Merry Christmas 2012

December 2012


Dear Family, Friends, Acquaintances and People Who Casually Picked Up This Letter—

Looking back on our 2012, I couldn’t remember all of the noteworthy events that took place during the course of the year, so I turned to our trusty family blog at www.nathanandmegan.blogspot.com for ideas. Unfortunately, 2012 turned out to be worse than last year in terms of blog post production (only 3 posts vs. 15 last year and 51 posts in the peak year). Next I tried my Facebook account but that had even fewer updates. I may have to survey the family to find out what we did this year…

Ok, the survey responses are in and it turns out we had quite an eventful year! For starters, we bought a house here in Charlotte and were able to close just 10 days before we would have been forced to move from our old one—as our landlords did us the favor of selling it while we still lived there.

Olivia thought an important event during 2012 was her birth—debuting at 7:15 a.m. on her birthday and weighing in at 7 lbs. 11 oz., measuring 18.5 inches and sporting huge dimples. She has been a wonderful addition to the family and loves being held by her 3 oldest siblings as well as having a pacifier shoved forcefully into her mouth by Ava while she’s sleeping. 

Speaking of Ava, she turned 2 this year, and is becoming a master of language; she’s figured out a way to reduce the number of words she actually has to learn by assigning multiple meanings to the same phonetic sound. For example, “be-dees” can mean any of the following: my two security blankets, breakfast, babies, pizza, scriptures, and a bunch of other things (if also accompanied with pointing). I wonder what other efficiencies she’ll figure out as she gets older. She loves her nursery class at church and playing at the YMCA while Megan works out.

Max (turned older this year) thought, probably, that the significant events of 2012 included his continued participation in pre-school, his developing reading skills, his playing YMCA flag football, his having a dead tooth extracted and his ability to “clean” his room by shoving everything under the bed so he can go outside and ride his scooter. He is also an expert “hugger” and is friends with everyone. Everyone.

Kaitlyn (turns older in a few weeks) reminded me that our moving into a new house meant attending her 3rd different elementary school in 3 years. It’s a good thing that she’s incredibly social and has other girls in her class dressing like her within days. She’s also been involved in dance, gymnastics and piano—including a love of figuring out the melody lines of songs by ear. And, she’s very excited to be getting baptized in a few weeks.

Alison (turned older this year, but is going on even older next year) is also making great strides in piano and has continued to be heavily involved in sports. She took up soccer for the first time this year and fit in great, despite being the only girl on the co-ed team. However, she’s excited to return to her roots and started basketball again this week. She also continues to excel in school (and work on Excel at home with money-making sales ideas of all kinds).

Megan reluctantly pointed out that she turned older this year, but I would point out that that didn’t stop her from being a member of the Stake Champion Weddington Ward Women’s Basketball team, serving in the children’s Primary leadership at church, delivering Olivia, or continuing to turn ordinary things like water bottles into cute and crafty projects with Stampin’ Up products of all kinds.

I’m enjoying my job at Bank of America and try to find time to play guitar whenever I can (which with 5 kids in the house ends up being at around midnight for 10 minutes at a time, every other month).

We love you all and are grateful for this time of year when we can reflect on the things it turns out we did this year as well as the things that really matter most—our family, our friends, and our faith in Jesus Christ. We wish you a very Merry Christmas and Happy 2013.