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To those of you wondering where I've been for the last three weeks, I've been in Utah. But now I'm back so you can all breathe a sigh of relief.

Indiana is currently shut down due to 4 inches of snow (school is cancelled, the airport is shut down and no one is leaving their house) but luckily we didn't experience any delays on our flight home Wednesday. I was an awful picture taker in Utah because I left my nice camera in Indiana so I'm afraid pictures of our visit will have to wait until I get copies from those who took them.

While your Christmas may be over, ours has just begun. Santa will be stopping by our place tomorrow night, so on my calendar our Christmas card isn't late yet. And so folks, here it is--our first one EVER to make it out of my computer and onto yours.

Dear Everyone,

Here goes our 7th attempt at getting a Christmas letter out (none have made it to the mail box yet, but that doesn’t keep us from trying).

For those of you wondering why you haven’t seen us around lately, it’s because we moved to Columbus, Indiana in January of last year where Noah works for Cummins. We finally sold our Orem house in October, after having it on the market for one year and are now living in a beautiful house that we totally love, which is a big improvement on the small apartment we were living in.

Since our first attempt at writing a Christmas letter, we’ve somehow acquired 3 children. Gabrielle is now seven, Alex is four and Oliver is 1.

Gabrielle is a second grader at xxxxxx elementary (which looks strikingly like a prison from the outside). She loves friends, the color pink, climbing trees, and keeping her mom in line when she tries to break rules. For example: a few months ago, Kaila took the kids to a movie and brought her own drink in. She made the mistake of telling Gabby to “just keep quiet about it because it’s against the rules.” During the entire length of the movie, Gabby was beside herself with worry, convinced that at any moment the police would arrive and haul her mom off. It didn’t help when a few days later Kaila got pulled over for speeding. While waiting for the ticket, Gabby asked her if the reason she got pulled over was because she took her own drink into the movie theater.

Alex loves playing the Wii, fighting bad guys, being with friends, and riding his bike. Occasionally he carries around an imaginary boomerang, which Gabby loves to grab out of the air just before he catches it, so it gets taken away from time to time. As I type this, Alex is shooting lightning bolts out of Christmas ornaments, to give you an idea of the excitement he brings into our home.

Oliver loves breaking things, playing with outlets, turning the computer off when someone is using it, climbing on things and getting stuck, opening the dishwasher while it’s running and pulling out knives, hiding in cupboards, and finding balls. He keeps us busy and keeps our heart rates up.

Kaila spends most of her time on disaster control, but when she gets a minute to herself she blogs, decorates, sings, or goes for a run. She’s super happy about the move because it means she’s only 30 minutes away from Indiana University which has one of the top music schools in the country. She plans on auditioning in one year for the master’s degree program.

Noah has kept a pretty busy schedule this year by: continuing to be just plain awesome, working 3rd shift (a.k.a. graveyard) at Cummins as the production manager, getting totally sick during the move to our new house, and finishing his Master’s degree. That’s right, at the end of this month you may all refer to Noah as “Master Noah.”

Well that pretty much sums it up. We hope that you’re all doing well and missing us terribly. Merry Christmas!

Love,
Noah, Kaila, Gabby, Alex, and Ollie