Merry Christmas!!

As I sit down to write this letter, my heart is overwhelmed with the memories of this last year, both of our own experiences & those of our friends & family. This year has been what seems a constant reminder of the fragility of life. We have walked with friends & family through death, illness, and life-changing accidents as well as births, marriages, new jobs, big birthday celebrations, and even bigger wedding anniversaries. All in all it has been a good year, a blessed year. But my heart remains heavy for those who cannot say the same.

So today we give thanks for the abundant blessings in our lives, for our health, for our family & friends, and for the wonderful opportunities God continues to present to us. We celebrated L’s first birthday & K’s 40th, both in July! And we spent a week in the Pacific Northwest with K’s entire family to celebrate his mom & dad’s 50th wedding anniversary! How fantastic is that?!

Our travels took the three of us around the world to places like Sanibel FL, Phoenix, Madison WI, Vancouver BC, and most recently Cape Town (South Africa…with L!). We spent many fun days of summer up in Michigan at my folks’ lake house and had a fun family reunion in Pennsylvania.

L is an awesome little boy. He is such a joy to have in our family. He has the sweetest temperament, smiles & laughs so easily, has a long attention span for playing & looking at books, enjoys our family meals together (most days), and LOVES the freedom walking has brought to him! Come Christmas, he will be almost 18 months old! It’s hard to believe that much time has passed since he was born. It has been a blink.

The Wonderdogs continue to be, well, wonderful. Max is 5 this year & Syd will turn 13 in February 2011. They both continue to play well with each other & increasingly with L. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that L has been known to sit down with a (almost-empty) jar of treats and proceed to feed them one by one to each of the dogs until the jar is empty… That will make any baby your best friend!

We continue to host house concerts with such wonderful musicians as Danny Flanigan, Tad Armstrong & Stasia Demos, and Jeff Black and will be rounding out the year with poet Kelsea Habecker & musician Liz Janes performing a joint winter celebration. And Stone Soup – the weekly soup dinner in our home – is still going strong.

K & I both have ramped up our work with our non-profits, Ball Project (www.ballproject.com) & The Viewfinder Project (www.theviewfinderproject.org). For me, this meant resigning from the board of directors of the Harrison Center of the Arts as well as closing my darkroom, two big changes this year.

And how can I not mention that our beloved Butler University Bulldogs went up against Duke in the NCAA basketball finals! And only lost by 2 measly points!! We were there in the stands cheering on Butler! It was awesome.

That’s our year in a nutshell. We’d love to hear what the last year has brought to you when you get a chance. In the meantime, you are always welcome in Indianapolis! Many blessings to each of you this Christmas season & always.

All our love,
K, M, L and Syd & Max the Wonderdogs

(This photo was taken this summer by our friend Stacy Wasmuth, Blue Candy Photography.)