Our 2008 Christmas Letter

Welcome to our 2008 family Christmas letter. I know that if you are a regular reader of our family blog then this letter will be totally redundant to you… but that’s ok cuz I really write these letters for myself.
So this year as a family, we did a lot of fun stuff. Of course we went to Disneyland a lot, a couple zoos, got annual passes to Sea World and did lots of fun camping trips with family. After Family Camp in San Diego, Pismo Beach with Jane’s folks, Carpentaria (where our guys got to kayak with dolphins!) with Jane’s family and Big Bear with Ryan’s family we decided to take the leap into the RV world. And since storage was an issue, a tent trailer seemed to be the perfect answer! We got our little trailer in the summer but it took till October to finally venture out in it. It was super cool! We are looking forward to many more trips to come.
Ryan is still teaching at Options For Youth and in January completed his Masters (with an A+) in Education. He took his 4th trip this summer to kayak/camp on the Channel Islands and says that next year Nate will be old enough to go with him. Hmm. Ryan was sad this year when we sold his Tacoma that he has had since 1997! But we needed something to tow our trailer and a 3-seater Tacoma is a little small for family of 4.
Jane said goodbye for now to invitation making this year because it was consuming too much of her time with the boys. She is still running 4 events a year at Flipside and this year became involved in Mothers of Preschoolers (Mops) as a table leader. We had Kiddie Pool parties every week during the summer which was very “cool” and a lot of fun. This year Jane made a lot of tasty cupcakes and started designing t-shirts for moms at www.zazzle.com/MomsRockTheShirt* (yes, type the asterisk in the web address) you should go buy a t-shirt right now for a cool mom you know.
Nate, age 4
Nate is such a super fun kid. He officially potty trained in January (well that’s when he stopped wearing diapers but some days I still wonder) and started attending speech development classes once a week in February. He had a lot of new firsts; 1st dentist trip (no cavities), 1st “sleepover” (with cousin Mei-Mei), 1st amusement park w/o mom and dad (Grandma & Papa Roy took him to Knotts), 1st big boy bike, and 1st team sport (his T-ball team was the Mariners). He’s growing so big, learning so much it’s crazy. He started going to Pre-school 3 days a week in August and he really enjoys it (he tells me he doesn’t want to go EVERY day we go but it’s really that he doesn’t want to get dressed or brush his teeth or whatever it is at that moment). He is totally boy, still into Star Wars, cars, superheroes, and his new favorite… wresting. Ai-yi-yi, mommy does not encourage that one.
Zach, age 1 ½
Zach is our smarty pants. We are constantly amazed at the things he does and seems to know. The kid walked at 9 months! Zach made his pictorial debut in the May08 issue of Inland Empire Magazine when a photographer snapped his photo at our Mops meeting. Right now Zach is super obsessed with Toy Story (last month it was the Wiggles) and asks to watch it all day long (“Buz pees!”) He is a super jibba-jabber and talks and talks, saying lots of different words and word combos. He always wants to be in a tunnel and loves the song “What I like About You” by the Kinks. Whatever big brother is doing, Zachy wants to do too, even if it’s jumping off the couch or playing Star Wars guys.

Big ups to Tara Sos for making us look awesome in our pictures! (see her link on my sidebar)


Ryan decided that this year he wanted to do his own special Christmas Card to the people he works with so this is what he gave out