Christmas 2009

Just thought I'd put our annual Christmas newsletter--minus the names--up here.

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No news is good news, right?

Or so they say. But when you’re writing an annual newsletter, it makes for a very short one, unless I follow the example of seemingly all backs-of-today's-DVD-covers and books:

“The family had a stupendous year, making spectacular mountains out of hilariously small molehills! You’ll gasp at every leaf they rake, every trip they take, and cry with them over the lack of a proper ending to the year!” But if I did that, you’d read everything we wrote from then on with the same jaundiced and skeptical eye with which we read the aforementioned movie blurbs.

’Cause we didn’t have a stupendous year. Oh, it was pleasant enough, and a few memorable things did happen, such as our son getting engaged and then getting deployed to Iraq, where he is now as is his fiancée, and our other son and his wife buying their own place, and our daughter becoming a teenager, and my dad coming out to visit, and seeing my high school best friend for the first time in 10+ years (last year I saw another one; her place should be written up as a vacation destination!), and taking a trip to El Paso to see our son and his fiancée before they left. But even then it all fits in one paragraph.

Our year was more filled with what we read, what we learned from what we read, what projects we completed around the house; things that may look boring to an observer or reader of a newsletter, but are actually quite exciting inside. But they still don’t really work in an annual missive.

But, you know, it’s just as well, isn’t it, since we would rather you think about Christmas than us, and about a tree of another kind as well as a Christmas tree, a crown of thorns as well as a crowning birth, and the gift He offers all of us; the best present ever.