…. accompanied by the out-takes that didn’t make the cut for the official card. Because you know I am always down for sharing the outtakes.

Dear family, friends, and distant friends who receive a card late after I guiltily receive their own Yuletide cheer, as well as total strangers living at outdated addresses because I put off updating my list too long: Merry Christmas.

We still live in our 980 square foot apartment and, thanks to Amazon announcing this area as its new HQ2, we will probably never be able to move. Come visit! But please don’t stay too long unless you are prepared to fold yourself and all your luggage up into a very tiny ball which Henry will then hurl around the apartment while Etta cheers.

Hannah defended her dissertation last spring and is proud for her first job as a full fledged Dr. to be doing the identical thing she was doing the last years of graduate school (teaching/administrating stuff), only she now boasts the distinction of being paid less somehow. She promptly turns over her entire paycheck and a little extra to pay childcare, which causes her to think of employment as a special spa membership that includes grading and student disputes. Henry uses her dissertation drafts as coloring pages, otherwise known as academic upcycling.

Henry has mostly stopped biting other children, a positive note to end 2018 on. Etta might someday get a tooth to bite something, but in the meantime, she is developing a very thick skin for all of the times Henry’s love endangers her person.

James continues to work in the ever-encouraging, uplifting, and harmonious realm of politics.

By the end of the week (the day?), our home is a disaster, it is hard to always remember when Etta was last bathed or if Henry ate enough vegetables to insure that he doesn’t get scurvy and grows up to prefer Mozart and Shakespeare and Hannah’s hair is 78% dry shampoo. Things are loud and chaotic and busy and we wouldn’t have it any other way. In the pursuit of The Photo to grace our annual missive, Etta was kicked in the head, Henry escaped no fewer than a thousand times, lots of tight lipped commands were issued mid pose, and chaos ensued. Maybe the outtakes tell the real truth of things as they are right now.

Life is full and it is good.  There are some tears, but a whole lot more laughter.

Merry Christmas.