Dear Friends,
Greetings from Glasford, Illinois. It's time for Christmas Vacation and we drove all night on Friday (with a couple of rest area naps) to cover the 900 miles to get here from Virgina and join a Geltmaker Family Christmas. Jennifer's sister Jill is already here, and her brother Steven will arrive today with his family, while David & his fiancée will get here the day after Christmas. But we still have time to get our eChristmas Letter sent this Christmas Eve, and so we hope you enjoy this recap of our year as much as we've enjoyed hearing from so many of you.
Without question, the biggest event of the year for us was the addition we put on our home. Our long discussed plans to make the house fit our growing kids was turned into reality by our old friend and master builder Bob Holland of Manassas Home Improvement. There was the expected dust and disruption, with our lives temporarily packed away in storage boxes and Jen, Katie and Chris all evicted from our rooms for the duration, but the end result has been everything we hoped for and more. There will be no shortage of minor finishing work to be done in '07, but the major work is all done and we've moved into our new rooms. Summer travel allowed us to get away while much of the work was done. We enjoyed catching waves in two different oceans this summer during a trip home to Huntington Beach, California over the 4th of July, and a return to the Outer Banks of North Carolina in August.
Katie turned 16 in September and is starting to get some driving experience with her Dad in various parking lots (we haven't hit anything yet (curbs don't count)). A sophmore in High School, Katie is on the staff of her school's literature magazine "Eddas", and has also joined the 'Green Ronin' fencing team. In November she again successfully participated in National Novel Writing Month and the working title of her latest 50,000 word novel is "Guardian".
Will reached 14 in December and is in the Eighth Grade. He's on his school's track and soccer teams, and also plays in league soccer. This year the all-star team he played on took home the title in their November tournament. Will has developed an irrational fear of barbers, for which we hope to find a cure in 2007. To that he says, "Good Luck".
Colleen, now 10, took a tumble from the playground monkey bars in April and broke her arm. That derailed her soccer season, but three weeks in a cast was enough to put her back together again. At school she serves on the safety patrol, and her repaired arm worked just fine while playing basketball on weekends and in her piano lessons. In 2007, we'll get our new 105-year old piano tuned, which Colleen point out is the only problem with her playing.
Chris and Jennifer each continue in their work. Chris is beginning his third year as Director of Online Campaigns at NGP Software, where he works helping Democrats to use the Internet in their campaigns. Needless to say, he's still on a post-Election high, and his 'Blue Christmas' isn't at all a sad one. Jennifer is still teaching elementary special education and enjoys the challenges it presents. Home improvement projects and keeping kids on schedule often keeps them from their respective hobbies of genealogy and quilting, but we both expect new progress on those fronts next year.
We hope the holidays find you and yours happy, healthy, and looking forward to 2007. We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Chris, Jennifer, Katie, Will, & Colleen
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The Casey Family |
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From the Flickr Gallery
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Casey Web Surfing |
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