Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Year In Review: 2013 Family Christmas Letter



This has been an exciting, amazing, and very busy year for the P family! It’s such a blessing to look back and reflect on all the activities of the year. We have tried our best to capture our favorite adventures and stories from 2013 to share with our friends and family.
We are celebrating our seventh year living in downtown Bremerton. We are also celebrating our first year without a drive-by shooting, serial killings, or meth lab. We had awesome weather this summer, which made it unbearable to be in our house. This forced us outside to actually meet our neighbors. Turns out, our neighbors are mostly normal and pleasant, but we still stay away from the apartment complex that lights up like a Christmas tree on the sex-offender map. And thanks to the neighborhood effort to pick up all the used hypodermic needles in the alley, the kids can finally ride their bikes!  

Ryan is now 19 months old. It has been a real treat to watch him grow. In April, we celebrated his first birthday. His favorite part of the party was when the guests left and he had all the empty cardboard boxes to himself. Ryan is talking a lot now. When we go out driving he likes to point out cars, busses, trucks, and homeless people. He still thinks trucks are busses and he still thinks his Grandpa Roger is a homeless person but we are working on it. You know how nutritionists say that it’s healthy to eat a colorful diet? Well, Ryan must have taken this to heart because he ate approximately 50% of a Crayola crayon box (it appears that he prefers primary colors). Ryan has also shown a penchant for mixed media art when earlier this year, he removed his own diaper and finger painted with its contents. We recently discovered that Ryan is suffering from an incurable condition known as "Toddler." The symptoms include going from sickeningly sweet to punch-your-older-brother-in-the-face in less than 60 seconds. We think it’s hereditary and that he gets it from his mom. 

Jacob turned 5 years old in September. We celebrated his birthday in our newly planted backyard with a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle themed birthday party. We hired a karate instructor to teach the kids some karate moves. The instructor also brought katanas (swords), nunchucks (nunchucks), a bow (staff), and sais (three-pointed thingys) and demonstrated how to use them. Kids, weapons, and sugar turned out to be a pretty awesome combo. I don’t know about Jacob, but Ryan sure learned a lot of karate (Jacob is still suffering from his nunchuck wounds -- the doctors are hopeful he will be able to see in time for Christmas). This year Jacob has shown us his sassy side. He has threatened to run away from home several times. Unfortunately he has never made good on that promise (Husband says this is another characteristic passed down from Mom). Jacob has really been developing his interests, which as of late, include stuffed animals and art. We think he will combine these two interests and become a taxidermist when he grows up (free living room decor for life!).

Husband has been on tour with his band a lot this year. They play in exotic locations like Lakewood and Silverdale. They play for free now but we have high hopes that someday people will stop mistaking them for musician beggars. Husband completed our backyard remodel project this year. We now have a level back yard, with grass, and a nice, tall cedar fence. It’s pretty. And it keeps our neighbors from looking in our windows, which has helped minimize the surprise visits from the protective services.  

CP started her dream job working as an attorney for the local county. She has already won a trial.....well, a trial membership of “Honest Lawyer” which was cancelled after its first issue due to lack of content. CP is also trying out a new parenting technique called “outsourcing.” It's amazing how much internet surfing you can do when people in foreign countries parent for you. (Mom #5 is on Skype with Jacob as we speak, probably telling him to brush his teeth or grounding him or something). 

Let’s see, some other highlights? Well, June was a pretty exciting month. We earned a 60 cent fuel discount from Safeway and our Subaru hit 250,000 miles. More recently, in October, we learned that children can, in fact, live off of hotdogs and Cheezits for an entire month. Don’t worry, we squirted some Ranch on their plates to make sure they got their daily dose of dairy. And this Christmas we are looking forward to Jacob breaking the Guiness World Record for most consecutive times singing “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer.” He is also looking forward to singing that song at Aunt Diane’s March wedding (if we can arrange a flash mob with the Muppets (shhhh, don’t tell Aunt Diane, it’s her wedding present from us). 

So, that pretty much wraps up our year. We look forward to keeping in touch with everyone in 2014 (preferably over Facebook so that we can tweet, pin, and text all at the same time). We wish your family lots of love this Christmas season, many blessings throughout the New Year, and a never-ending supply of adventure!


Love,

The P Family

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