Christmas Letter Top 10 List

Each year we write a top 10 list with highlights of our year for our "usual" Christmas letter. We thought we'd save trees & money this year though and post it on our blog for viewing...plus, this way the pictures are in color and bigger too! This year was marked by the adjustment to our home in America/Kansas City/Overland Park and having two growing boys! In 2008 our Andrew became a toddler and Henry became the big brother of a toddler. In honor of their expanding vocabularies, our 7th annual top 10 list is entitled, "Cute Things Our Boys Said."

10. "Andrew is my very best friend." Although they don't act like it...he did say it! :) Actually, it has been fun to watch the boys develop into playmates over the course of the year. I still do a lot of mediating, but it is nice to see the occasional sharing of grapes or Goldfish or even sometimes a train!

9. "Sientate." Many know that Mike attempted to speak only Spanish to Henry when he was born. Although English is more prevalent in our house today, a few Spanish phrases are heard once in a while...this one by Henry! It means "sit down" which Andrew does not like to do in his highchair.

8. "I've got an idea, we could go to the train museum!" Henry for a while was asking numerous times daily if we could go to the train museum--and I WANTED to say yes...but the issue was that the train museum he was referring to was in St. Louis! We did make it to St. Louis a few times this year though--once to visit our friends the Powells who were in Chicago for a few weeks from Italy and met us in St. Louis. We also enjoyed going back for Jessica Motchan's wedding in June and then again at Thanksgiving with the whole Wilkerson family. Henry enjoyed the train museum on two of those trips. Hopefully he's held over for a while since my parents will likely be in Florida until July!

7. "Remember when we went to Lucy's house and Lucy, Andrew and I climbed on Daddy?" I have no idea how the kid has such a good memory. He talks about things that happened months and months ago and remembers very specific details. We did go to "Lucy's (& Alex, Joe, & Christine's) house" on our summer vacation for one evening of fun. Our summer vacation led us to Indianapolis, Purdue, Chicago, Wisconsin, and Michigan...when gas prices were over $4. We had a lot of fun visiting everyone on our way though! Thanks sooo much to all who hosted! We enjoyed a similar long drive for my friend Julie Young's wedding in Chicago in August.

6. "Uh Oh." It's Andrew's first two word phrase (and only)! It seems that he does things just so he can use the phrase! :) We had to put atleast one Andrew quote in this letter! :)

5. "Daddy's going to wire practice and we will go and say, 'Go, Daddy, Go!'" (He meant "choir" practice...we joined the "Thanksgiving to Christmas choir" at our church.) We've enjoyed getting involved at our churches (yes, two). Henry cheers better than most three year olds I think...due to the fact that in 2009 he attended many of his cousins' soccer/baseball/basketball games and "knows" how to cheer. It's been so nice having my sister's family in town.

4. "I'm going to graduate Friday." In August, Mike's brother David graduated from University of North Texas and we got to cheer then too! David is now the stage manager for a brand new theater at the UT-Austin. We're so very proud of him and glad that Henry wants to follow in his footsteps--whatever Friday that might be! We have also been grateful that Mike's brother Matthew continues to work for Southwest Airlines and can fly up from Dallas for free! We enjoyed three special visits with him this year--on one he treated us to our first Royals game!

3. "Hooray! Is this our tent?" We camped with two boys over Labor Day with our new "mansion" tent...and after setting it up in the dark with the help of the neighbors (we were holding two tired boys) I thought it was funny that Henry had to ask, "Is this our tent?" We hope to do more camping now that Andrew is walking and sleeping through the night.

2. "Knock, knock...Boo Bear" Mike's parents visited us at Halloween and witnessed the dawning of our costumes, representing Henry's favorite story at the time--he's now onto Dr. Seuss.

1. "Baby Jesus was in Mary's tummy in the hay and then Jesus popped out of Mary's tummy." If only birth were that easy! Happy Birthday Jesus! Merry Christmas everyone!

We will be celebrating Christmas in Denver this year and are looking forward to a trip to CA in January. We also look forward to hosting YOU in KC in 2009! Happy new year!

Love,

Mike, Julie, Henry & Andrew