Merry Christmas!

Our annual Christmas newsletter -- Merry Christmas from our family to yours!

Dear Friends and Family,

There were lots of changes for our family in 2013.  With great sadness, we moved from St. Louis earlier this year.  We sure loved it there and like to think St. Louis reciprocated. {St. Louis friends – if you disagree with this assertion, please don’t let us know. We frankly would prefer to live in our state of blissful ignorance.}  Even though the transition was a bit rough for the kids, we have finally started to settle into our new surroundings and are pleased to announce that we have the nicest neighbors in the world.  In a truly shocking development, you will not find any hospital references in the rest of this note. In a family first, we have not visited the hospital once during this calendar year. And yes, I realize that since we completed this letter with time remaining in the year, I fully expect to be spending at least a few hours over the holidays with our friends (and borderline family) in the medical profession. But let’s just move on before I tempt fate any further.

Jessica continues to be amazing, acing life with class (and sass?) to spare. Along with managing the day-to-day mayhem of life with our large crew, she single-handedly prepped our St. Louis home for sale with all 5 kids under foot back in June. I wish this was just figuratively speaking, but they were very often literally under her feet while she painted roughly 42 different surfaces this year.  In her spare time she continues to love a good project, reads us all out of the water, and is always on the hunt for better and more effective ways of molding the kids into respectable, responsible and contributing members of society.  She’s holding onto lots of Hope. 

I had the pleasure (?) this year of serving in what turned out to be a surprisingly patriotic capacity: jury duty. Working in HR, I fully expected to be dismissed during jury selection. I was wrong. And boy, did I pick a bad time to be wrong! Suffice it to say that I am now an expert in a field that NOBODY wants to hear anything more about.  In other news, another year has come and gone and I still haven’t written a book or run a marathon.  I continue to feel mostly OK about that but have gotten a head start on my resolutions for 2014 and just might {might} join some friends at work in a Spartan Race come spring.  Because nothing says “Spartan” like Scott.  On a serious note, I’m enjoying my new assignment at work and adjusting to driving in traffic on I-71 North during rush hour.   

Regular readers (awfully presumptuous, eh?) will be curious/anxious to find out if Ethan ever got his Kindle Fire this year. The answer is…kind of, although the better question would be if he still has it, and that answer would be no. After demonstrating that said ownership would NOT help him to be perfectly behaved, he reluctantly handed it back over to us. Thankfully, he is still a really good kid and his lack of electronics has not hampered his ability to be a model child at school.  He enjoyed his first season of organized sports with soccer in the fall and in other sports related news turned into a human Popsicle at the BYU-Notre Dame game in South Bend back in November. If you watched that game on TV or heard about the freezing cold conditions, it really was as cold as it looked/sounded. Ethan braved it as long as his rail-thin body could take it before we finished the last 15 minutes in the heated bathroom listening to the game on the radio.

For someone who still doesn’t own one, Grace continues to be obsessed with dogs. (Thought provoking, yet somewhat tangential/existential question: Is Grace truly obsessed with dogs or is she obsessed with the idea of having a dog? Discuss.)  She has added an iPod Touch to her list of needs and despite our efforts to frequently remind her that it is actually a want, she continues to insist that it will help her to be a better human being.  Right.  On an academic note, Grace became a voracious reader earlier this year while powering through all of the Lemony Snickets books in a mere couple of months.  Since finishing, however, she has returned to her party line of insisting that she hates reading and all things books despite evidence to the contrary.  Other than “not reading,” Grace spends her free time playing with the little ones, doing LOTS of homework, and turning random objects (masking tape, cardboard boxes, paper, etc.) into pretty impressive works of art.  As Sophie says, “Grace is VERY artsy craftsy.”  No argument here!

As for Sophie, this child continues to break her own records for most words per minute at high-pitch and high-volume levels.  Her tendency towards non-stop chatter at school with friends has continued to raise comment at parent-teacher conferences, but luckily has not resulted in any red notes sent home so far this school year!   On the activity front, Sophie started gymnastics in the fall and has really enjoyed running and jumping and swinging, this time on objects designed for said activities.  Additionally, Sophie can waggle her eyebrows with the best of them, but you sort of have to see it to truly appreciate it.  While she can go full on angry elf when she wants to, Sophie is thankfully a mostly happy child who flashes her dimples when necessary to charm her way into your heart.

Jane … I’m half tempted to just simply write Jane’s name and leave it at that because it’s becoming increasingly impossible to accurately describe this precious little jem. She is such a unique kid in such a way that I wouldn’t dare change, and we’re so grateful to have her in the family. She started pre-school this year and has really loved it, and I think her teachers get a kick out of her too. After a steady diet of cartwheels in our family room with an increasing level of competence, we got her involved with gymnastics classes as well and she couldn’t be happier with the arrangement.  

The baby of our family is no longer a baby.  {Although, NO – that is NOT an announcement!} Alex turned 2 this summer and has joined the ranks of the communicators, first babbling up a storm and now talking in full sentences over the last several months. He continues to love his elephant and his pacifier and his life is pretty plush if you really stop and think about it.  He wakes up, gets doted on by his mother and older siblings, occasionally changes into real clothes (why bother getting out of footsy pajamas?), plays on assorted electronic devices, eats here and there, gets pulled into various pretend/make believe schemes concocted by the other children, and then goes back to sleep. Not bad, right? He still loves anything to do with a ball and has recently added a donkey kick to his repertoire of tricks.  Another thing you really have to see to fully appreciate.  Ha!

We are so thankful at this time of year for our family, as well as our friends – old and new. We are blessed well beyond anything we deserve and wish all of you nothing but the best. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Love,

Scott, Jessica, Ethan (10), Grace (9), Sophie (6), Jane (4), and Alex (2)