Holiday Letter

I find myself in this position every year, it seems... December comes, bringing with it in a hurry Sinterklaas, my mom's birthday, Reed's birthday, and Will & Satchel's birthdays. After a feverish week of celebration, baking, shopping, organizing, cleaning, and planning, all the birthdays are successfully navigated and... WHEW! All done! A chance to relax and start to think about Xmas - oh, wait a second, it's less than two weeks away? Oh NOOOOOOO!!!!!

Actually, when I think about it, our whole year is generally like that - every time I think that things are going to get quieter for a bit, I'm SO wrong!

So - our year in a nutshell. (Okay, maybe a small bag of nutshells...)


This year Reed went from a preschooler with a red mohawk to a happy Kindergardener. He wrote his first book: (I can) se a dimand, (I can) et, (I can) se, (I can) drink, (I can) Klim a tre. Clearly he'll be the next Shakespeare! We're already contacting publishers...

Carson is in 4th grade, and grows a few inches every night. His teacher is marvelous, teaching a lot of science, environmental issues, caring, activism, art... at first he said the class was just like any class, but now he's starting to see how much more fun it is. Plus, I come in once a week to do "Trash Math" (pick up trash around campus with 6 kids, weigh it, keep a chart of how much we got), Geoff comes in to do water quality testing of the school's little creek, and Satchel comes in to help with whatever's needed. Carson's a pretty lucky kid, with so much family helping in his class.

Carson's also decided to be in the school play this year, which I think is great even though it requires even MORE volunteer help from the family. Who needs time to earn money or clean house, anyhow? His starring role is Neighborhood Kid #4, but he gets to ride a bike onstage so it's all good.

Will is more into his sports than ever. This year he went from a hurdler with flowing locks, to a bleach-blond soccer player, now's he's got almost no hair at all and is wrestling. But I'm showing the flowing locks photo, it's so much nicer than one with than no hair in a wrestling skin-suit! If anyone would like to wrestle, come on over! We're gettting tired of being challenged and could use some relief! ("Hey Mom! Want to wrestle? No? Okay, Reed - want to wrestle? No?? Geoff? Anyone? Come on! I can totally take you down!")


Satchel broke his collarbone this summer downhill Mt. Biking in Colorado (on day #3 of our vacation, naturally!) - but he sure learned his lesson. The day the Doc. cleared him to ride again—after surgery and 3 months in a sling—he bought himself a downhill Mt. Bike. Now he wants to take up downhill racing. Scary! (The Mt. bike racing he does with school is cross-country and much less dangerous.) Our garage is starting to look like a bike shop, too - the garage door man asked if we park a car in there and I laughed at him! No, but we have 9 bicycles...


So, because everyone is growing so quickly and it's hard to keep up, I've made this handy chart to show the relative sizes of our family. It also gives you a small taste of what it looks like in our front door/entry way - people who can successfully navigate the shoe zone, and find their way past the discarded-backpack zone, may be lucky enough to make it into the rest of the house, which is merely filled with scattered toys, homework, and kids... most of them ours, but frequently a few scattered extras as well. If you can find your way to our kitchen, you'll generally find me cooking for the hungry troops. And if you find the office (not hard, it's the room full of computers where we mostly hang out) you'll find Geoff, working away on his Drupal chops and bringing home the proverbial bacon.