This Years Christmas Letter

It is time to recap a most excellent year. Here is a bit of what we've been up to:

This year Dave has delicately steered his company through some tough times and has
taken on many different roles. He has taken his turn at being the lawyer, the marketing guy, the decorator, the landscaper, the sales guy and other odd jobs that come up. He is a multi-talented partner and as a result his company has remained relatively stable. At home, Dave has stayed firmly committed to not finishing his grand and beautiful projects, namely, landscaping the backyard... all in good time ! However, he has found a new and exciting hobby...remote controlled airplanes. He paints his styrofoam plane very nicely and then promptly crashes it. It's a real stress reducer I'm sure!

I'm just glad I have a job. One of the great things about working for a hospital is that it is very stable work. On top of that I still thoroughly enjoy what I do. I've also taken up cycling and spend an hour spinning to nowhere at the gym. I can't say that I particularly enjoy sitting on a stationary bike, sweating my guts out, all the while trying to keep up with the other girls going nowhere also. The things I do to stay young!

Eleven year old Tanner is as perplexing as ever. He now demands total domination over the remote control so that he can watch the golf channel. Although he never watches anything in the normal sort of way...he entertains himself by rewinding and forwarding and skipping around whatever he's watching. Imagine watching golf in slow-motion, could there be anything more monotonous! We have all relinquished any hope of seeing a movie from beginning to end. It's just not going to happen.

Nine year old Hailey is as entertaining as ever. She has aquired her dad's compulsion to NEVER throw anything away, hence her bedroom is a fantastic mess of random treasures and clutter. Most of the time there isn't enough space on her bed to sleep. Hailey has shown great interest in doing chores for money but also has a specific idea about payment. When I offered her 50 cents to do a chore, she said "Sorry, I only take dollars." When it comes to eating she is still as picky as ever. "Can you make dinner not so gross?" she says. No doubt the future will be challenging. Still, Hailey's sense of humor is so sharp that she comes up with some pretty good material from time to time to keep us laughing. For now she is mostly charming and appreciative but that could change depending on what's cool at the moment.

2008 has proven to be one fine year. Dave and I started off by selfishly traveling to a distant Caribbean island to do some scuba diving. As we dove the world famous reefs off Bonaire and learned how to windsurf, the kids suffered at home in the cold winter. If that wasn't enough, Dave and I next went to China and left the kids home because they really needed to be in school. We climbed the Great Wall, walked the streets of Beijing and saw the amazing Terra Cotta Warriors. To add insult to injury, we floated down the Colorado River with just the Hosenfeld adults, once again neglecting the children. Hiking and rafting in Cataract Canyon was a beautiful and colorful adventure. We floated amongst the majestic, red, horseshoe canyons and even waded chest deep in the brown mucky water in order to reach a gorgeous waterfall. And that's not all! Quite spontaneously, we drove to California where a chartered dive boat took us to the kelp forests off Catalina Island. Of course we HAD to go because Dave's boss arranged the trip as a work retreat. For four days we did some scuba diving in the cold, pacific ocean swimming through thick , golden kelp and seeing things we've never seen before. Lastly, through no fault of our own, we accompanied the Hosenfeld adults on a trip to NYC and then to my dad's peaceful home town in upstate New York. The autumn colors were breathtaking as we rode bikes along the Erie Canal and walked along the leaf strew pathways of dad's favorite places. So as you may have noticed, our kids have been mightily left out in this year's travels.. Tanner couldn't care less but I have gotten some substantial grief from Hailey and have made some serious promises about next year.

Please have a safe and wonderful year and Merry Christmas!!!