Christmas Letter

Dear Family and Friends,

As you well know, Christmas cards are late again this year. We've decided to just post our Christmas letter to our blog since we've been unable to get a family picture as we've done in years past, our eldest hates the camera. We'll add some pictures taken this year to the blog. The year has gone by so fast we scarcely realized Christmas was approaching. We finished our shopping on the 22nd of December. Many exciting things have happened this year, sit down for an interesting read.

We began the year well, living our lives with business as usual. In late February, we received a surprise, Sam’s mom called us and asked if we would like to have Sam’s oldest son, Shane, come live with us. We of course gave a resounding, “Yes,” and Shane arrived the first week of March. The same week Shane arrived, Sam, Aurora, and Karma were working as extras on a feature film entitled, “Will” due out 2009. Shortly after Shane’s arrival, he found work as an extra on the same film and met his new best friend, Austin, who lives in Austin, Texas.

Spring was both bumpy and busy for us as we went through a dichotomy shift with a new member in our household. We also continued our participation in home school socials on a weekly basis and attended monthly field trips that included a hike in a nature preserve.

Summer came quicker than we expected and we found two members of our household participating in the Landmark Forum. This was an exciting adventure for both Sam and Andrea and we highly recommend the experience to all of our family and friends.

August found us celebrating three birthdays in our household, starting with Shane, who went to a movie with friends, then enjoyed dinner at Red Lobster afterward. Caedmon celebrated his birthday at Austin’s Park and Pizza, an establishment that offers go carts, laser tag, an arcade and many other fun activities. Andrea enjoyed a reasonably quiet birthday, planning her own birthday party that a friend hosted and just having a quiet afternoon of food and conversation.

In September we headed out for the open road to keep our promise to Sam’s Grammy and see New Hampshire in the fall. Instead of driving directly to New Hampshire, we drove North out of Texas, stopping to visit with another homeschooling family in Norman, Oklahoma. From there, we drove to Minneapolis, Minnesota where we camped for two nights and visited the Mall of America. We believe the mall is so named because it has every retail store offered in America. After the mall, we drove to Michigan and visited with Andrea’s brother’s family for several days. Our last stop in September was to spend 10 days visiting with another homeschooling family outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. While there, we went up to visit with Andrea’s aunts and uncles in Franklin.

On the first of October, we finally headed to New Hampshire to visit with Sam’s family. We had a picnic lunch on the Atlantic seawall, visited a historical festival, had dinner with Sam’s aunt, lunch with his cousins, and visited Grammy several times. We also enjoyed several games of croquet at Grammy’s house. During our visit, we took a drive up into the mountains to see the fall foliage, this practice is called “leaf peeping”. After leaving New Hampshire, we drove to Vermont to see the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream factory before heading down to Raleigh, North Carolina to visit with friends that relocated earlier this year. We spent a week there and helped celebrate their son’s 16th birthday.

Upon returning to Texas, we have settled temporarily in Converse, Texas, which is just outside of San Antonio. We found a four bedroom house at a very reasonable price in a pretty quiet neighborhood. We intend to relocate outside of Texas, though it may not be until 2010. Karma participated in the Landmark Forum in December and found it to be just as exciting as Mom and Dad did. We had a good Thanksgiving with Andrea’s mom and aunt and spent Christmas with them as well.

See you in the new year!!