It’s been three years since I sent a Christmas letter. Last I wrote, we were in the middle of the Pandemic. We’d gotten a new-to-us dog just as the schools closed. Alex’s first year of high school was all online. The first semester went pretty well… second semester, eek! 

Now Alex is less than 60 days away from his 18th birthday. I know this because the bank sent me a letter telling me so. Eek! He will graduate in the spring, and plans to attend Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. He has done well and anticipates his AP scores will earn him enough to start college with a minor in German! 

Eli is a freshman at Tucson High School. It boasts a whopping 3,200 students. Eek! The school year got off to quite a start with him coming home every couple of weeks to report a fight on campus, one serious enough for the school to go into “lock down” and for the police to be called. It’s never a great day when your kid texts you to say, “Mom, we are on lock-down right now.” Eek! The reports of fights have become less frequent, luckily. 

My work has been crazy. My boss has been out on medical leave since November and the other two administrators and I have been holding down the fort. It’s been quite a ride! 

Corey’s working at Johnson Controls. Don’t ask me what he does. They make stuff there. Out of metal, I’m pretty sure. He’s in charge of something important, like making sure that they make stuff LEANly. Lean manufacturing was invented by the Japanese, probably because they are pretty slender people, so they know how to get stuff done without a lot of waist … or is it waste? I’m not sure, but lean is a pretty big deal. Or maybe it is slender deal? Oh, Corey just commented, he wants me to add that he is the Lean Manufacturing Engineer. 

And Sea Lion. Of course you remember the dog’s name (not Seabiscuit, not Dolphin). He’s entering doggy middle age at six years old, and witnessed a car accident in which a car jumped the curb, careened across the grass, and rammed into the play structure at the park. Eek! He has PTSD and is afraid to go to the park. I didn’t know that dogs could get PTSD, but it seems to be so. 

The year was punctuated by quite a few unexpected surprises—not all of them pleasant—eek! In spite of that, we are happy and healthy. Hope your new year brings you lovely surprises, and I hope our new year brings us lovely things without any surprises.