We have sent out a Christmas letter for twenty years and for a girl who writes every day, this year was tough. Every time I sat down to do it, I’d write five minutes of crap and then surf for crap on the time-sucking net. I found out that the Kardashians photoshop their card, Michael Jordan got kicked off a golf course in Florida for wearing cargo shorts and the way to make your crinkly, aging neck seem more youthful is to wear a scarf. Drrrrr………………
But I got it done in the nick of time………………a Festivus miracle.
So…………we had a little party this summer. We cleaned up and invited the whole clan to come celebrate the day that Maggie and Nathan got hitched. Contrary to what you may have heard about Kansas and our peoples, in this case the new Mr. and Mrs. are not cousins. Near as we can tell.
In August, Mal bid the parents adieu (that’s French for I can’t get out of here fast enough) and departed for college. She rarely makes a home visit for the obvious reason that we are here. She is a dance major and had her first gig at the new performing arts center this fall. We paid admission to get a glimpse of her, bought her some dinner afterwards and then returned her to the dorm and her pretend family.
Will is a senior at K-State and working in a grocery store as a bagger and weekend food demonstrator. He may have found his college job passion with an electric skillet and vast refrigerated bunkers of food at his disposal. He is a weekend warrior at the Hy-Vee (where there’s a helpful smile in every aisle) and when he finally made it home for Thanksgiving, he smelled like tortilla-crusted tilapia.
Maggie and Nathan (and their little dog, too) are happy and living about a mile from us. Maggie is in her 3rd year of teaching and Nathan is still at Sprint, thus providing a Friends and Family Entitlement for our cell phones. Unlike the other two, they show up around here often to eat dinner while their dog roams around snacking on wayward underpants.
This was the year that we became empty nesters, which was quite sad for about three days. It didn’t take us long to figure out that cooking and picking up after ourselves wasn’t nearly as labor intensive as when the house was full. We’ve had grand plans to travel abroad (or maybe to Omaha) but with two kids in college we instead walk the dog, go to work, come home, yell at the t.v., go to bed, rinse and repeat.
Whether to carry on with this letter or not has been the dilemma of the weekend in the wake of so much grief and sadness in recent days. We decided to continue with what we hope to accomplish every year, which is to remind you that you are loved, that you are the shiny ornament in our tree of life and that more than ever, we wish you and those you love a merry little Christmas. Until next year………