Christmas Cards

I mentioned my Christmas Card plans earlier, and I'm happy to report I got them all signed, sealed and delivered. I hate that we don't get too many in return, I don't think a lot of priority is placed on Christmas cards anymore, which is sad! :(

But I do love sending them. Since we don't get to see too many family members during the holidays this year I thought a neat way to catch everyone up on the comings and goings would to be send out a Christmas Letter. I've always wanted to do that, but I'd never taken the time to sit down and write one before, or I'd lost all inspiration come time to send them out. Anyway, not this year.

These were the cards, scored for $3 at Half Price Books. I thought they were super cute.


Photo tucked into each one:


And I decorated the envelopes:


This is the letter:

Dear Family and Friends,

Another year has gone by and we continue to sit back and wonder where it went to. It seems like just yesterday we were preparing for Christmas 07 and Jonathan becoming a teenager and now 14 is upon us. We won’t talk about how fast those 14 years have flown by. But I think you’ll notice that Jonathan is now taller than everyone but Bobby. Quickly approaching his Dad’s height is something that Jon finds great amusement in.

But enough of that, let’s get the formalities out of the way: April is still a professional student (frankly, we’ve stopped asking about elusive graduation dates), Bobby has had no major health crises to speak of (knock on wood of course) since he had the brain transplant earlier this year (ha!), Vickie is still trying and failing to make us all keep up with the housework, and Jonathan is eating us all out of house and home (why did no one warn us teenage boys can bankrupt you from food bills!?).

We added a new family member this year, a Chihuahua/Miniature Dachshund mix (aka, a Chiweenie) named Molly. She’s long, lean and suffering from an identity crisis. But we love her anyway. The Labrador, Jack, and the Chihuahua, Jill, took a little while to adjust to the new addition but a few bloody noses and several bite marks later and everything seems to be fine. Ironically the bloody nose and bite mark were all on Bobby. Weird. Or accident prone, we still can‘t figure it out.

As mentioned Jonathan is definitely a growing teenager, but he’s also become quite the teen in other ways. His latest love? Rock and Roll music. He’s spent hours poring over AC/DC, Aerosmith, The Rolling Stones, Lynard Skynard, Bad Company and CCR albums. This year he hopes to learn how to play the guitar and has begun strumming a bit. In the process Bobby can now only hear out of his left ear. We just make sure and talk real loud around him, or terribly quiet when we’re plotting things he doesn’t want us to do.

April has spent this past year, in addition to her professional student activities, traipsing around the state campaigning for her favorite politicians. She met President Bill Clinton in Paris, Kentucky. She got to talk and take a photo with Chelsea Clinton in Lexington. And just this past September she and Vickie got to meet Senator Hillary Clinton as she campaigned for Barack Obama and Bruce Lunsford at the Kentucky Horse Park. She now jokes about getting the Clintons to adopt her, which Bobby thought was a good idea in hopes they might help pay for all this schooling she seems so addicted to. ;)

In June we took the annual ‘don’t tell Dad how much this trip really cost’ trip to Florida. We visited Sanibel Island in South Florida for the 3rd time in 5 years. It was a wonderful trip…AFTER the 16 hour car drive it took to get there. Highlights were Bobby catching another huge snook, Jonathan hooking a small shark and Vickie and April trying to figure out how they could just move to the island forever. For the record, they are STILL trying to figure that one out without much luck yet. (Anyone have a few million dollars they could borrow?)

We all spent the remainder of the summer tending to a garden in the back yard against Dad’s protests. He feared by the end of the summer he’d be the only one left taking care of it….he was right. But we thank him every day (okay, at least once a month) for all of the tomatoes we have frozen for future use.

This fall Jonathan took up archery as a hobby. He and his Dad have been busy fletching arrows and going on hunting trips. Bobby’s only managed to lose a little skin here and there, nothing traumatic for which we are all thankful. ;)

Jon does however, keep trying to get his sister to stand real still with an apple on her head for ‘target practice’. She has so far refused to oblige.

But it should be said, we are all looking forward to the Holidays. If we don’t get to see you, just know that all of us are thinking about you and your family. We hope you had as wonderful a year as ours has been. And may your Christmas be everything it’s supposed to be: merry, bright, and beautiful.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays,

The Watkins Family: Bobby, Vickie, April, Jonathan, Jack (the Labrador), Jill (the Chihuahua), Molly (the chiweenie), Emily Elizabeth, Hercules and Zena (the cats)

I love stuff like this. The 13 year old me would be SO disappointed at how much I've embraced my inner Martha. But sending Christmas cards is one of the reasons I'd love to be all married with a house of my own and living in domesticity. Just...if you run into 13 year old April...don't tell her what she's become. Okay?