as much, and vote them all down, though Rabbi Jacob was close. The bubble gum part was soooo funny!

Another part of the year that we really enjoyed was working on Family History. Because the Washington DC temple is closed, and availability of the Philadelphia temple has been limited, we’ve been trying to spend time at home every month doing temple and family history-related activities. Around Memorial day, we learned about various ancestors who fought in wars over the years. When bad weather canceled a trip to the beach, we learned about how our ancestors crossed the ocean from Europe. At St. Patrick’s day, we learned that….we’re not as Irish as we thought! Most of our “Irish” ancestors had actually moved to Ireland from Scotland as part of an English effort to convert, or at least dilute, the Irish Catholics. Marriner's Irish friend at work was not impressed!

Lige successfully earned a driver’s licence this year, and has been making his parents happy ever since. In the absence of marching band this year, he played soccer and made some new friends.

We went back to school in-person in the fall. This produced some anxiety, especially for Martha, who had never been to school in-person before. But it wasn’t long before the joy of seeing friends and being able to do things with people their own age prevailed. Jane surely missed everyone when they left, though. She’s been learning to read, now that there’s nothing else to do at home.

We made sure to have a fun Fall - we spent a night at Assateague National seashore (our happy place) and then we replaced our roof over Thanksgiving. Ok, maybe only one of those was fun. But we still had a yummy dinner - after the sun had set!

We had fun welcoming Christine’s parents back from church missionary service in Paris and sending Marriner’s parents off on a mission to Dominican Republic.

And now we’re here at Christmas time, and our thoughts turn to all of our wonderful friends. We’re so grateful for your influence in our lives.

Lots of love,

Marriner, Christine, Lige (17), Ellis (15), Lillian (13), Sam (8), Martha (6), and Jane (4)