Our Annual Family Letter

2010

Tonight I am considering two thoughts; Luke 2:19: "But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart." and the unfortunate event that my hard drive died and is holding hostage thousands of pictures I cannot share with you.

It causes me to pause when I consider that Mary knew Jesus was the Son of God and that he was quite literally on loan to her. It's a bit awe-inspiring to think of how his birth was announced to her and that she heard so many prophetic utterances about him before she even saw his face. It makes my heart sad that once Jesus started alluding to his death Mary knew her days to hug him and tell him she loved him were numbered.

I wonder if this knowledge made Mary wise enough in her young age to let the little things slide and spend as much time with Jesus as she could? I wonder if knowing her time to 'mother' would be cut short enabled her to enjoy all the little things? I wonder what it was like for her to see him creating worlds in the sand and then change the world on the cross?

Maybe you've wondered those things too, and now you're wondering what my hard drive has to do with Mary?

Just as the Bible shows us snippets of Mary and Jesus' life, there are parts of our lives that everyone gets to see; the kind of stuff that makes it into the family Christmas letter. We don't know much of anything about Mary, Joseph and Jesus' mundane everyday life. Yet we all know that the major milestones in life are really the culmination of a bunch of little moments. And I think that Mary knew that too. Even though the major events in Jesus life would be told over and over, she had a VIP pass to the behind-the-scenes moments that supported them.

That's what 2010 was for us. We had two major milestones; Brooklyn started school and we moved to a new house. But if that's all I shared this would be a very short letter. Our mundane everyday doesn't seem noteworthy, so I probably would have filled this page with pictures and an accompanying story or two, but I can't go about writing this letter that way as my hard drive hasn’t made his demands know.

After I lamented that fact I began to embrace my 2010 as I think Mary may have embraced being Jesus' mother, treasuring all the things she would experience and not be able to adequately share. Like the way your child's laughter makes gloomy days brighter; the way answering a million questions gives you a new perspective. How love becomes simple in the mind of a child and adventure never ends in their imagination.

Having a year lacking in major milestones and being without the pictures I wanted to share has reminded me to cherish the little moments and be grateful I experienced them. The truth of the matter is that every moment means as much as every milestone because each day is to be cherished.

Now, I'm not going to stop taking pictures and I hope that next year I'll share many of them in our letter, but the process will be new for me as I'll see each moment captured in picture as a fragment of the mural of our life.

We hope that this Christmas season finds you surrounded by family and friends you love; enjoying and treasuring as many moments as you possibly can, the big ones and little ones alike.

Merry Christmas,

Nick, Amanda, Isabella, Brooklyn, Kathryn & Nolan

Here-we-go-A-Carolling

I was majorly bummed when I received a letter home from school letting me know that the kindergartens would not be participating in this year's Christmas Concert. Last year they did and Isabella was the cutest nose picker there ever was. Luckily our church did a Kid's Christmas Musicalish performance and so the girls got to get dressed up and sing a little. The performance consisted of singing, with the bigger kids talking in between songs. Then there was a cute little slide show.

Brooklyn was having a blast. I think she sucked in enough air to sing an opera every time she needed to breath. She twirled her skirt back and forth. She was adorable. Then she came home and caught her sister's stomach bug, poor girl! She had a great time. And in the slide show I learned that their favourite parts of Christmas are decorating with mom and dad. Isn't that sweet? Isabella also did great and I am so happy she wasn't the nose picker! She did get bored after the first song, but that's my girl.

Merry Christmas Everyone!! I hope you got to enjoy some little people singing in the season.

Magic on Main

We live in a great little town that celebrates itself often. We have "Buy Local" campaigns and really try to put on good events throughout the year. I have so much to learn of what our town has to offer, and I'm glad this year's Christmas event caught my eye in the paper. It was called Magic on Main and there were various retailers open late where you could get good deals, some of them had craft stations for the kids and there was some free food and horse drawn wagon rides around the 'downtown' core. I had never been and wasn't sure what we were in store for but it was a blast. We spent most of the evening having fun with the kids so the pics are few, but this is my favourite store window display. There is something about white lit Christmas trees that gets me.

This guy walked up and down the main strip talking to people, pointing out attractions and just making the evening merry. The girls were absolutely astounded by his height and he offered to pose for a picture with us. He also let all the girls jump up to give him high fives and started calling Nick; 'my brother from another mother', due to Nick's height. It was fun to hear him talking to all the other families on the street and pointing everyone to the highlights, which seemed to be the hot dogs on a stick.

There was a really cool balloon castle made by our friend Blake who is AWESOME and had THE BEST FLOAT in the town's Santa Claus Parade, I'll post the pic soon. The kids could stand in line and meet Santa. A fun treat.

Inside one of the shops we made some tree ornaments and the girls discovered this piano. It was so nice to spend an evening with 3/4 of our kids able to participate in the events and see them enjoy what was going on. We're still learning to let them do their own thing, but that's a process I'm sure and we'll get better at it each time we go to something like this.

Magic on Main was a great start to our Christmas celebrations!