Merry Christmas ~ 2012

Merry Christmas,

Another year has passed (how’s that for an obvious cliché intro?) We are grateful to be doing well. The kids are growing too slowly (still unable to carry more than 20lbs on their backs). Oregon remains the strangest weather state we’ve lived; rain all winter and spring, drought all summer. But we still live here… for now. We have been pretty active in our small church in Troutdale. Oregon really goes out of its way to try and be free from religion to the point of almost being repressive to those of faith, but we endure.

                We had a few mission trips this year (Nicaragua and Mexico), a trip to New York,  lots of hikes, races, camping, climbing and the regular stuff. Kevin’s job is fine, he was promoted to a full clinician partner this year. Jill had to have a tooth implant and spent 2 months with a fake ‘denture’. Homeschooling is going well, Jill is doing a stellar job. Syndey is addicted to Legos, thinks she’s a dragon and can’t stop reading fantasy books. Kayleigh is reading well, dances around the house and continues to be our compliant, reasonable child. They play together great. Wait. Who cares?!  I hear you crying at this point. Good point. Christmas letters are usually dumb and this one is going in that direction. So I will stop.

Here is the 2012 Breakdown:

	Jill	Kevin	Sydney	Kayleigh
Best book	Celebration of Discipline (Richard Foster)	From God to us, a history of the Bible (Geisler and Nix)	On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness (Andrew Peterson)	Chronicles of Narnia
Best album or artist	Newsboys – God’s Not Dead	Andrew Peterson, light for the lost boy	Peter Furler (on Fire)	Peter Furler (on Fire)
Worst thing	Not having a front tooth for 2 months	Having an injured neck for 3 months	Math	Math
Best time	Central Oregon trip	Crater lake vacation	Biking in Sun River	Going to Bend
Thing most resisted	Facebook / Twitter	Facebook	Math	Squash
Most annoying thing	skunks	Exclamation points!	Mosquitoes	Ticks
Coolest thing seen this year	Crater Lake	Josseling, (one of our Compassion)  kids in Nicaragua	Hobbit Legos	Lord of the Rings (edited version)
Favorite food	Is wine a food?	Blue cheese	Calamari (?)	Steak Sandwiches
Favorite toy	new camera	Jill	Legos	My stuffed unicorn Susan
Plan for 2013	Keep sane in the midst of my crazy family	Move to Montana and become a writer	Become a famous jungle explorer and animal trainer	Get  $100

People who visited us this year (if you’re not on this list you’re lame):

·         Dave and Sam Miller (we all climbed Mt Baker!)

·         The Eubanks family from Thailand/Burma (we climbed several things)

·         Mom and Tom (they climbed nothing - this is actually NOT true - they climbed a pretty high sand dune at the coast)

·         Jeremy Byrd (the only guy I still know from ECU school of Med)

·         The Christmas Angel

·         The Holder family

·         My mother in law

·         The Haseltines (yes all of them, we had 12 people in our 2.5 bedroom house! This is my sister Mary’s family)