The real highlight of Spring 2010 was, of course, that our niece Lydia was born to Rachel and Doug on Easter. We were happy that Houghton had no classes the week after Easter, so we were able to be with Rachel, Doug, and Lydia in Rochester, pretending to help while getting to know our new niece a bit.
Summer 2010 was pretty busy. We were excited to be able to attend Rebekah's cousin Jason's wedding to Bonnie in Chicago in May and spend time with family there. After the wedding, we visited Wheaton for several hours, getting to see the women of the Herr family and many of our math and computer science professors as well as the new Science Building. Then we drove to Edwardsville, IL, for Rebekah to attend the Sixth Conference on Function Spaces, where we saw many friends from graduate school and enjoyed the paved cycling trails in the area. A few weeks later, we headed up to Potsdam, NY, for Rebekah to give a colloquium talk at SUNY Potsdam and then drove to Burlington, VT, to spend the weekend with Rebekah's cousins Laura and Ryan. On the way home, we rode the ferry across Lake Champlain and drove through Lake Placid.
In July we headed out to Missoula to spend time with good friends and get our Glacier National Park fix (we miss living three hours away!). We saw our first wolverine and a whole family of black bears.
We continued on to Grass Valley, CA, to spend the week with Ryan's family and attend both our nephew Chris' adoption ceremony and the Christian Encounter Ranch 40th Reunion. From there, we flew down to San Diego, where we got to go to the San Diego Zoo, see more family, and attend Ryan's cousin Shaina's wedding to Chris (not our nephew).
August was spent getting ready for the fall semester and Rebekah went to MathFest in Pittsburgh to begin her year as a Project NExT fellow.
Ryan played a lot of ultimate in Fall 2010, including three tournaments with the Roaring Sheep, Rebekah rode her bicycle regularly and worked constantly, and Möbius learned that bicycles are fun climbing gyms. We enjoyed the wall-breaking ceremony to mark the beginning of the renovation of the Science Building at Houghton (Rebekah's new office is really happening--and her temporary office is twice as big as her original one!). There were a lot of trips to Rochester to "go to the grocery store" (read: see Lydia, though we did also go to the grocery store), and on one of those trips we got to be part of Lydia's dedication to the Lord. Rebekah went to Potsdam again, this time with several students to attend a conference on undergraduate research in mathematics. We went to Rebekah's parents house in Beaver Falls, PA, for Thanksgiving.
We began Winter 2010-2011 with a pre-Christmas trip to Grass Valley, where we enjoyed anticipating Christ's birth with Mom and Dad Yates, Grandma Yates, nephew Chris, and other California friends. We flew to Pittsburgh on Christmas Eve, landing early Christmas morning, and had a great time celebrating the birthday of our Savior with some of Rebekah's extended family in Beaver Falls. As we continue in the Christmas season, we pray that we will all be amazed by the mystery that we are celebrating: "when we celebrate Christmas, we are celebrating that amazing time when the Word that shouted all the galaxies into being limited all power and for love of us came into us in powerless body of a human baby" (Madeline L'Engle) and that we will know His love more fully in the year to come.
(Yes, we forgot to take a camera, and yes, we had a Christmas bush this year instead of a Christmas tree. Don't judge us.)
