Merry Christmas 2024!

It’s a good start for Christmas when you get all four of us home.  Towards the end of the Spring Semester, our son John decided that he would spend a semester “away from home.”   He’s a master of understatement – he spent the fall semester at Kansai Gaidai in Hirakata Japan (Gaidai is “Foreign Language University”).  We dropped him off at the St. Louis airport on August 19 and he returned to us on December 18.  His classes were mostly taught in English, but he’s become fluent enough in Japanese to get along in the countryside and to travel on his own.   The rest of us lived vicariously through his trips to Osaka, Kobe, Kyoto, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  We loved having him exposed to new cultures, but it will be nice never to have him 15 time zones away again.

Although just now (Friday afternoon the 20^th) he’s on the phone with Illinois State University trying to get his housing and financial aid arrangements completed.   He’s got almost all his General Education classes out of the way and is ready to dig into his pre-law studies.  He’ll be heading back to school in just 3 weeks, so we’re enjoying having him with us.  As an echo to his semester overseas, he’ll be living this spring with an exchange student at ISU.

Joshua has had a great first semester at Lincoln Land Community College, where he’s studying Culinary Arts.  He was very busy this semester, with 18 ½ credit hours.  Some of his classes involved catering events that had him busy extra hours.  He’s very pleased with himself, and his mother and I are also. 

Joshua’s highlights for the year (as if graduating High School and starting college weren’t highlight enough) included participating in the Special Olympics “Polar Plunge” on March 2, serving as a Judge of Election with his dad on November 5 and winning a competition at the college for “Garde Manger” students.  His team of 3 students had the best “Grazing Board” with hors d’oeuvres including homemade crackers and bread by Joshua.  Joshua was featured twice in the local paper as part of the culinary program.   He’s very excited about the spring semester, which will feature “Café Production and Management” – which involves running the “Bistro Verde” restaurant on campus at LLCC.

Karen’s year was even more dramatic than we expected.   She started her year with a Lumbar Puncture on January 2, and things went downhill from there.   By July, her recurring migraines and problems related to Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension required her to decide that it was time to set aside her career to focus on her health.  In late November the government agreed with her and approved her disability allowance.  Rest and a lessening of stress have helped, along with medications – but she’s still frequently exhausted and is still having migraines more often than we would like.  

Patrick continues to focus on Disaster Recovery and IT Planning at the Illinois Department of Transportation.  But with the slow pace of hiring to replace retirees, he’s now returning to direct software support of IDOT’s payroll system.  When he started at IDOT, there were 16 people on his team, and at the moment there are 4 – with a new employee starting January 2, and four more being interviewed.  His big highlight was a surprise promotion on January 2, 2024. (How much of a surprise?  The promotion was announced in May, and was retroactive to reflect extra work that had been taken on over the last several years – his new title is “Lead Software Analyst”)

The four of us managed to travel more this year.  Our highlights included a long weekend in Chicago for Spring Break (John was able to join us part of the time), a long week driving from home to Mackinac Michigan for a Provart Family reunion and then homeward by way of Sault Ste. Marie Michigan and a drive across the Trans-Canada Highway to Niagara Falls Ontario, and then home along the south shores of the Great Lakes.  Karen and Patrick got to take a long weekend in the fall to visit the Shawnee National Forrest and a few wineries.

As a treat for those of you who’ve read this far – the annual pictures:

 

Joshua’s graduation, June                                     

Frozen Chef Joshua at the Polar Plunge, March

 

 

 

Joshua 1^st day of college, August

John, leaving for Japan,  August.                      

John returning from Japan, December

Mackinac Island, August

 

Every year since 2004, we’ve included a family picture for the Christmas Letter.    This November, we suddenly realized that our older son was away at college, and we didn’t have a recent picture of all four of us together – so I resolved to write my letter after John got home from school on his birthday, December 15.  We were late getting home Friday night and spent Saturday celebrating his birthday.   Sunday, Karen developed a serious migraine, and we spent literally the entire week before Christmas on a round of hospital, clinic and doctor visits.   So, my first chance to get a group picture of all of us was Christmas Eve after Church!

Karen’s our biggest news of the year – as I mentioned, she’s had increasing issues with migraines, and has been seeing a neurologist.   December 21, she was finally diagnosed with Idiopathic Intercranial Hypertension – an unexplained increase in the pressure of her cerebral/spinal fluid.  This is causing swelling and inflammation of her brain and especially her optic nerves.   On January 2, she’ll be having a procedure to reduce the pressure inside her head, and she’s already started medication to keep it down.   The is a “down” ending to an “up” year for her.   Back in April, she was approached by Springfield Clinic to come work for them in their pediatric behavioral health department.  She’s the only mental health provider exclusively dedicated to pediatric patients in the organization.  She’s loving the new job and other than her health issues is doing well.  She even has had a chance to be on TV (“Dealing with Holidays and Grief” on a Wellness Wednesday on our local ABC station), and as a video host on the Clinic’s Facebook page (a two-part video on Seasonal Depression).

John is giving us a little practice in being “empty nesters” – he spent most of two weeks last June traveling to Italy and Greece and left us in August to attend Illinois State University (which is JUST far enough to keep him from coming home all the time, but close enough that he can easily get here about once a month).  He’s majoring in Political Science and Legal Studies.  He has found a great roommate and already has a few professors that are serving as role models and mentors.

 Joshua is a senior this year, and keeping us both busy and well-fed.  He is a second-year culinary student at the Capitol Area Career Center – where he spends his mornings cooking and helping to run a snack bar.   By the end of the school year, he’ll have 7 college credit hours, plus his food handler’s license.   His career focus is shown in his senior pictures.

We made time last March for a Spring Break trip to Chicago to see a few museums and to let Joshua be fed by one of his culinary heroes.

 After the monumental year that everyone else had, I’m glad to say my year has been calm and peaceful.  I’ve taken on yet more responsibilities at the Illinois Department of Transportation.  I’ve especially been involved in a major upgrade of our disaster recovery planning and in creating new standards for our technical documentation.   They also have me working in an interagency group with vehicle crash data reporting.  And I’m still serving as one of IDOT’s representatives to the US Department of Transpiration’s Commercial Motor Vehicle Safety Administration planning council.  Of course, we’re all kept very busy supporting existing software as well (my work group had 14 employees in 2011, when I started.  We now have 5, plus a programmer we share with another group).

Next week, Karen and I will be having a quite dinner out to celebrate our 20^th Wedding Anniversary.

Our household wishes you a very Merry and belated Christmas and we hope the joys of the season have been found in abundance by each of you.

Patrick, Karen, John and Joshua

                 
Christmas Eve, 2023

John Graduating - 1st week of June

John in Rome at the Coliseum - last week of June

Gordon Ramsey Burger, Downtown Chicago, March 2023

Joshua at Gordon Ramsey Burger

Joshua at Capitol Area Career Center

Joshua at Capitol Area Career Center

 Merry Christmas 2022, Everyone! 

Every year, my lovely bride and I debate about when to start the Christmas Letter. It’s usually after John’s birthday on December 15th, and frequently after the first round of wintertime colds, and often ties in with the first snowfall of the year in Central Illinois. Tonight, on December 21, we’re all healthy after a round of illness has swept through the household, and we’re expecting as much as four inches of snow tomorrow, followed by single digit temperatures and 40 mile an hour wind .... so I guess it is time to get started on the letter.  

2022 has been a big year for us, with a high school senior and a culinary student in the house. 

John, our Senior, has chosen to attend Illinois State University in Normal starting next fall, and will be studying some combination of Political Science, Legal Studies. and Business. His goal is to be ready to attend law school after graduation. He’s been extremely excited about campus visits and has already made choices about housing. As a railroad fan, his dad is pleased to see he has made “walking distance to the Amtrak station” a priority.  John is still registered as a member of Scouts, BSA, but he is becoming much less active. He is celebrating being 18 by searching for a job . . . and he is looking forward to a Senior Trip to Europe after he graduates in June.  

As a Junior, Joshua spends his mornings at Chatham Glenwood High School, but his afternoons at the Capitol Area Career Center, where he is a culinary student. 2022 has been a big year for milestones for Joshua. He earned his Eagle Scout award in July and got his license as a Food Handler on September 10th. He also completed his behind the wheel that same week, giving us two licensed teen drivers. Joshua is especially happy that John is planning to leave the car home when he goes to college in the fall. Joshua’s real focus has been the culinary classes – he regularly cooks for us on weekends and tells us LOTS about what he does in the kitchen at school. About once a month, he gets the opportunity to spend a full day at the CACC to cater an event. Their biggest event was the first week of December when he made lunch for 120. 

The boys did lots of things together this last summer, from working four weeks at Scout Camp (John as a Merit Badge Counselor and Joshua as an Assistant Cook) to attending the National Order of the Arrow Conference in Knoxville Tennessee with thousands of other Scouts. Joshua’s looking forward to being one of the oldest scouts in his troop, but he too is slowing down his involvement.  

Karen has been expanding her role at ABC Counseling, now adding Friday hours 42 miles east, in Decatur IL and is planning to add her certifications as a Licensed Sex Offender Evaluator and Licensed Sex Offender Treatment Provider. She’s pleased to be back in the Counseling profession full-time. 

Patrick is continuing to shift professionally to more and more documentation and system design, as the State of Illinois slowly and painfully moves away from Mainframe Applications to more current architectures. As the other mainframe application specialists retire (there are only 3 left, down from 14 in 2011), he is becoming the expert in exporting historical data from the mainframe into web-based applications. It has been an incredibly stressful, but extremely rewarding year. 

We hope this letter finds you healthy, happy, and celebrating the season 

Patrick, Karen, John, and Joshua 

 

 

Joshua age 17

 

John age 18 

 

Provart Family October 2022