Family Christmas Letter 2021

Dear Friends and Family,

We hope you are having a blessed season of Advent and are eagerly awaiting Christmas like Lily and Jackson are. It is amazing to see how their anticipation and love for candles and carols, special Christmas books and home-made ornaments grows each year. They love to rearrange our nativity sets, have Christmas music video dance parties, watch some classic kids Christmas movies (The Grinch, The Snowman, and Charlie Brown), turn on Christmas lights in the living room or under their new bunk beds, or put on their Santa Lucia Day crowns.

Looking back over the year, in many ways it was a quiet year of staying home. We did have a great summer with our big trip to Maryland to see Evan’s family and many of our dear DC friends. That was followed by a little trip up to see my parents in Northern Wisconsin. Both trips were amazing and just as we were leaving someone got quite sick with a (to our knowledge non-covid) illness. Actually, come to think of it, that is also the story of Thanksgiving where we got to see lots of family and then were sick with colds for several weeks afterwards. But we are ending the year really grateful for our health and the ability to see family.

We keep meeting more wonderful friends at the park and keeping up with old friends that way too. This summer we met some new friends (a Wheaton grad) who invited us to join them at their local church. We’ve been walking down to Meadowbrook Church all Fall and really appreciating the proximity, the preaching, and the opportunity to connect with families who live nearby and have kids our kids’ ages.

Evan

Evan was able to carry on with in-person teaching all year. This is now his seventh year at his school. This fall he took on new responsibilities as a teacher-leader as well as some technology-instruction roles at school. This has meant dabbling some in the world of administration. He’s been learning a lot about teaching teachers, is grateful for his new head of school, and is looking forward to Jackson and Lily joining him at school next year. He was Jackson’s soccer coach this Fall, which was awesome and more work than he thought it might be. Jackson’s best friend Eli was on the team, so it was fun for the whole family to go out to games. Lily got to sit next to Eli’s little sister Rory, and I was able to chat with my dear friend Gwendolyn (Eli’s mom) as we cheered the boys on.

Evan also took on doing nightly Spanish Duolingo with Jackson, and our days are now peppered with stray Spanish words and phrases. In the evenings, he’s been reading aloud to the kids as they go to sleep, and reading The Hobbit to Jackson was pretty amazing. Another highlight of the year for Evan has been starting a bi-monthly, on-line book club with some of his good friends. He has also started work on a long-term project that he is calling, A Reader’s Lectionary, in which he will pull out bits of his favorite books that correspond to each day of the year and expound on their significance in a short reflection. If you want in on getting some email updates about these, shoot him an email. In another very good year of reading, his favorite books of the year have been Angela’s Ashes (the best of the year), For the Glory: The Untold and Inspiring Story of Eric Liddell, Hero of Chariots of Fire, The Chosen, Okay for Now, and A Tale of Two Cities.

Jackson (age 6)

Jackson learned to read this year! He made steady progress all last winter and then in the spring it just seemed to click and he’s been off. He loves to first thing in the morning sit on the couch with a pile of level three readers and giggle to himself as he reads. He’s still our numbers boy too, currently working on his multiplication tables. His favorite way to use them is card game “Multiplication War.” Evan’s been teaching him some board games as well: Settlers, Carcassonne, and, now that he can read and add so well, Dominion (the toughest part is the shuffling). He had a great soccer season with an awesome coach, and besides scoring and saving lots of goals, he could always be relied upon to cheer his teammates on when he wasn’t playing. He also started swim lessons after soccer season ended, and is making great progress there too. My mom, Grandma Debbie, and I are teaching him piano, and he’s coming along beautifully and he loves when it’s time to do piano with Grandma on my phone. His favorite books of this year have been series Nate the Great, Young Cam Jansen, Henry and Mudge, Katie Woo, Ana & Andrew, Oliver and Amanda Pig, and anything about space or artic exploration. In person, he will ask you what your favorite planet is. His favorite planet is Saturn, because of the rings and all the moons. And he might add, it’s also the planet for Saturday, his favorite day of the week because Daddy stays home and they can play lots of games. He also lost three teeth this summer, and has many plans for that 75 cents.

Liliana (age 3 1/2)

Lily has been a bundle of joy and passion this year, in true three year old fashion. She wept and screamed through her 3-year-old wellness-check-up and then when we got home all she wanted to do was read books about doctors for weeks afterwards. Now, her doctor kit is one of her very favorite toys. For Halloween she was a doctor. She has her own box of band-aids and now puts them on herself (or anyone else who will let her) when a cut arises. She is unsure whether she wants to be a doctor or a super hero when she grows up, and often combines both of those dress-up outfits in creative combinations. After almost no interest in knowing any of the names of her letters this spring, she now is doing phonics letter blending charts well, and can count to 29. (Currently she thinks sixty is what comes after 29.) She loves to play with Jackson, and their capacity for interaction increases weekly (it seems to me in equally positive and negative ways). Her favorite books this year have been Mercy Watson, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, The Monster at the End of this Book, The Red Carpet, Sophie’s Squash, and The Complete Adventures of Curious George. She is still devoted to her dolls. This year she gave them names: the baby doll formerly known as “Baby” is now “Wella-Bella-Baby” and the doll from her friend Rory is now “Rory-Baby.” One of her favorite things is for me to tell stories about “Little Mama Lily and her babies.”

Amy

My year has been marked by trying my hand at homeschooling. It’s been a joy to watch the kids flourish, and a challenge to fit our long walk and my own writing into our day. I’m both glad for this extra season with the kids, and looking forward to more writing time next year when we plan to send them to Evan’s school. I have been making excellent progress on my 7 year Reading the Newbery project and have only a handful left to finish! (But who’s counting?) I have also been able to put together and share some of our family’s home liturgies and kid services, and I’m pleased with how those have turned out. I have read some really great books this year, my favorites probably have been the two Dallas Willard books Divine Conspiracy and Renovation of the Heart (this has been the year of Dallas Willard for me, I love him so much) but I also really loved Try Softer, Paradox Lost: Uncovering your True Identity in Christ, Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep, and The Making of Biblical Womanhood. I have read great fiction too, but the stand-out books this year have been non-fiction, mainly spiritual formation and memoir.

If you want to read more about our summer trip, here’s a blog post about that. Or if you want a peak into our ordinary days here’s one about that. Some of my favorite things I’ve written have been for the church year at home with children: Ordinary Time, Lent, Easter, Pentecost, and Advent. And of course I have some new lists of books: 40 picture books for 2 year olds, and 7 books on mothering and my big birthday list of books from last year.

We hope that you are waiting for Christmas with hope and anticipation to match Jackson and Lily’s! And we hope that we can see you in person very soon.

Love,

Amy, Evan, Jackson & Lily