My sister-in-law had the genius idea of posting her Christmas letter to her blog. Since I never get my letter completed and mailed before the New Year (if at all), I decided to follow her lead.
I've been terribly disappointed in myself for not getting our wedding thank-you's completed and mailed, so you'll see references to that in the letter I'm posting here. Hopefully they WILL come out, even if not until our first anniversary (Pray it doesn't come to that!)
As usual, whenever I have a chance to sit down and play catch up, something else slams into our lives, and concerns of etiquette continually take a back seat to real life. Most recently it was the late night phone call last Friday, informing us that Julio's host parents, the Vauthrins, had been in a car accident which totalled their car. They walked away from the accident, but his host father, Lloyd (age 88) is scheduled for shoulder surgery on December 23, so we took that as a wake up call that we needed to make visiting them a priority.
We took the three day weekend we'd set aside to finish up our Christmas preparations (including Christmas letter/wedding thank-you's), and instead we made the 9 hour trip out to Nebraska. It was well worth the change in plans. We had a wonderful visit and got to meet their adopted daughter, Chris, and her family while we were there. We were also able to be there to provide moral support when Chris learned that her oldest son, Tyler (who lives with his father), has an inoperable brain tumor.
So anyway, here's the initial draft of what may or may not go out as our Christmas 2008 letter, (as it was when we got the late night call from Nebraska that sparked our last-minute trip):
Happy Holidays! At the end of April, when I said our wedding thank-you’s probably wouldn’t be done until they had to go out with our Christmas letters, I was joking at the time! Those of you who know me best probably knew better!
We did manage a lovely wedding, in spite of my emergency eye surgery at the end of March, and my primary focus directing the Spring play, which closed just 2 weeks before the wedding. Not to mention the contractors who were working until two days before, repairing ceiling damage from a leaky roof and clearing away huge tree limbs that were victims of the remarkably harsh 2007/08 winter weather.
Immediately after the wedding we went on a “familymoon” to Chicago with Julio’s father (“Abuelito”) and my parents (and Harrison, of course!) After a whirlwind tour of every sight we could squeeze into three days (Sears Tower, Shedd Aquarium, Chinatown, Museum of Science & Industry, Museum of Natural History, Adler Planetarium, and the Field Museum), we saw Abuelito off at the airport and raced up to Minnesota to meet my newborn niece, Anna. She was born just before our wedding, so Mom and Dad were “chomping at the bit” to get their first look at her ~ as were we!
Harrison finished his last few weeks of 4th grade at Kenwood elementary, where he continues to participate in the Program for Academic and Creative Talent (“PACT”), and started playing soccer with team Wolverines. Julio resumed work at Pearson in Iowa City, refereeing Harrison’s soccer games on weekends. Meanwhile, I had just three rehearsals to pull together the first annual Debbie Harms Memorial Benefit Concert, which took place on May 10, the one-year anniversary of Bobbi’s death, and what would have been her 57th birthday. Our cousin, Liz Varnum donated a beautiful handmade quilt that helped us raise thousands of dollars for a memorial scholarship fund.
As school wrapped up, we prepared for another summer of full-time daycare fun (field trips, activities, swimming and, naturally, shooting a Zombie movie written and directed by Harrison).
The melting snows of the harsh winter returned in the form of flooded rivers and torrential rain, causing unheard of damage in Cedar Rapids. We were blessed to have only groundswell in our basement, which forced us to throw out a lot of things we shouldn’t have been storing in the first place. If only everyone had fared so well! The theaters I grew up in (TCR and the Paramount) were ruined, as were most of our cultural landmarks and favorite fieldtrip destinations.
Sadly, as the floods were receding, our family experienced another heartbreaking loss with the passing of Mom’s cousin, Tom, which was all the more difficult because we lost him just months before the wedding of his son, Chuck, and daughter-in-law-to-be, Grace.
Summer flew by in a blur, as we coordinated the neighborhood 4th of July potluck, and later the Kid’s Carnival at the neighborhood pool. We enjoyed joining Chuck and Grace at their late-summer couple’s shower, which led the way to their lovely October wedding. We also discovered the monthly “public night” at the Eastern Iowa Observatory, where we’ve learned about the Milky Way, Jupiter, Star Clusters, and the Science of Star Trek, among other things.
School was back in session before we knew it, and while Harrison’s class had a difficult time with the new 5th grade teacher and her less-than-stellar student teacher, Julio’s work intensified, causing him to work longer hours than usual.
Harrison’s unpleasant classroom situation pulled me into doing more volunteer work at the school, starting a reward program for students who achieve certain classroom goals. When the reward program was combined with specials, recess and the PACT program, things started looking up for Harrison and his classmates.
The fall musical, Bye Bye Birdie, was fraught with setbacks, but as with other roadblocks of the year, we overcame them thanks to the dedication and hard work of a great group of volunteers. It was over just in time for us to prepare our home to host the annual Shaffer Thanksgiving Extravaganza, though I admit I was sidetracked by preparations for the upcoming speech season.
We actually managed to hang our Christmas lights before the cold weather struck this year, and rehearsals have been snowed out just often enough for us to get our Christmas trees up, but not completely decorated yet.
A couple weeks ago, we added a new family member: a one-year old dog we call Zuki (short for Azucar, which is Spanish for Sugar, the name she had when we adopted her). She is a beautiful dog who came from a shelter in Iowa City, where they guessed her to be part Collie, and possibly part Samoyed and Golden Retriever. We never entertained any hope of finding a dog like Yuxia, so you can imagine our amazement that Zuki is almost exactly the same in personality and temperament that Yuxia was at her age. She’s our Christmas miracle in another year filled with opportunities to seek a silver lining.
We hope this holiday greeting finds you and your family enjoying all the blessings of the season, and we thank you all again for your love and support throughout our long-time-in-coming, long-time-before-being-thanked nuptial process!
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