Letters of Christmas Past

Noah and I write a Christmas letter every year and if you've never received one from us, I'm not surprised. We've not once gotten around to mailing them. I came upon two of our old letters while cleaning up the hard drive for your enjoyment.

Christmas 2005:

Dear Family and Friends,

This is our third attempt at writing a Christmas letter, but hopefully the first one we’ll get sent out. (Last year’s letter started the same way).

This year has been pretty eventful for our family. The main event, of course, happened on June 10th with the addition of Alex Rafe, weighing in at 8 lbs 13 oz (though, as of November 18th, he’s tipping the scales at 19 lbs). Gabby was overjoyed, and announced through the halls of the hospital, “We have a brother!” He spends his days smiling and chewing on everything in his reach.

Gabrielle turned 3 this past July and has discovered princesses, the color pink, and that she doesn’t like being called “Gabby,” its “Gabrielle.” She recently started ballet and looks pretty dang cute in her leotard and pink tights. She had her ballet recital on December 12th, and was the cutest three-year-old on the stage. Gabby’s been a good help with Alex (most of the time), and affectionately calls him “[her] little squishy baby.”

Noah is finishing his second degree in school, at BYU in Manufacturing Engineering. He finishes in December (with about 190 credits) and is currently looking for a job--know of any? Also this year, Noah pretty much finished our 1000 sq. ft. addition, and the remodeling of the remaining 500 sq. feet of our house (see below). If that’s not enough, he is also finishing up rebuilding the engine of his “race car” that blew out a year ago. If anyone cares, in his spare time, Noah plays with CNC machines in our garage. If you don’t know what a CNC machine is, Noah now has the capability of making personalized key chains (I’ll finally get one with my name on it—says Kaila).

Kaila is also finishing her degree at BYU, in Vocal Performance, and had her senior recital December 6th. She really rocked the house (In an opera sort of way)—says Noah. She will have 5 credits left after this semester and will graduate in April (horary).

This past summer, our family took a trip to California where we visited the beach, and Mexico. We didn’t intend on driving in Mexico, but that’s the last time Kaila will be taking directions from Noah. We got out alive with an authentic Mexican Prada purse. Our $300 car made it all the way to Mexico and back. It died three days after we returned home, so we had to get another car.

This is such a fun time of life for us. We honestly couldn’t be happier. Merry Christmas everyone!

Love,

Noah, Kaila, Gabrielle, and Alex

And then there was Christmas '06 that we started but almost as a joke, knowing full well it probably wouldn't make it out either:

Dear Everyone,

We had another great year. It started out with a January, went on through several more months, and here we are at December. I guess you could say we faced 2006 head on and kicked its ass.

Kaila went to school until April, at which time she graduated. Kaila then focused all of her efforts on finding a new house, buying it, decorating it, and then presenting it to Noah some time in the fall. She also raised two children and started a blog.

Noah found a job at a place called IntelliServ, he is a Quality Engineer. He began working on a master’s degree. He also started working on the new house.
Today I finished writing our 7th Christmas card. Maybe this year's our year!