merry christmas 2010

Seasons greetings to all of you! We hope you had a wonderful year and have an even better one in 2011. We have had a fun year settling into our new location in Marin County and bought a house just a few weeks ago, so now we can settle in for a while. It has been nice to still be within driving distance of our friends in the East Bay and San Francisco. We made it a point to do more travel this year and made two big trips; one to Thailand, that the kids still talk about, and a road trip to Washington and Oregon, where we got to see some old friends. The kids saw the snow for the first time this year, we went to our first Holi festival, which was incredibly fun and messy, and we met up with our friends from France in Yosemite National Park.

The kids are increasingly enjoying each other's company and continue to play a variety of made-up games. They yell and fight half of the time but most of the time they seem to work it out. Mahala is in first grade now and just turned six. She is full of curiousity and wants to be experimenting or learning something every minute of the day. She has been doing soccer and Spanish and hopes to do gymnastics and science in the coming year. She is still an artist at heart but now that she is beginning to read, she spends hours doing word searches and trying to read. Noble is three and still heads to preschool 2 partial days a week. He is still the family clown and never seems to stop talking. He loves costumes and music and has been asking to take violin lessons. We are guessing that he should wait a couple years before we commit to that but it is fun to see him improvise with his play guitar, recorder and drums. He is still plagued with food allergies and his list actually grew this year, but we have managed it with creative meal planning.

Buying our house took close to eight months which was exhausting but, in the end, we ended up with a Craftsman style duplex in downtown Fairfax that fulfilled most of what we were looking for in a house. We moved 7 days before Christmas, making tree trimming and general holiday fun impossible. Fortunately, we are celebrating Christmas in Florida with my parents where we were greeted with a Christmas tree and smiling grandparents as opposed to unpacked boxes and contractors! The house is in good shape but being built in the 1920's, it does need some work. So, yes, more renovations for us in the future. Douglas and I seem to spend every waking minute discussing things like window hardware and water heater options. Fortunately, it is our love of everything house-oriented that makes it fun. Having said that, the fun usually stops quickly when we end up disagreeing about 5 minutes into every conversation.

So come visit us in Fairfax! We'll be settled eventually, but there really is no need to wait. Now that we have a little extra space and a yard to entertain visitors, we look forward to lots of guests. We hope this letter finds you well and we hope to hear from all of you during the season and in the new year.

Love, Sheeba, Douglas, Mahala and Noble