Christmas Letter

I don't send out Christmas cards anymore because I am lazy and most of the people I'd send a card to are also my friends on Facebook so I can just post "Merry Christmas everyone!" and achieve pretty much the same result of spreading Christmas cheer but in a more eco-friendly way.  However, I enjoy reading the letters that other people send to me in their holiday greetings.  Most of them are very upbeat and full of successes and adventures. The letters are always accompanied by adorable photos of the family which clearly took a lot of time and planning.

If I did write a Christmas letter, however, it would probably not sound like those letters.  It would probably sound more like this:

Dear Friends and Family,

Enclosed is a picture of the kids. You'll notice that the grass is brown, they are wearing summer clothes and neither one looks particularly enthusiastic.  That's because this picture was actually taken on the first day of school and it was about a hundred degrees outside. If the Son of Never Stops Eating's shirt looks a little small, it is. He grew a lot since I bought it. However, it is his favorite shirt and I just haven't had the heart yet to sneak into his room in the middle of the night, pick the shirt up off the floor and hide it at the bottom of the Goodwill box.

Earlier this year we had some extreme excitement when the Teenager finally got her braces taken off.  This meant that we no longer had to make a 30 mile round-trip drive down a freeway under major construction every two weeks for a five minute appointment.  This past summer, on her mission trip to Tennessee, she called us in a panic because she had stepped on her retainer and thought she had broken it, but it turned out that she'd only bent a wire.  Crisis averted.

We thought about taking a family vacation somewhere spectacular, like Alaska or Yellowstone, or maybe a six week trek through Europe, but then we remembered that marching band camp starts on August 1 and apparently there is this zero tolerance policy about missing the first week, so we ended up just driving down to Grandpa's house for a few days.  It worked out well because the kids ate all his food and saved me a fortune on my grocery bill.

In related marching band news, I sold over $500 worth of band pies for the annual fundraiser.  Let me tell you, $500 worth of pies is a lot of pie.  Also, the pies all had to be kept frozen and our freezer is just not that big.  It was really stressful at the time, but looking back, it was a hilarious family bonding experience. 

Due to a massive wind storm that came through the area in early summer, we got a new fence.  Since our old fence was original to the house, this is a dramatic improvement in the appearance of our property.  The new fence doesn't lean into the alley at an awkward angle, so our neighbors are probably also happy about the new fence, and the city has stopped sending us letters from the code enforcement officer.  Earlier in the year, we had a massive line clog in the kitchen and couldn't use the sink, the dishwasher or the laundry room.  It took about ten days to get it fixed. Homeownership is such a joy!

In other news, we also had to get new brakes for the older car and a new washing machine. Two days after the new machine was delivered, it stopped running. locked up, and started flashing codes. After seven hours on the phone with the manufacturer's customer service department, it was determined that the mystery codes meant "This washing machine is defective".  The customer service agent said that she'd never seen that code before, so she learned something new. Our second new washing machine seems to be functioning as designed.  I was so relieved that the laundry that got locked in there was some old bed sheets and not anything like our underwear or the marching band uniform.

We have a lot of exciting things to look forward to in 2017, including the Teenager taking her driving test, getting new duct work installed in our attic and starting the college application process.   This will also be my last season as a high school marching band parent.  I'm trying to decide how I feel about that.

May you have a fantastic Christmas and a wonderful New Year!