Sunday, December 25, 2011

Holiday Letter 2011

Making predictions is for the year is always a challenge. The extended trip to London we were planning on taking this year didn’t work out. Turns out, we had plenty of other things going on to keep us busy. First and foremost, as should be obvious from the card, we have a new addition to the family. Since Moira was 1.5 weeks early, and the second child is generally earlier than the first, we fully expected him in November. Having him take his own sweet time arriving in December was quite a surprise. Everyone seems to be taking it in stride now, although it has made things a bit more complicated for Walker’s new manager. We did have our share of tacos this past year; we won a charity auction, which got us a taco truck to cater Moira’s birthday party. She now has a pretty good bar to aim for if she doesn’t want her coolness to have peaked at age three.

The reason for skipping the trip to London wasn’t Davis, but Walker’s move into management. With the new role with a new team in a new office, it no longer made sense to spend a large chunk of time helping out with a different office. Moira will have to wait to see the ancestral home of Winnie the Pooh.

Travel as a family this year was limited to one trip to Vancouver and one trip to Tucson. Shannon also got a long weekend in Boston while Walker took a few trips to Mountain View for work. We’re hoping 2012 will see a bit more. It looks promising so far, as Davis seems very happy to ride around in the car. Well, Shannon’s car. He hasn’t met mine yet, although his car seat will fit.

Moira loves being a big sister. Her favorite part so far has been the diaper changes, where she drops whatever she was doing and rushes over to pull out a new diaper. Some day, she’ll learn the reality of diaper changes, but for now, it’s good someone is showing enthusiasm. She also likes holding the baby and showing off for him, but is a bit disappointed he didn’t arrive ready to play with her. She has a knack for finding girls 2-3 years older than she is and making them play with her, so we’ll just have to continue to rely on the community to keep her amused for now.

Beyond sisterhood, Moira continues to enjoy arts and crafts, gymnastics, reading, playing with her extended doll family including a husband and several children, making grocery lists, and especially skiing. She’s still on the bunny slopes for now, making a couple turns over the course of the run. She has to make four turns and be able to stop before we go up on the list. We’re hopeful that will happen this season. We’re also hopeful that the grandparents will let us wait for two years before we’re taking Davis up to the slopes. At that point, he should be able to use Moira’s current “Princess” skis. If that winds up in a book about traumatic childhood experiences, you heard it here first.

In addition to increasing the size of our family by 33% this year, Shannon continued with her quilting group, helped with Norwescon organization, kept up with Moira’s busy schedule of activities, and helped start a pre-school co-op with some of Moira’s closest friends.

Outside of work, Walker’s main extracurricular activity has been autocrossing. Last year, he got 3rd in class individually and his team came in second (both because he wasn’t able to make it to the final event). This year saw improvement to first in both categories (although his contributions dwindled a bit after clinching the individual title. He’s very grateful to his teammates for not kicking him to the curb for slacking off at the end.

Wishing you a happy and healthy 2012,

Walker, Shannon, Moira & Davis