Christmas letter 2002-- a thank-you note Christmas

Hello everybody!!

Okay, so here comes Christmas again.    At the time of this writing I have not yet even managed to coerce James into digging around under the stairs (moving the vacuum cleaner, the luggage, the “fall” and “Easter” decoration boxes not to mention disrupting the final resting place of various spiders and other spring-time friends) to locate the “perfect find” Christmas tree from three years ago.  I think I’m running behind because this is a James-tree-year.  For those of you who don’t know what a “James-tree” is let me help you “see the light.”  Every year James and I alternate between whose turn it is to have the tree of their choice.   This is a “James-tree” year which means we will be having a tree complete with the 1950s burn-your-house-down fat lights that are really meant for gigantic evergreens still growing naturally somewhere (Like the forest or that mammoth thing they drag in every year for the White House lawn). This is opposed to the “Melissa-tree” year where we have the classic mini-white lights ONLY adorning the tree so you really feel like you’re at a classy, romantic outdoor-evening affair (you know, the type of affair James usually avoids and finds an excuse to “stay home in case Alex begins feeling ill” from). I will spend the entire holiday season smelling each room to ensure there is not even the slightest aroma of burning fake pine from the multi-colored fat lights and will go so far as to sit on the couch on those brisk evenings when we light the fireplace holding the fire extinguisher on my lap for maximum fat-light-tree safety.  But this is not at all what our letter is about this year. 

Because I’m so far behind in my holiday decorating, baking, wrapping and obsessing (after all, its the 5^th of December and I have received not one but TWO Christmas cards already) I’m thinking about how far behind this will put me AFTER Christmas.  After all, if I start late, I’m sure we’ll end late and that brings me to the focus of our letter.  In an attempt to not get any further behind with the Christmas agenda of “to-dos” I have decided to go ahead and write our Thank-you notes now.  This should save some time after Christmas and allow a wider margin for James to stuff the tree back under the stairs, not to mention re-tangle the fat lights for two years from now. 

James and I would like to take this time to say “thank you” to all those people who helped make our year special:

Thank-you to the “Wiggles” for making the trip from Australia to the U.S. (Kansas City) so Alex could see his first LIVE childrens concert and so that James and I could reaffirm the notion that we are not the only adults in the world who not only know who these men are but are willing to pay big money to ensure our child may see them from the 4^th row.

Thank you to Dr. R. Gooch for his friendly, non-threatening chair-side manner.  Because of his “I wear jeans and talk about hunting” attitude James now has a dentist he not only likes but will listen to in terms of dental care. 

Thank you to the nice woman who works in Kroger in Chillicothe, Illinois for staying open 10 minutes past midnight when I so desperately needed to get Alex some Pedialyte for his “I think I’ll start throwing up at midnight when I’m outta town” flu.

Speaking of that instance, thank you to grandma Ginny and grandpa Jim for not throwing us out when Alex proceeded to throw up all over their brand new pretty house on our VERY FIRST visit. (did I mention it was in the middle of the night?)

Thank you to Charlie and Larry Williamson for being so nice to us and inviting Alex to try to take a nap in their cool speed boat when we invaded their vacation in Arkansas.

Thank you to all of the nice airline pilots and staff for flying me/us safely to Palm Springs, Washington D.C., Little Rock, New Orleans and Atlanta this year. (Thank you also for overlooking my hysteria and understanding when I threw my arms around you all upon landing safely)  Speaking of which…..

Thank you to John, Janet et al for keeping me occupied on our various flights and continuing to speak to me as I took chunks out of their legs with my finger nails as we hit those “their just like bumps in the road” air pockets. (Oh yea, and thanks to mom for the tranquilizers!)

Thank you to Jeff McMorrow, Bob Wilson, Pete McGLaughlin, Mark Merdian, Christine Hawley, Gina Prayne White, Tina Jones, Amy Morrissey Fleshman and honorary “good-little-catholic girls” Kelly Manns McMorrow and Michele Kline Kluge for participating in the best-darn St. Edwards, all school reunion ever.  The 6^th grade class of 1979 had an awesome time!!!!!!

Thank you to the very nice mom who took the time to write the letter regarding James and his teaching.  Neither one of us will ever forget that kindness and want to remind those of you with school-aged children that if you have a teacher you think is doing a good job, please take the time to let them know.  Teachers get far too little credit as it is (and they certainly aren’t rewarded monetarily).  Any way we can help them feel appreciated is a good thing.

Thank you to all of the Missouri speech-language pathologists who trusted me enough to vote for me for one of the VPs of the association.  Thank you then, secondarily for putting up with all of my hokey newsletter articles.

Along those same lines, thank you to all the attendees of last year’s Missouri state convention for not booing me out of the hotel when there was not enough FRUIT with the pastry for breakfast when I served as co-chair of the conference.

Thank you to the automobile Gods for allowing our beat-up-old van to run yet another year and for safe travel for James, Alex and uncle Jeff all the way up to Michigan (in the truck of all things!!!!!)

Thanks to my family for joining me in St. Louis to help celebrate my 35^th birthday.

Thanks to the ER staff at the hospital in Kirksville for being nice to Alex and stitching up his first wound.  (Thanks to nana Sue for being the first person to injure him so that the rest of us are “off the hook” if it is ever our turn!!!)

Thanks to Heather, Shana, and Janet, Alex’s first speech therapists who, without batting an eye, willingly took on the challenge of providing therapy to the clinic director’s kid.

Finally, to those of you who enjoy our Christmas letters, thanks for all the compliments over the past several years.  For those of you who do not enjoy them, thanks for putting up with my/our rather unconventional style.

Oh yea, and Thank you to God for sending us two little boys:  the baby Jesus and Alex Hendler.  We love them both very much.

Time to close for this year………James has wrestled the tree out from under the stairs………and I think I smell something burning.

Peace,

 James, Melissa, Alex