Merry Christmas!

In lieu of a Christmas card (which I have yet again not written ...) I dug up a few favorite photos from this year to put here. It is bittersweet to get so many cards in the mail, from faithful friends and family who don't get return cards from us - such pleasure at being remembered, and at being able to catch up a bit with growing kids and various adventures, but so! difficult not to compare my actual accomplishments with the endless and ever-more-perfect list in my head of things I should have done.

Things I might have written, had I sent such a card:

Peter is lively and energetic and was, I believe, the inspiration behind the structure of the children's Sunday School program earlier in the month - it involved a reinactment of the Creation narrative, complete with interpretive dance to represent the emergence of various critters onto the earth, and there's really nobody like Peter for wriggling around energetically in church. We feel loved at our church and that makes the rest of the week easier.

Grace is doing a range of things inside and outside school, including dance and violin, and along with Peter has become a veritable encyclopedia of all things Harry Potter-related. Her analysis of Dolores Umbridge, in particular, is quite interesting. (She is, for the uninitiated, scary as hell. Dolores, I mean, as Grace is a lovely young person and not at all scary.) I've become the mother who has to remove the book from the child's hand if she wants teeth brushed or the table set, and I think that's a good sign.

We are otherwise making our way, more or less. I am astonished by how busy we are, and yet we almost always eat a dinner together that someone has made from actual ingredients. I'm planning a marathon next July with my fabulous friend Kara. About 90% of the time, I really love my job. I learned a lot about what kind of music my students listen to this year, and am a more culturally attuned person for it. Mike's working hard and at his job and is now on church council which is, I think, a sign of his life coming full Lutheran circle.

I can hardly bear how big my kids have gotten, but am also so pleased that they're interesting people who make me laugh and make me think.

So thanks for the friendship and patience, sorry about the lack of cards, and phone calls, and timely birthday greetings, and the slightly neglected yard, and the occasional late return of papers, and the other various daily instances of imperfection and finitude. We'll figure it all out eventually.