Merry Christmas from Barb, Mark, Matt, Katie, and Jenny! Holiday

Merry Christmas from Barb, Mark,
Matt, Katie, and Jenny!
Holiday Letter 2005
We hope that this letter finds you healthy and enjoying the 2005 holiday season!
This year, Matthew (14 this month) finally grew taller than Barb, and is catching up to
Mark. He toured with the Boy Choir up the East Coast for the last time, as his voice has
dropped as his height has risen. The tour ended with a concert at Carnegie Hall –and we
went to NYC to see it, with Grandma and Grandpa Ericson. Matt also got a big part in
the church production of Bye, Bye Birdie!
Katie is now 10 years old. She had a major part in the fourth/fifth grade production of
Dear Abby in the Spring. Probably the highlight for the year for her was standing up in
cousin Danny’s and Kim’s wedding in August. She went camping with Mommy at a
Mom and Me Girl Scout camp, and she and Daddy attended the Girl Scout Mountain
Jubilee in September.
Jenny has just turned 8, going on 21. She’s getting ready to make her First Communion
this May. She continues to be small with a big personality. She and Katie both had a great
time playing soccer this Fall, with Daddy coaching Jenny’s team. Both girls are really
quite good at soccer (with no bias at all!).
Barb continues to be a hero to high school teachers in Georgia. She travels all over the
state, giving talks to students to encourage them to take computer science. She is now
serving on a curriculum committee deciding what should be taught in computer science
for all high schools in Georgia.
Mark was promoted to Full Professor this last year. (There are suspicions about what
he’s Full of…) He continues to work on new kinds of introductory computing classes,
with about a half dozen schools now using the book that came out last year (including
one school in Australia!)
Barb and Mark completed their first book together this year. (Read that as “Barb
majorly rewrote, improved, and added to Mark’s old book.”) The book is coming out in
January for some schools in a custom edition, then the full version is coming out in April
2006.
We discovered camping as a family this year. We went camping for a weekend in
August in Cherokee, NC, in the Smoky Mountains. Our big camping trip was to Fort
Wilderness at Disneyworld just before Thanksgiving. Uncle Brian went camping with
us, and Grandma and Grandpa Ericson met us there (but chose not to camp). Other than
rain while setting up, one child getting sick the first night, high winds and cold, we had a
wonderful time—and the girls have asked if we can camp again next time!
We hope to see you over this next year, if not at Christmas time. We wish you the very
best for 2006!
At Danny’s
Wedding in
August
Katie going up the aisle at
Danny’s Wedding
First Day of School,
August 2005
Barb and Matt in costume for Bye,
Bye Birdie
Uncle Brian, Jenny, Katie, and
some passerby at Disneyworld in
November
Daddy and Katie,
Cherokee NC
Halloween 2005
Jenny and Dan at
Graduation Parties
in June
At Justin Steinfeld’s Bar
Mitzvah, May 2005