Merry Christmas 2009 (Christmas Letter)

Dear Friends and Family,

There is no snow on the ground but the fantastic neighborhood lights are all pointing to the holiday season. Additionally right now Shae is practicing some beautiful choir music for this year’s Christ Community Church musical. We always enjoy the type of music which fosters sentiments of gratefulness for the true meaning of Christmas.

Shae still works as a CHO (Chief Home Officer). However, her company Ethan and Eric Industries, LLC, merged about a year ago with another company to form EEH International, Inc. The primary shareholders are talking about going public as I write. Though she is an executive, Shae’s job looks amazingly, like an admin assistant to three other up and coming executives. All three primary shareholders of EEH International, Inc. have different schools or schedules and they bring home a mountain of paperwork (crafts and handouts) daily. Add to that meeting cancelations for sick days and doctor visits, the only thing she is missing is booking international air travel. No wait, she’s done that too. She also is busy as a MOPS table leader, choir, bible studies, and co-leading our Small Group and young families Sunday school at church.

The 2009 spring was a blast. The boys reached a new level of fishing competency. Eric learned if he left his lure in the water, he would catch as many fish as his brother. We enjoyed a couple days at the trout pond and also discovered the lake ½ mile from our house is loaded with pan-fish and small channel catfish (they fight like sharks ). Shae’s nieces and nephew even made it out a couple of times to catch some of their first fish. It was not uncommon to have 3 fish on 3 different poles at once with daddy/uncle Mike running amongst them with pliers and new bait. Mike was also blessed with a respectable Spring turkey and 2 Fall deer.

Over the summer we played in the backyard family pool and city pools a much as we could. Early June seemed to be monopolized by our baby girl’s 1st birthday party. You’ve never seen so much pink in one place. As you can imagine Haven is a growing little lady. She started walking the day before turning 14 months and was running within a month. She is saying many words. However, she responds with “NO!” to most all inquires regardless of the context.

As the summer continued, Ethan turned 6 in July. He loves Kindergarten, is reading very well, and is a whiz at math. Ethan has also set himself apart at Awana’s Sparks as a high achieving memory verse memorizer. He found out you could memorize future weeks’ verses and earn vest awards (jewels) ahead of schedule; and the rest was history. Mike has also worked with the boys during their bible story time (morning) and daily devotions (evening) time, and now they can go on for about 10 minutes quoting memorized verses.

For once there was a cousin’s wedding within a day’s driving distance that Shae wasn’t in late pregnancy for, so we made it to her cousin’s Chicago wedding over the 4th of July. The two towheads made a great impression on the reception dance floor. Both boys have unique styles of dancing. Ethan was a natural at Mr. Robot. Eric reminded us of Animal from the Muppets who could break-dance. Following the wedding 4 cousin’s families (7 adults, 12 kids) joined forces to brave the Chicago trains and went downtown to see the Chicago Field Museum and some authentic pirate treasure from the famed Whydah shipwreck. We also continued to the Wisconsin Dells and enjoyed more swimming, some Paul Bunion flapjacks, the deer park, and riding the Duck boats.

As fall kicked off we beat the streets in search of candy. Our motley crew showed no mercy. It is amazing when you bring a Power Ranger (Ethan), Pirate (Eric), and Kitty (Haven), even bold and daring home owners cower in fear and give large offerings of candy. The natives practiced their pillaging at Mike’s company holding each manager for ransom, as long as the manager had a cute orange paper pumpkin thumb-tacked outside their office door.

Eric is in Awana Cubbies at and earning lots of patches. Eric attends Sonshine Christian Preschool 2 days a week where he’s doing great. Eric turned 4 in November. As some of you might recall we returned from Vietnam just prior to Eric’s birthday last year. As a result we celebrated our 1st “Family Day” Anniversary in October since Haven joined our family a year ago.

In typical fashion the boys find great enjoyment beating on each other, their friends, and their dad if his back is turned. Though there were wrestling “time and place” rules in existence, they were very difficult to enforce. Amongst the prior mentioned statement and other reasons, they boys are taking martial arts lessons. Their cousin CJ is also a regular attender. The boys have also really enjoyed the 14’ trampoline Shae found (really cheap) at a moving sale.

Dasha (our dog) continues to slow down. Other than being sway-back it is very difficult to judge age with the Samoyed breed. She looks great, but has the motivation of a 10 year old (70’s).

We just celebrated 3 years in our new house, two years in Mike’s latest position with his company as a Manager of Systems Admin., and will celebrate 11 years of marriage in January. We’re also grateful to celebrate the birth of our Savior, Jesus and pray that we, our children, and our friends and family will grow in our relationship with Him.

Merry Christmas,
Mike, Shae, Ethan, Eric, and Haven