The Sarjeant-Tuggy Homepage

Dear Family and Friends,

             We hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and we send our best wishes to you for the New Year!  We’re obviously a little behind in our holiday greetings, but better late than never, right?

            Every year seems to slip by faster than the last and 2003 was no exception.  We’re the parents of a teenager and an almost-teenager now and competing with them for the phone and computer (we highly recommend ‘call waiting,’ DSL and wireless internet!) and driving them to sporting events, youth groups, sleep-overs, and music lessons really make the days fly by.  It’s a wonder Mike and I can still find the time to go to work!

            I’m sure we’re far from finished with our adolescent parenting challenges but these kids of ours are pretty darn great and it’s actually a huge amount of fun to be around them.  Daniel is an eighth grader now at King’s Jr. High and is hot on the trail of choosing a high school for next year (correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t it used to be a lot easier?  You just went to the school nearest your house and that was that—no visitations, no exams, no decisions, no complaints.)  He plays the electric guitar, loves computer games, writing stories, skiing with his cousins at Mt. Baker and girls (not necessarily in that order) and is really looking forward to a Spring Break trip to Washington D.C. with his history teacher.

            Kristin is in fifth grade and recently left the small Christian school she’s been in since kindergarten for our local public school.  She just finished her fifth soccer season and this past year added basketball and track to her list of sports.  She has spurned skiing this winter in favor of learning to snowboard, is an excellent student, and remains enthusiastic about nearly everything on the planet.

Mike’s job as residency director for the Swedish Family Medicine program continues to go well despite its many challenges.  He’s also managed to pursue his interest in video production and has snagged a couple of nice contracts to produce videos for medical education.  My pediatric practice remains busy but has its hazards—last January I contracted a rare bacterial inner ear infection that left me completely deaf in my left ear and destroyed one of the organs necessary for balance and equilibrium.  Thankfully, I’ve finally compensated for the balance thing and am back to running, skiing and hiking after several months of involuntary inactivity. 

We’ve had several family adventures this year—a couple of spectacular desert backpacking trips in southern Utah and our annual summer backpack, this time in the Olympic Mountains (the high point being our unusually warm summer which enabled us to swim every single day in a different high alpine lake.)  More adventure is on the horizon for 2004 when we’ll spend 3 months in Africa.  June and July will be spent in Kenya where we will work and teach at an Africa Inland Mission hospital.  In August we’ll travel and plan to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro, go on safari in Kenya and Tanzania and spend a week on the Indian Ocean with a visit to the Tanzanian coast and the island of Zanzibar.  The kids are psyched and so are we!  BACK to the Main Family Page.