Christmas Message 2006

Dear family and friends,
We hope this Christmas newsletter finds you well and happy and that we get it out in time for Christmas! Our biggest news this year is that in January we finally moved house and we are now expecting baby number three. More on that later, let’s start from the beginning…

We spent last Christmas at Katie’s parents as our flat was all packed up and ready to move. When we returned home our flat was so cold that our water pipes were frozen and the kitchen wall tiles fell off! We were more than ready to move by this point.

We finally completed on January 12th and moved into another cold house with hardly any lights that worked. With all our things moved in things soon felt homely and it’s been lovely having so much extra space. So far we’ve redecorated the dining room and the girls’ bedroom and after discovering dodgy building work in bed 3 ended up having builders in to rebuild the wall between bed 3 and the study and to plaster both rooms. Not something we’d planned on but both rooms look great now and we’re renting out bed 3 to a uni student so that will recoup the costs incurred. Another nasty surprise included discovering that the two big bay windows need replacing too, especially our bedroom. Never mind, all in good time. We hope this house will last us as long as we want to live here. After finding so many leaks though I think we’ll go for a newer house next time.

We’ve spent a lot of time and energy in planting a garden this year and enjoyed bumper crops of tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, carrots, sweet corn, courgettes and a few strawberries, black currants and about four raspberries! So we’ve been really pleased with that and had a great bargain of getting a large greenhouse free from freecycle.

In the Easter holidays we enjoyed a holiday to Burnham on Sea in a caravan at a Haven Holiday Park. When we first arrived we’d been put in a caravan right by the lake – with a three year old! So we complained and were moved to a brand new caravan, posh as you like! So we had a good holidayJ. We walked to the top of a big hill, played pitch and putt, got the kite stuck up a tree and went swimming.

New back garden and old back garden (after we moved)In the summer Katie spent the first two weeks at the beach with the girls, which turned out well because they were our best two weeks of weather. We then decorated bed 3 (post plastering) ready for the arrival of our student. Katie went on Young Women’s camp for the week while the girls had a nice holiday with Katie’s mum and dad. We spent the last week of the summer camping on the Isle of Wight. This year both girls played at the park while mum and dad read, quite a novelty! We enjoyed cycling to the beach, days out and lazy days at the camp site.

In September both of the girls started at our local primary school, Leah in reception, Amber now in year 3. They both settled in really quickly. On Leah’s first day she happily strolled in by herself and sat on the teacher’s chair and read herself a book. Leah is still doing her dancing lessons and just learnt to swim at the end of the summer. Amber has really improved her swimming strokes this year and in her previous school played the recorder and sang in the choir.
September saw the biggest event of the year and that was Katie falling pregnant. Unfortunately this meant the usual ‘Hyperemesis gravidarum’ which saw Katie into hospital three times with dehydration and Ketosis from the continuous sickness. Unfortunately the side effects from all the medication also lead to Katie not sleeping either, a horrible combination because she could find no relief from the sickness by sleeping. Thankfully at 14 weeks she finally began to be able to eat and now at 17 weeks is starting to get back to normal, just in time for Christmas. She already has quite a bump and we are excitedly waiting for the first movements to be felt. Amber and Leah were so excited when they found out about the baby and Leah wanted to see it straight away! Now that the bump is starting to show they want to keep looking at it and showing it to all their friends! They have coped amazingly well with all the sickness and being ferried off to friends all the time. Thankfully Alan has been able to work from home and was able to do the school run and basically everything else.

Since the pregnancy Katie unfortunately has had to stop teaching swimming and was released as Young Women’s President which she was gutted about. Needless to say Katie doesn’t like being pregnant:L This year Alan was called to serve on the Stake High Council which involved organising activities, helping support wards in the Stake (our local area) and doing things like audits.

He also has a new job in the same bank but a different department. He was a business analyst and is now a systems analyst (ask Alan for more details on that one!) and we hope will be moving up a steeper pay scale.
Over all we’ve had a really good year. The girls are lovely and play nicely together. It’s hard to describe them but here goes: Leah is quite sensitive and conscientious. She loves bringing home a new book from school and inviting all her friends to come and play. She still loves to dress up and dance around the house. Amber on the other hand is always found in her pyjamas and despite claiming to dislike school loves to play schools with Leah. We think it’s because she gets to be the teacher! Amber loves to make star charts and be helpful around the house. She constantly tells us she loves us and gives us lots of kisses.

We haven’t received any cards yet and that’s probably because no-one has our new address (we hope anyway), so we’ll try to get this out to you soon. We wish you all a very Happy Christmas and a wonderful New Year. We feel very blessed this year as a family and find great happiness in being with each other. The pregnancy with all its drawbacks has at least strengthened our marriage and our love and appreciation for each other. We know that all our blessings come from a loving Heavenly Father and share with you our knowledge that He lives and that His son, our Saviour came to earth so we can return to live with them again.

We send you all our love and best wishes,

Katie, Alan, Amber and Leah. xxx

(Sorry about the late letter the printer broke – so we got a new one, cheaper than buying new ink too)