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Greetings dear friends and family!
I hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday season! You’re probably shocked and amazed to be receiving our Christmasletter so early this year–I’m actually starting it on Thanksgiving day, which I’m pretty sure is a first for me. This year I had to get my holiday greetings done relatively early, because as many of you know, we have a new address! Since I never got around to sending out change of address cards, I thought I’d better take this opportunity to let everyone know we moved. In July, after 11½ years on Golden Rain Drive, we sold our house and moved to a new home on the west edge of Lawrence.
It’s kind of amazing how much of our year was actually consumed with the whole moving process. We started shopping for a new home very early in the year, only because the buyer’s market made it a good time to invest in a new house. Our weekends were full of open houses and our evenings full of searching for houses online. After many months
of looking, we finally found this house that seemed like a good fit, so we made an offer as a 15th wedding anniversary present to each other! We spent a few weeks getting our old house ready for the market before it was listed in early June, and it sold just 16 days later! We moved in mid-July and are so incredibly thankful. The new house has been a perfect fit for us and we just couldn’t feel more blessed! The pictures are still being hung and a few rooms are still being furnished, but overall we are feeling very settled after just a few months. Although the year wasn’t a good one for KU basketball (we lost in the Sweet Sixteen) and wasn’t a good one for KU football (5-7 with all sorts of coaching drama), we still enjoyed attending all the home football games and a few basketball games as well. This year we’re splitting season basketball tickets with a group of friends for the first time, so we’re looking forward to seeing our #1 Jayhawks play a lot of hoops this winter! Although 2009 wasn’t good for KU sports, Chad was of course extremely happy to see his beloved Steelers win the Super Bowl in February! (Chad wants you to know that’s 6 titles, in case you’re counting at home.☺)
We didn’t do a ton of traveling this year, although we were able to take a nice weekend trip to Tulsa, which was a much needed break in the midst of our house-hunting frenzy in May. We met our friend Jason there and went to see my favorite band in the world (Old 97's) at an art and music festival. The next month we went to San Francisco/Sonoma county for our friends Nate and Leigh Ann’s wedding. Even though we were just there last year, it’s such a beautiful area with so much to do we didn’t do any of the same things we’d done the year before!
In August, our regular life was put on hold for several weeks while we dealt with the yet another cancerous tumor on our sweet girl Hope–-her third tumor in three years. After another expensive surgery she was declared cancer free again, but we know we have to be vigilant about watching the tumors that are bound to return. Thankfully she recovers quickly from the surgeries, so we’ll just have to continue to budget for our very expensive puppy and plan on another surgery next year! Thankfully, Celtic and Fresco are both doing well. We celebrated Celtic’s 12th birthday in June, and he’s still walking over a mile almost every day!
Speaking of walking, last month I walked in the 60 mile Breast Cancer 3-Day walk for the 4th year in a row, after raising over $3000 in support of Susan G. Komen for the Cure. This year, since I had no one to walk with, I decided to walk in the Dallas 3-Day because it was only a day’s drive. I trained relatively little compared to previous years, but the walk was still fairly easy and blister free! Chad drove along to Texas and went hunting with his cousin during the days that I was walking. I’m already looking forward to the walk next fall and am hoping to walk in the 3-Day in Washington, DC. Hopefully next year I’ll find some friends who want to come along!
Those are really the only highlights of our year–everything else is very much the same! Chad is still at Westar after 6 years, and I just celebrated my 11th year at KU Endowment. We are so thankful for the stability and security of our jobs and the blessings God has heaped upon us. We hope that this holiday season finds you and your family abounding in peace, love, joy and a multitude of blessings as well!
With Love,
Chad and Kim
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