Where has the year gone? (I don't really need an answer, I KNOW where the year has gone.) So we're heading right back into the holiday season again, and I'm determined to hang on to EVERY shred of my sanity. With my "buy low, sell high" philosophy, Christmas should be a breeze. Plus, I cancelled it. Remember?

Lydia is in 3rd grade now and is becoming a bit of a math genius, if her MAP scores are to be believed. How this is possible being the spawn of 2 people who couldn't balance a checkbook to save their lives is beyond me. She's also an excellent reader. This does not surprise me. Books are our friends. Her current obession is a booked titled, "Emily Upham's Revenge or How Deadwood Dick Saved the Banker's Niece". She's been working on it for about 2 weeks now. She reports that she is currently on page 160.

Genevieve is getting big, literally, surpassing her peers in weight and height, where once she was such a peanut. She likes to dance and sing and read books. Lydia brought home a box full of new books for her from the neighbor's house yesterday. And that, my friends, is what raising decent human beings is all about, is it not? One sister, being thoughtful and procuring new books for another? My work here is done. Just kidding.

We've got dance class, Girl Scouts and in January - skating lessons for them both. We've got 2 trampolines in the backyard by a stroke of good fortune. Anyone need a trampline? Brand new? You can have it for a song!

Early snow showers are making everything kind of pretty today. Although I question my ability to get through the winter with a smile on my face if winter is going to start 6 weeks earlier than normal. Pray for me.

In other housekeeping news, literally, Lydia left something strange and juicy in her room and now we have an invasion of fruit flies. In October. With snow on the ground. Help.

Christmas 2008

Well, Little Reyes Sisters, I sincerely hope you enjoyed this past Christmas, because it will our last. <collective gasp from everyone reading this>

Let me explain. You see kids, Christmas is hard. I don't mean emotionally hard, we have liquor for that. I mean it's difficult. The magic, the warm memories, the WOW Santa gifts waiting in the living room for you on Christmas morning - all converge upon me in the weeks leading up to the blessed birth of our Lord Jesus Christ and conspire to kill me. And it isn't for lack of effort on my part. I shop, I bake, I arrange for the delivery of surprise gifts that requires a level of global logistics that boggles the mind, just to make the holiday special.

So what I'm saying is, I've given it the old vo-tech try, and 8 years into it, I'm calling her quits. From now on, its one gift a piece which you will open at an appointed time in a rented time share in any exotic location from Grand Rapids, Minnesota to Acapulco, Mexico, depending on how many "points" grandma and grandpa have left over on their plan in any given year. The world is our oyster, girls.

And don't worry, there will still be cocktail and hor d'eurves on Christmas eve (you guys haven't gotten to fully appreciate that part yet, but you will.) And we will still gather as a family to play liquor dice. Trust me, you won't even notice a difference. After all, they have Christmas eve mass everywhere, right?

You may think me cruel, or selfish, or maybe even just lazy. But here's the thing: I have a sneaking suspicion that if I ask you in May what you got for Christmas last year, you will have trouble listing even 3 things. But after a fabulous family vacation over Christmas, you will be able to recount memories that we have made well into the future. That is my hope, anyway....