Greetings friends and family!
We hope each of you had a most excellent holiday season. Since we are a little behind, we decided to send out a New Year’s Letter to keep in touch regarding the things our family has been up to during 2009. Let’s face it, we need the deadline extension. We had a busy and exciting year. We took several trips to Santa Clarita on several different occasions to visit family there. We also made a trip to Utah and Island Park, Idaho just outside of West Yellowstone. It was a beautiful week full of lollygagging around the lake boating, wake boarding, paddle boating, and riding quads. We thoroughly enjoyed our extended family and lack of cell phone coverage.
Ed started a new job a year ago working as an assistant to an oral surgeon and dentist. While the first surgery made him a little queasy, he now loves the job of pulling teeth. In fact, you know a guy’s passion is teeth when he gets excited about the subscription to a dental hygiene magazine you got him for his birthday. He stays busy serving as a counselor in the Young Men’s presidency, advisor to the Deacon’s Quorum and Scoutmaster. He had a lot of fun at Scout Camp this summer and recently completed the laborious job of re-chartering the troop. He looks forward to improving his knowledge about scouts and going to wood badge training. He continues to plug away at school little by little and studies church history for fun or for spiritual enlightenment, or both. He remains the constant amidst his wife’s craziness while offering his steady and unfailing support and friendship. He loves playing with the boys and keeps us laughing with his sense of humor and one of a kind laugh.
Emily created a vision board toward the beginning of the year that left little white space, thus her life has been busy. But that’s okay because she finds that she is happiest when she is kept busy. She loves being a wife to a husband that encourages her to develop her talents and cultivate her hobbies (and no, Ed is not writing this). She loves being a mom to the two bestest boys a girl could have because they bring her endless joy. She loves teaching Relief Society at church once a month and finds it the perfect calling for a busy woman. She even likes her job most of the time managing the apartment complex we live at (and no, she’s not saying this because this letter will most likely be sent to her boss). She enjoys the challenge of school at UCSD as she works toward her degree in History while she debates between a minor in Human Rights or Education. She thoroughly liked the institute class she took this quarter and the friends she made there. She also appreciates the success she found in triathlon this year and is looking forward to a new season.
Jadon (6) finished Kindergarten this year and started 1st Grade. This year he played winter basketball, started a recycling business and kept up on his mad reading skills. In his spare time he likes to come up with ways to earn money. This leaves his parents with a dilemma at times. How do you tell your child that the neighbors might not purchase his home-made book for $20 a pop without trivializing or discouraging his work? But Jadon is undeterred in his entrepreneurship. At one point, he went through all our DVDs, picked out the ones we didn’t watch anymore and posted a list of the titles for sale. He made $11 that day. Jadon regularly insists that we need to start a restaurant out of our home and once spent an entire day making menus, a large sign for the “Grand Opening,” pictures indicating the downstairs bathroom was meant for boys and the upstairs was the girls restroom, etc. He was sincerely disappointed that mom was the only customer the next morning but gave Eddie, the server and cook, a raise when he brought her breakfast in bed.
Zachary (3) loves trains and cars, gives the best hugs and kisses, and constantly makes us laugh with his animal impressions. He has finally graduated from swinging exclusively at the park to climbing on the equipment, even when his brother is not around, thus prolonging the pounding heart and sweaty palms of mom when she takes him out to play. Zachary started speech therapy twice a week and is making a lot of progress learning new signs and improving his expressive communication. He will start occupational and physical therapy shortly to treat some of his delays as well as get an IEP (individualized education plan) through the school district next month. We hope that he will then be placed in a pre-school for special education. Zachary’s heath has been great and we feel very blessed that he is part of our family. Having a child with special needs has taught us to slow down, that everyone goes at their own pace, to be more soft-spoken and serves as a daily reminder of our Savior’s love for all of His children, giving us a more eternal perspective as we go about our daily life.
We love you all and wish you a fruitful and blessed New Year!
The Whittemore Family
I included our address but if you want it you'll have to email me since I don't keep this thing private emily.whittemore@gmail.com
{You can also check us out on facebook. It's much easier for me to update my status with some little quip of the day.}
And for the family picture... 24 shots later with my aunt Melissa's blazing shutter speed and bribery of licorice and ritz crackers...we got a good one!
UPDATE: I had the envelopes stuffed with all the letters folded up inside to mail out to family and friends but never quite got to the part where you address them, stamp them, and send them off. Yup, I'm that kind of crazy.
5 comments:
Love it! You write so well, I'm jealous...don't read my blog, you'll be sorely dissapointed.
Which Oral Surgeon is Ed working with? That's very exciting! I've worked with Oral Surgeons in El Cajon/San Diego for over 10 years...I'm an RDA and was the Implant Coordinator for the dental practice.
@ Autumn: Ed is working for Torrey Pines Dental Arts mainly for the dentist but they have an oral surgeon from the navy (dr. pace) come in on fridays which is when ed assists. He's working on his RDA. I think he's taking it in February. He's excited :) Are you still working?
I haven't given up on you, and I happily read your update. Sometime, when you come up to SCV, we should get lunch.
oopps...somehow i accidently deleted misty's comment--sorry!!! there were two of the same thing and i was trying to delete the extra one but somehow trashed both. again, so so sorry!!
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