Writing the yearly letter

It was ‘Almost Heaven in 2007’. Now we are ‘Doing Great in 2008’. Can’t wait to be ‘Feelin fine in 2009’. But seriously- this years’ is a hard Christmas letter to write. The year of 2008 has had its ups and downs. Chronologically speaking the year started out great. We were thriving in Iowa. The winter was bleak but the sun finally came out to greet us. Troy finished up his fellowship in Iowa City and we got our next assignment to Washington DC with Troy being assigned as staff at his place of residency, Walter Reed. So we loaded up the truck and we moved to Ole DC. Capital Hill that is (no swimming pools or movie stars- I will be quitting that now). We moved in July and then in September the news came. Troy would be deploying to Iraq for 6 months. Sigh! So now we are about 1/3 the way through his being gone, and I have no one to nag about writing the Christmas letter. Not a problem you say? Wrong you would be! Like Yoda I am speaking....

Here is our yearly card completion ritual. I orchestrate the taking of photos. Every other year the adults are featured in with the kids. This year is an exception. Since T was leaving we had another nice photo this year. I pick out the cards, buy the stamps, make up the list and then- want that monkey off my back asap so I can enjoy the letters coming in knowing that they got mine first and therefore have to comment in their card about how great it was to hear from me. This never really happens because Troy feels that nothing motivates his creativity in Christmas card writing better than the 11th hour deadline. I can write a pretty good letter or even the occasional poem that is acceptable (to me) and he will shoot it down because it just isn’t quite what he was going for. But he won’t know what he was going for until around Dec 18th or so. Now we are apart for Christmas and that is sad, but there is no one to bicker about the card with. Sometimes there is a silver lining-less bickering.

So please forgive if our letter’s not up to standard this year (the pressure your yearly compliments add to our plate!) and know that I had complete creative control and accept complete criticism and blame. Troy says he is going to write a letter this year from Iraq and email it to me, but without me to nag him- I don’t really see that happening…. Does his reading my blog count as nagging? I’ve done the first 4 steps- it’s your turn sweetie. Turn on the letter writing juice and pretend it’s Dec 20th.

On a side note I have never and most likely never will use the headlines 'Doing Great in 2008', 'Feeling fine in 2009' and so on and so forth.