Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

If you are new to this blog and visiting it as if it were the “Christmas newsletter” that you had hoped Anita would write, WELCOME!

In a nutshell, if you spend a little time on this blog, you’ll see and hear a lot about our year. Consider the following a brief overview of what you’ll find.

John and Anita both still work at WSU which we are grateful for in this economy. Our state cut funding to higher education last year by something like 22% and we’ve all be impacted by budget cuts and staff vacancies. We don’t blog much about work…so if you really want to know more, well, sorry.

The kids are busy:
• Spencer is in soccer, basketball, track and band (alto sax and guitar).
• Camryn is in soccer (first time this year-she loved it),gymnastics & piano.
• Harrison is all about baseball &looks forward to playing soccer this spring!

John competed in his first Spring Triathlon and placed in the top 10 (out of 120ish) overall and 1st in his age group.

Anita realized feeling bummed about turning 40 was silly and we celebrated this year instead.

We road-tripped to the Midwest this summer for a 2+ week vacation and stopped at many random tourist spots during the trip!

Anita’s Mom, Ruth Fritz, suddenly passed away from ALS related issues on July 4th with family around her (God had to have orchestrated the timing!). John’s Grandpa, Ken Wheeler, also passed away in July. He was well over 90 and in failing health.

We live blessed lives!

A

P.S. Double click on the photo above and it should become full screen:)

It's beginning to look alot like Christmas...

...everywhere you go.

Yes, we had our first snow in Pullman over the weekend, which brings out the kid in boys of all ages.

Harrison wanted to go out in the snow on Friday evening around 8:00 pm in the dark, black night, to play in it….luckily, he was willing to wait until Saturday morning (although it took some persuading).

Then, it was Spencer and his buddy Josh’s turn on Saturday morning…at thirteen, they couldn’t wait either.

On Sunday, John got his turn and took the boys sledding on the perfect sledding hill in Pullman. Since all I want for Christmas is a B (passing) grade in my statistics class (the final is this week), I was at home studying and not documenting the first sledding of the season…sorry…maybe next time!

So, yes…the snow is here, the tree and lights are up, the packages that need to be mailed are wrapped, and...

it really is beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

A