The Family Letter 2009

Christmas greetings from our house to yours!

It’s been a fairly peaceful year for us. All of our lives revolve around school these days. For a while there we were up to three different campus parking tags hanging from our rearview mirrors! Roger continued working as the communications manager for the library at BYU. Margy finished up her job at the local high school library, finished up a stint as PTA newsletter editor, and taught freshman writing at Utah Valley University both spring and fall semesters. Jack finished fourth grade with flying colors and is now thriving in fifth grade. We can’t quite believe he’s only got one more year in elementary school.

Roger and Margy got a new job at church teaching a great group of eight year olds (six boys and one girl, who holds her own quite nicely). We’ve had to dig deep into our bag of tricks to keep them engaged. Well, we aimed for keeping them engaged. Sometimes we just managed to keep them captive. Jack’s class is the complete opposite (nine girls and two boys, who both hold their own, too).

We took our apparently annual pilgrimage to Legoland and the Pacific Ocean in the spring, and then Jack and Margy took a huge, nearly six-week trip to Wisconsin and New England in the summer. Roger flew out to meet us half way through for a week. We had so much fun connecting with family and friends along the way, and only wish we could have seen everyone. Our goal was to swim every single day, regardless of weather. Jack only missed one day (thunderstorms were the one weather exception) and Margy only missed three. We swam in Lake Geneva (even when it rained and the temperature dropped into the sixties), in Nana and Gramp’s pool, in the Atlantic Ocean at four different beaches, out in the middle of Long Island Sound off a sailboat, at the Connecticut beach Margy enjoyed growing up, in Lake Sebago, and in Walden Pond. And I think we counted a dip or two in Uncle John’s hot tub. It felt very good to have our priorities straight! We also brought home all sorts of sand, rocks and shells, including two large horseshoe crabs. The whole lot of it sat baking in the sun on the front porch for a week before we dared to bring it inside to display.

Our biggest news of the year is not that we’ve all three been sucked into facebook (to varying degrees and we’d love to be your friends there if we aren’t already). No, the biggest news is the addition of two crazy kittens to our family. They are siblings, but Fluffy takes after her Siamese father and Doublestuff is mostly black like his mother with white markings, including a ring around his neck. They don’t train easily. Okay, they don’t train at all. But they are sure entertaining and they haven’t knocked down the Christmas tree yet.

We wish you the happiest of holidays and all the best this coming new year!

Love,

Roger, Margy and Jack