The Christmastime Chronicle, repeated

We just couldn't find time to get a real family photo done this year, and the cute pictures of the girls never materialized, because when one kid was cute, the other kid would be turned around. So I found the most recent funny pictures and made the above photo, sent it off to Target for printing, and then discovered that I hadn't paid enough attention to the size. The "Merry Christmas" part got completely cut off! Kinda loses its impact that way. *sigh* Oh well.

Got a Christmas card yesterday from a certain lurker, who knows who she is. Cracked me up, thank you. You've got more funny in your little finger than I have ever had or will have.

By the way, about that last post--because The Eldest called mashed potatoes 'manna' and The Hub is the master mashed potato maker around here, he was highly flattered and we had mashed potatoes for dinner that very night.

At this time of year, I get all mushy and grateful for things. This year, I am grateful for blogs to keep track of family and for the comments we always get! Thank you, friends and family, for making blog-keeping a worthwhile effort!

And now, a copy of our Christmas letter. In case I hadn't mentioned it before, we're a little tight on the cash flow, so I wasn't able to send out a million Christmas cards like I usually want to. I did send out enough that the following letter should be a repeat for some of you, so feel free to skip it.

Hello dearest family!

While we often feel that this year has been a holding pattern for us, we’re grateful to be moving closer to a new stage in our life—The Hub’s graduation! Next May, The Hub will finish his Master’s Degree in Counseling at ASU—a goal that’s been three years in the making. We have seen the Lord’s hand in our lives as The Hub has pursued this education and we feel truly blessed. Our cars have worked well, we’ve enjoyed good health, and our apartment has been a wonderful shelter for us. Truly, we could not ask for more.

The Eldest has been a delight to watch in this past year. Her intelligence absolutely beams from her, and she’s made great strides in her learning. In May or so, while Miss Bubbly still napped, she would get bored easily, so The Momma decided to start her on the Hooked on Phonics series, just for kicks. The Eldest took to it and now knows her letters and all her letter sounds. She can read simple words and often takes a stab at reading the signs around us. The Eldest is also quite proficient on the computer. There are a few bookmarked sites on the Internet that she’s allowed to play on, such as Sesame Street, CeeBeebies (the BBC’s educational programming and related games), and Starfall.org, a reading site. She loves the games and can navigate them quite well. Her progress is amazing!

Miss Bubbly is developing rapidly as well. She walks, runs, jumps, and dances all the time. The child seems to be inexhaustible! She loves Winnie the Pooh and the Disney Princess movies, especially Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella. Often she’ll find a stick of some sort and wander around declaring to various family members: “Zap!” In the academic department, she also knows her alphabet and her numbers up to 26 by sight. (We walk by a numbered parking lot every Sunday. It has 26 spaces.)

The Hub’s year has been full of school and only two-thirds full of work. On his last day at work, the ladies at the daycare pulled together some farewell presents—two large pecan pies and four individually sized ones! They really got to know him well in the three years he worked there. We managed to finagle some savings out of our finances (thank you Uncle Sam for a nice tax return!) so that The Hub could do his internship and go to school full-time this semester without trying to work on top of all that. It’s been tight, but we’ve been blessed to make it all work and the financial lessons we’re learning now will carry into the future.

The Momma has been holding down the fort at home, entertaining the children and watching in amazement as they grew without her help, pursuing her many hobbies, and prayerfully considering the future. She’s always felt that more education was in her future, maybe after all the kids were in school. However, the prompting to begin sooner was too strong to ignore, so after much research and consideration and fasting and praying, she chose a school and began the application process for a doctoral program in English. The school in question is Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas—a thirteen-hour drive from our current location and six hours from Dallas. She completed her application at the end of November and is doing her best not to think about it again until March.

Overall the year has been good to us. During this holiday season we wish to express our appreciation for all our friends and family. We also turn our thoughts toward the blessings that the gospel of Jesus Christ has brought to us in the past year. We wish to share with you our testimony that Jesus Christ lives, and desires to bless our lives if we will be but willing to submit ourselves to the will the God. We know that we are far from perfect people, but we can testify that as we have tried our best to obey the commandments of God and heed the counsel of our church leaders, our lives have been greatly blessed. We pray that blessings may fill all of your lives.

Merry Christmas!
Love from the C-------s