Come Read Our Lazy Christmas Letter

So here is our Christmas letter, which in years past would be sent to your mailbox. This year, in an innovation I'm calling "Putting The Darn Thing On The Internet Because Printing and Mailing It Is Too Much For A Slugabed Like Me," we're just gonna put it here and you get to use your precious internet time reading it instead of updating your Facetube or Mybook or Youspace or whatever you kewl kids are doing and we're not these days. You kids with your "tweeting" and "friending" and "poking" and "pinging" and other things that sound dirty... Humbug, I say!

The big news is that we seem to have survived our first year in Louisiana. It was a little touch-and-go in the summer, when the high temperatures were regularly reaching 3000 degrees, with 173% humidity... well, by my calculations anyway. But we made it. Adam, of course, loved the hot weather. We spent a lot of time in the air conditioning of the local children's museum, but when we were outside, water played an important role in Adam's summertime existence. We went to the pool a lot, and by the end of the summer, he was pretty darn close to swimming. Next year, he's going to be a swimming fool. He also found that running across the front lawn naked or nearly naked through the sprinkler was great fun. I don't know how our neighbors feel about it.

Adam turned 2 years old in January (which of course means he's fast approaching his third birthday already, but we don't want to think about that right now). And in February, he took his visiting Grandpa Ray and Grandma Beth to his first Louisiana Mardi Gras parade. He was completely exhausted by the end but refused to leave before it was over.

The visit from Ray and Beth coincided with the Saints big win in the Super Bowl. It was pretty exciting for the long-suffering locals, given the not-so-glorious past of the team formerly known as the 'Aints. And Ray and Beth got to see the Saints' victory parade, which was cold and windy but still fun.

Adam also got to experience his first camping weekend this March when we met Tori and Kevin, and Seth and Deb and Vicky at Caddo Lake State Park in East Texas. He was a natural when it came to s'mores and canoeing, but a two year old boy and tent camping are a lot of work for parents. It was a fun weekend, but that boy sure wore us out.

Beth had had such a good time in N'awlins in February that she came back in April. She flew directly to the Big Easy, and we met her there for a weekend of cable cars, the zoo, the aquarium, and gators.

And we had our first non-family guest in May when Colin extended his Southern work trip with a few days in our sleepy hamlet. We weren't able to show him much of the area because we still didn't know much about it ourselves, but at least he got to sample the end-of-the-season crawfish.

In June we trooped out to Washington for Sharon and Ben's wedding. It was as close to a family reunion as we're going to get, and it was fun to see everyone again (or for the first time).

After a couple of quiet - and hot - months, we flew up to Iowa for Rebecca and Bob's wedding. Again, fun to see everyone, and we had a good time exploring Pella and Knoxville, topped off by Evey's first-ever kayak experience, with a huge assist from Tori and Elizabeth.

In late October, we received a third visit from Beth (I wonder if she likes it down here?) and a second from Ray. They helped us through Halloween and had a good time collecting pecans at a local farm. Adam was a tiger (in LSU colors - don't blame me; if Jean does the work, she gets to choose the colors).

A couple of weeks later, I ran in the San Antonio Rock 'n' Roll 1/2 marathon. It was a fun weekend with Jennifer, Bryan, Stormy, and Blake. We did a little pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving while we were there, which allowed us to have a nice, quiet Thanksgiving here. It was our first Thanksgiving in a while that we didn't travel, and it was a nice change of pace.

We were going to do something similar for Christmas, but Jean got a hankering for the sea, so we're going to go to Gulf Shores, AL for a few days next week. But first, we've got to get Adam through the holiday without him exploding. The last few years were relatively easy because he didn't really grock the whole Christmas thing. He just didn't care one way or the other. This year is different. He is fully invested in Santa and presents and trees and lights and candy canes and stockings and snowmen... the whole nine-yards. We will soon find out if Adam received the skid-steer tractor he loudly and proudly announced to Santa that he wanted for Christmas, and the anticipation is killing the poor kid. I like to think of it as a tough but necessary lesson in patience that will be good for him in the long term. Adam is not so sanguine.

Aside from the Christmas excitement, the other big news lately is that Adam has started full-time pre-school. He's been going to school 3-4 days a week for the last few weeks, and he's enjoying it a lot. Combine that with his nearly complete potty training, and he's gone from toddler to boy in the blink of an eye.

We wanted to get him in pre-school so that I could start working again. I'll be teaching a class at University of Louisiana Monroe in the spring, and I'm looking to get certified as a group exercise instructor this year, with the long-term goal of becoming a personal trainer. We figure it's something I'll enjoy and can do wherever Jean's job with Deere takes us. For now, we're enjoying our respite from the crazy summer weather and looking forward to the crawfish season.

Now, you kids get off my lawn.