Christmas 2008

Dear Friends and Family,
Merry Christmas! I hope you all have had a terrific year. It has been a great year for our family-we’re together, healthy, and happy. The children are all doing well. They just keep growing, even though I beg them not to! This has been an uneventful year, which has been a good thing! No big events or news, just trying to enjoy each day as it comes.
Anna is 9 years old now and in the third grade. She is getting more mature, which is neat to watch, and is incredibly responsible and nurturing-definitely the leader of the bunch! She has such a good heart and loves her family passionately. Anna enjoys ballet, reading, horses (riding them, painting them, reading about them, looking at pictures of them), and being with her friends.
Ryan is also growing so quickly. He’s 7 years old and in the second grade. He loves his teacher and has really come out of his shell this school year socially. He still loves to build, create, and design. He has big dreams, much larger than the resources available, which frustrates him sometimes. He loves playing and building Legos and is getting quite good at it! He went to a “Lego Engineering” camp for a week over the summer, and has definitely been practicing what he learned.
Sara May is such a big girl now. She is the delight of the family, and has fulfilled her role as “baby of the family” quite nicely! She is an excellent communicator and knows how to get what she wants. Her shoulders, arms, and hands are slowly getting stronger. She is able to bend down and pick things up and can feed herself finger foods. She continues to go to occupational therapy twice per week. I’m always impressed at the way she is able to improvise and use what little strength and movement she has to accomplish so much. She is learning to color with markers and is even able to watercolor with a paintbrush!
Rich and I are doing well. We love having 3 kids to round out the family. We celebrated our 10 year anniversary this year…we actually got to go out on a date! Something that’s hard to come by these days with the kids and our work schedules. Rich is still working (in retail) and I am still working as a school psychologist. Since the journey of school and child-bearing has ended, it seems like we’re in a place of trying our best to enjoy the daily routine-though rarely is there ever a dull moment!
We wish you love and laughter this Christmas season and a joyous New Year!
Love,
Rich, Lori, Anna, Ryan, and Sara