Richelle, Sara, Mom and Erin (my cousin)

Essie- Sara's Second to Oldest (Picture of Caleb is still pending)

Abby- Sara's Oldest

Jack's still a little too high strung- even as far as dogs go.

New Camera- More Expensive Than My Car

Christmas Letters

Trying to simultaneously work through a Christmas letter and not grit my teeth at the same time. Breathe. I cracked out a paragraph that did jokey like Christmas letters do but it was way too cynical of a jokey. Mostly because of the fact that I really don’t want to write a Christmas letter. It seemed funny to me, but I couldn’t get the voices out of my head of all the people that would be reading it and thinking,

“This really doesn’t belong in a Christmas letter.”

So I pulled back and deleted everything I wrote and then I realized that the letter may be a lot harder than I first imagined it would be. Now I’m stuck. The runway is iced over and the plane is gonna’ be grounded for a little while. And the not gritting my teeth is also not really working out.

This is really stressful.

Answering Without Listening

Richelle and her Christmas music have started their Saturday thing. I was caught trying to answer her question without actually listening to it. I’ve found that this is the great thing about yes or no questions. You don’t have to listen to a thing. You just say yes and people seem perfectly happy.

The problem is when the question comes back to visit you in another venue and you have no idea what was coming. For instance, she just came to me and said, “Can we give this to my dad and get new ones for ourselves at Costco today?”

To which I innocently asked, “We’re going by Costco today?”

“Oh my gosh!” she began yelling, “You really don’t listen to me! I asked you earlier and you said, ‘Yes. We’ll go.’”

I tried to explain the whole answering without listening concept which she found mildly interesting. But she really just wants me to get started on putting up the lights. Apparently, I said “yes” to this as well.