Christmas 2025

December 5, 2025

Dear Friends and Family,

Merry Christmas! 2025 has been a year of special landmarks and events. We always love catching you up on how things are going.

In April, Jane turned 8 and chose to be baptized as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. We are so proud of her! It was our last baptism. Now I guess we turn our face forward to weddings for the next family special occasions. It was definitely a tender moment to see her smiling face go under the water and realize what a wonderful person she has become.

Ellis graduated from high school. She went out with a bang, vying for and getting the big solo in “Trumpeter’s Lullaby” in the band concert, being first trumpet in the All-County band, getting the Marine Corps band award, securing a full-tuition scholarship to Utah State University, going to Senior Ball, graduating from Seminary, and being part of the award-winning jazz band. (Yes, band was the theme.) It was nice to breathe again when it was over. She worked for the summer and applied to be a missionary for our church. She was called to the Australia Perth mission, and starts in January!  Planned to finish in June 2027 (18 months). 

Meanwhile, Lige came home from his mission in Florida. It’s been so wonderful having him home temporarily! He’s found a job at FedEx, where they unload planes and trucks in a warehouse. Unfortunately, the warehouse is colder than Florida, and Lige mentions this occasionally. But he has kept busy meeting all the Haitians in Rochester, helping with missionary work, and preparing to start college at Utah State in January. 

Lillian started her senior year of high school, and joined the elite youth orchestra in town. She accomplished her top goal of making it into the Conference All-State Orchestra, which is the highest level of All-State. She’s taking Calc II at RIT this fall. We teased her a lot when one of the guys in her class invited her to study for a test with him, and she had to turn him down because she has to go to high school during the day. And she got her drivers license! Wahoo!!

Another big landmark this year - Marriner finished the wood strip canoe he started as a Covid project! Unfortunately, it was finished about a month after our family camping trip to the Adirondacks, but the trip was beautiful even in a borrowed canoe. And the canoe is beautiful, even in the calm waters of the Erie canal. (See the back and front of our card, respectively, for visuals.)

Sam and Lillian made their landmark theatre debut this year, premiering a one-act musical written and composed by themselves. They got all the neighborhood kids to act in the show, practiced in our living room for 2 months, and performed for parents. It was a fun, ambitious project. The plot wasn’t half bad. The music, though, was really good. We had it stuck in our heads for weeks. YouTube link available upon inquiry, it’s about 40 minutes and it’s captioned. :)

Some of us had smaller landmarks this year. Christine joined the Erie Canal 200th Anniversary challenge and biked 200 miles this summer. This annoyed some of the kids, who really wanted to drive to the library, but Mom made them bike with her. Christine and the little kids did have a really fun bike camp out on the Erie Canal. It was urban style camping - we biked from a water park to a restaurant for dinner, then camped, then biked to another restaurant for breakfast. Pretty fun!

Martha had the landmark of being the first in our family to be recognized in the visual arts. The school art teachers submit some of the top student work to the county library’s art show, and Martha’s was selected. As people who are good at music, but have no expertise in visual arts, this was something new and fun for us. She was hoping to be part of a landmark study to develop a vaccine for CMV, a virus that disabled a friend of ours. Unfortunately, the vaccine was not effective, thus losing status as a landmark event. But she did enjoy making some money.

We still continue to experience great joy trying to be disciples of Jesus Christ in every way we can, which includes a lot of wonderful opportunities at church.  Marriner volunteers within the Deaf group in our congregation and serves as the assistant ward clerk (all of the tools, none of the responsibility. Five out of five stars!). Christine had a big change when she was called to be the president of the Relief Society, the women’s organization. Her “presidency” consists of two wonderful Deaf friends and one who knows no sign language - it’s an adjustment for our mostly hearing congregation to be led by these wonderful women that they previously assumed were very quiet :) And after years of Christine being the support spouse while Marriner served as branch president, it’s been a big adjustment at home, too. On a totally unrelated note, Marriner has started cooking dinner more often… As has everyone else. It’s been amazing to see the love and support from the family to make it possible for Mom to go out and help people in need.

Marriner’s job at NTID is going well. Three of his Masters students graduated in the Spring, and one of them was the RIT graduation speaker! He was super proud and can’t stop talking about their great successes. Christine is still enjoying working part time tutoring at NTID and got to branch out to hydraulics (Civil Engineers are so weird! Physics problems about how much friction a concrete dam has to experience to not tip over…).

We love you all and hope that your lives have been as joyful. Thank you for your friendship and please let us know if we can help you in any way. And if you ever want to visit Rochester or Palmyra or Niagara Falls - we’re here!

Love, Marriner, Christine, Lige, Ellis, Lillian, Sam, Martha and Jane!