Dear Friends and Family,

We have had an incredibly busy but good year. After a rough start in medical school for Sarah and a rough job search for Dave in late 2006 and early 2007, we are grateful to have settled in to Syracuse. We have found many wonderful things about this little city including a fabulous year-yound farmer's market, an outdoor ice skating rink downtown, and the new five-story playscape inside the Science Museum.
We have great neighbors, including some recent arrivals from Texas of all places, although they were originally from Boston. They have two kids about the ages of Isabel and Calvin and they will all be going to the same school. We are glad that the house next to us, which was abandoned when we moved in to our house, is now occupied with an interesting family.

They think that the Northeast will be an increasingly attractive place to live based on their experience paying air-conditioning bills in Dallas for the last seven years. We hope they are right as the Northeast needs an infusion of people to live in the old neighborhoods and revive the economy around here.

Isabel is singing with the Syracuse Children's Chorus and learning to read music and sing all kinds of songs from around the world. This spring she will have two more performances with local theater and dance groups. She continues to study gymnastics as well and is excited about learning to do more complex back bends and flips. She is in her second year at Edward Smith Elementary School, where more than 20% of the student body has learning disabilities or autism. This is her second time being singled out and praised by her teachers for being tolerant and cooperative with people who are not like her. We are very proud of her for this.


Calvin is still at the Upstate Childcare Center where he has enjoyed making friends with children from other parts of the world. His best friend is a little boy named Terek, whose parents are from Lebanon. At Terek's birthday party we got to eat all sorts of delicious desserts. Calvin's sweet tooth shows no signs of going away anytime soon--although we are glad that his asthma seems to be abating somewhat.

Dave is working for a small engineering company writing and testing software for their machines. He finds the work challenging intellectually, but still pines for the woods. As an excuse to get outside he has taken on a trail project on the land surrounding the companies' new building. He works on his trail during lunch hour to keep from going crazy sitting at a desk eight hours a day. When we went to the annual Christmas party for the company he got an extra round of applause for his ongoing project to build a walking trail. People use it to walk to lunch at a nearby restaurant.

Sarah worked as a coordinator of the migrant farm clinic this summer, translating and doing physical exams on workers from Mexico, Guatemala and Jamaica. She enjoyed practicing her Spanish and visiting farms all around Syracuse. She got to spend a little time writing and paintng over the summer, but has had to put that aside again once classes started. She misses having time to work on her art projects, but is keeping her spirits up despite the rigors of medical school. She found that she could study while hiking, if Dave let her bore him with the details of drug pharmacology or whatever biochemical pathways she happened to be studying at the time.




It wasn't the most efficent way to study, but it was better than sitting at a desk all day--every day. She's also become fond of her iPod, which allows her to ski or run or pick cranberries while listening to and reviewing lecture materials that the college records. She is over halfway done with her second year and looking forward to taking step one of the USMLE in June, after which she plans on taking a few weeks off to rest and visit friends before starting third year.

Since the kids came along, balloons have become a bigger part of our life and we continue to find new ways to use them (the balloons, that is). For the third year running, we decorated our Christmas tree with balloons. We used long squiggly balloons this year because we thought it would please the Flying Spaghetti Monster to no end. We hope you will join us next year in following the prompting of his Noodly Appendages as you see fit: more peace, more pasta, and/or more pirates, according to your preference. We wish you a joyous year and good health in 2008.

Keep flying!

Love,

Sarah, Dave, Calvin and Isabel