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
