August 29, 2001
Bells are ringing. Birds are singing. The sky is blue and sunny. Life is beautiful in the corn country.
Why you ask?
Eric sucessfully defended his dissertation on August 28th, at 7 am central standard time!
Oh yes, life is beautiful!
For any of you who are interested, here are the details of the defense. For about 45 minutes, he discussed the research design and results of his research. He then responded to questions from his 5 committee members for about an hour. Laura was truly proud of his professionalism -- throughout the 2 hours, he demonstrated his academic/scientific abilities. After completing minor revisions, he will be officially completed! (By the way, Eric will put a link to part of his dissertation presentation on his website (www.geocities.com/ericsresearch) in case any of you are interested.)
Laura threw a party for him Tuesday evening. There were about 25 people who came -- thankfully, they came in shifts because our tiny apartment wouldn't have fit them all at once. We had so much fun celebrating this happy time with some of our friends.
As we mentioned in our last newsletter, we went out to Utah for a week in July. Congratulations to Mr. and Mrs. Marlowe and Rachel Springer! Thank you for letting us share your special day with you! We had so much fun visiting with family and friends -- thank you to all who squeezed in some time with us.
We are very excited to celebrate our first anniversary in just a few days -- it is truly incredible that a year has already flown by! We had originally planned to go to St. Louis for a week, but we decided we weren't up for another trip so soon after our Utah holiday. So we've decided to just spend some relaxing (post-dissertation) time at home with each other and then go to a bed-and-breakfast near Nauvoo, which is about an hour away, for our actual anniversary.
Speaking of Nauvoo -- for those of you who don't know, we are in the Nauvoo temple district, so we're getting terribly excited for the Open House in March and Dedication in April.
As many of you know, Laura has been released as the Young Women's President. She is now serving as 1st Counselor in the Stake Relief Society presidency. What an incredible blessing this calling has been! She is serving with a truly *incredible* presidency and is excited to learn from their experience.
Eric has just been called as the Sunday School teacher for the 15-18 year olds. They are a very mixed group of kids with varying levels of spirituality -- the Bishop expressed his belief that Eric's experience with the youth might touch them in an important way.
Anyway, we love you all. Thank you for allowing us to share our happy news with you!