Many people will be receiving this in Christmas cards (yes we sent them late because we wanted to know the sex of our baby). But just incase, here is the 2005 Duty family Christmas letter.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
It’s been a very exciting year for the Duty’s. In case you haven’t heard, our biggest news is that I’m pregnant and due May 27th. We found out on the 23rd that we’re having a boy who appears to be perfectly healthy and growing well. We postponed sending out Christmas cards until we had our ultrasound so we could share the news with everyone (or at least that’s the excuse I’m using!).
All the rest of the news is relatively boring compared to the baby but here it goes anyways. In order to further prepare for the baby, we’re trying to sell our house in Ypsilanti and move to a bigger house in Saline (closer to Ann Arbor for the non-Michiganians). We love the area, our church is there, there are great schools, and it’s closer to both of our jobs. We have a house we’d love to buy but have to sell ours first. As first time home sellers, we’re discovering that this can be a challenging and frustrating experience. Hopefully the market will improve after the holidays and we’ll get an offer.
Jonathan is still working for Harris & Baseview developing software for newspapers. In May he was sent to San Francisco, CA to attend the Java One conference hosted by Sun Microsystems. This is an annual conference for software engineers that Jonathan has wanted to attend since he started working in technology. He got to meet some really neat people and enjoyed California. The product he has been working on for the last year had their first install at a newspaper in September and is sparking lots of talk in the market.
As for me, I had a job change at the end of the summer. I had been working for Boysville, a residential treatment facility for juvenile delinquents, as a family worker in the sex offender unit for about a year. It was very challenging work which I really enjoyed but unfortunately, budget cuts led to my position being eliminated, and since I was lowest in seniority, I wasn’t able to stay with the agency. After a month of job searching and catching up on tons of TV reruns during the day, I was offered a job as a school social worker in the special education department for Lenawee Intermediate School District. I’m at a K-12 building for 3 days in Adrian and 2 days at an elementary school in Clinton, which ironically is only 2 miles from Boysville. So far things are going well and I’m learning a lot. I’m also doing contract work with an outpatient therapy clinic to keep up my sex offender treatment skills and am continuing to do research in the field with one of my professors from my Master’s program. We presented at two national conferences this year which went really well and my fear of presenting to large crowds is decreasing.
Jonathan and I took trips to see his family in Dallas and Sante Fe this year which we really enjoyed. We also took a nice trip to the west coast of Michigan for a long weekend and enjoyed the beach and sand dunes. Jonathan got to experience his first football game at the Big House (the University of Michigan stadium for the non-Wolverine crowd), which was a big change from the sparsely populated Baylor games we were used to. We had a great time cheering for a winning team and of course, enjoying the marching band’s performances.
We hope everyone is doing well and love getting updates from all of our friends and family. Jonathan updates our website a lot and there are lots of pictures for you to enjoy – www.jonandkerry.com For now, we can be reached at :
