Seasons Greetings,
Like the snowflakes, you are special and so unique!! You are one of a kind.
Just like everyone else.
Are you ready for another Christmas? Are you ready for another Christmas letter?
Do you want to hear about our vacation at the beach? Probably not. Would I bore you if I told you about finishing the basement? Yes. Should I write about the creek flooding our pond behind our house and sweeping away our big bass? No. But you can look forward to being treated with award winning poetry written by Jamey.
I wonder how many people actually read my Christmas letters that I send year after year. Christmas is such a busy time. Who has time to read? I do. I read all your Christmas letters. I look forward to them every year. Thanks for writing to us. I enjoy them and I hope you enjoy mine too. BTW...Our zip code has changed to 17015.
This year I thought I would try something different. I am putting my Christmas letter in a blog. I hope that you will feel inspired to post a comment after you read my letter. Comments will not show on the blog but I will see them. Just say a quick "Hi" or "Merry Christmas from the Cheery family" or "Cheers". (Please write something. Like my yoga instructor says as we attempt the cow's head pose, "Fake it till you make it." )
Need inspiration for your next cow's head pose? Watch this video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryCTIigaloQv
Amazing.
I am having a haaaaard time writing this letter. One of the men working in the basement just let out a big yell. "aaaaahhhhhhhh!!!!!!" Very distracting. I checked on them. He said he was reenacting a James Bond movie.
If you are in the mood for a really funny movie go see "Little Miss Sunshine". It had Joe and I laughing and laughing.
The doorbell. It's the delivery man with the Mooreland Elementary School fundraiser that I had to buy from my friend because she bought from my son's North Dickinson Elementary School fundraiser. Mikey is in fifth grade this year. This is my last year at the elementary school.
It is Tommy's last year in high school. I cried the morning of his senior pictures. I am tearing up right now just thinking that this is his last year at home.
Tis the season for tears, doorbells and noises from the basement, which brings me to my next topic...
Noises from the basement... Tommy is the drummer in the band, Knockout Stereo. Click on http://www.myspace.com/knockoutstereo to hear their songs and see pictures of the band. OR see Tommy and Knockout Stereo performing at First Night in Carlisle on New Year's eve at the Union Fire Hall (35 W. Louther St.) at 9:30 to 10:15 PM and again at 10:45 to 11:30 PM.
Tommy is more than just a good looking guy with a set of drum sticks. Tommy is in National Honor Society again and has a lot of hard classes this year. Honors Physics, AP Calculus and AP Chemistry. We bought a manual Ford Ranger pick-up truck for him to drive. There is a story behind the purchase of that truck. He drives to school everyday and where ever else he wants to go like to band practice or to his friend, Craig's house on North Mountain (We live next to South Mountain) or to the Y to weight lift or to play racquetball or basketball or ping pong. He has not been kick boxing recently. Tommy pays for his own gas. He worked for Grandpa (Sue's father, a retired farmer) over the summer. He helped to build the new addition onto their ranch house and also did a lot of weed wacking and lawn mowing.
Davey has his driving permit. Davey surprised us and ran cross-country for Carlisle instead of going out for soccer. His PR time was 18:15. He was a top JV runner on a winning JV team. They won the Tom Cook Invitational for JV squads and the Mid-Penn League JV competition. Davey was also on the winning team in the Local Church league flag-football tournament for high school students. (All the money raised from the Flag-Football tournament went to a charity selected by the winning football team's church.) Davey is also working part-time at La Luz Cafe and Gallery and spending some of his earnings on paintball and on an early December trip to Orlando, FL with a friend, Mick, Mick's family and Darren.
What goes around, comes around...Last spring, Davey and Tommy's friend, Craig, who is twice Davey's size were rough housing. Craig won and Davey fell, hit the corner of the stepper and has a small scar on his nose near the corner of his eye from the incident. In the first Y-league basketball game of this 06-07 season, Davey accidentally pegged Craig's eye point blank with the ball. The blow left Craig's whole side of his face was red. To everything there is a season! Turn. Turn. Turn.
Jamey who describes himself as "1% nerd and 99% beast" made the all A honor roll in the first marking period of seventh grade (He considers anyone including himself who earns good grades part nerd.) He also scored big on Carlisle middle school soccer team. Jamey was given the privilege of doing the Middle School soccer game report on the morning announcements because he scored the first goal and also the first winning goal of the season!
The four seasons for the Dennison family for the last four years have been Spring Soccer, Swimming, Fall Soccer and Basketball. For the first time in 4 years, we did not participate in four seasons of sports. Jamey, our swimmer, chose not do summer swim team. :) Having a more relaxed summer might have enabled Jamey to venture into new waters of poetry writing. Here are some of his poems that he does not want to share with you. He wrote them when he was 12. 12 year old boys do not want anyone to know that they wrote poetry. (I, the proud mother, think that they are great. Or maybe they are poems that only a mother could love...you be the judge.)
Moo, Moo, Moo
The cow took a poo
this made me laugh
for I was just a calf.
The opposite of hate
is when you take them on a date.
The opposite of fun
is when you sit on your bun.
The opposite of fun
is a day without the sun.
red,
blue,
purple,
orange,
red,
green,
all of these colors are in my mind
I wish I wasn't color blind.
Joining the ranks of true professional athletes, Mikey ran his first race with Jamey in the Monster Mile at the YMCA. Mikey came in second for his age group (10 and 11 year olds) and won $15. Jamey came in 4th in his age group (12 and 13 year olds) and won $5. On Thanksgiving morning, my sister, Nanci, and I helped at the finish line of the largest ever 5K YMCA Turkey Trot in Carlisle. Joe, Davey, Jamey, Scott (Nanci's oldest son) and Mikey ran in the turkey trot. Guess who won their age group...or just click on the blue turkey trot hyperlink to find out. Nanci and I (if my knee is not bothering me) plan to run with everyone next year in the 5K Turkey Trot. Come out and join us.
Mikey continues to excel at running, last week he tied the N. Dickinson elementary school all time record for the mile run.
Joe at age 48, played in the over 40 men's soccer league. He is thankful to be able to run and play at his age and for not getting injured this season!
As of next September, Joe will have worked at the Navy Depot for 20 years. He has changed hats over the years from Computer Programmer to Team Leader to Computer Specialist in the Business Development Office to Project Manager. He and Ken are still playing jazz gigs together but less frequently since this past summer. And what does Joe spend his money on? Jamey and Mikey's braces.
We had a unusual experience over the summer. A Killdeer laid her eggs on our gravel driveway near our pavilion next to the pond this past summer. It was amazing to watch. They sat on their nest though the wind and hard pouring rain of the flood. They were not chased away or eaten by our cat or our neighbor's dogs. If someone or something got too close to their nest they would pretend to have a broken wing and act as a decoy to distract the intruder away from their four eggs. Amazingly, after many weeks of trying to avoid getting too close to their nest, all four eggs were successfully hatched. In my life I feel like that mother Killdeer tending the nest against all odds.
And what does Sue do? She drives the family around in the van.
In addition to being a stay-at-home van driver, Sue worked three part-time jobs in August, September and October plus as room mother for Mikey's class coordinated and ran the Halloween party. (The class really liked making slime and the scary story telling ...Where's My Hairy Toe? The Viper. The Attic.) Sue always seemed to be in a hurry. She got a speeding ticket, backed up into the side of the guy's car who was working on the basement and almost forgot to go to the mandatory YMCA staff meeting, all in the same week in mid October.
After working part-time in the DataDen at the Bosler Library for 2 years and 5 months, Sue has moved onto working part-time in the Carlisle High School for the head nurse. Sue misses teaching the computer classes. She likes being more in touch with her son's world at school and also that she does not have to work evenings and weekends. Sue is still working at the YMCA in babysitting. For fun and fitness, Sue goes to yoga and rides her bike. She is taking Replenex for her knee and hopes to run again in the future.
At Easter, Sue hid plastic Easter eggs filled with popcorn covered with white chocolate. The next day when the boys went to hunt the eggs, we found 4 or 5 that had been opened and eaten by some nocturnal animal. They were also disappointed to find that the ants had found most of the sweet treats inside the eggs before the boys did. The ants crawled through the little wholes in the plastic eggs and covered the white chocolate popcorn inside the eggs. The weather was warm so the ants were on the move.
Nurturing the nest, Sue is still taking the high quality vitamins and making her sons take them also. (These vitamins are the same vitamins that the mother of the septuplets, Bobby McCaughey took exclusively after she found out that she was pregnant) It was another wonderfully healthy year. Sue also uses safer cleaning products for health reasons.
Check out Sue's favorite bookmarks at del.icio.us/sdennison . She is also creating a blog with health and wellness info at http://www.heartsoulandvoice.blogspot.com/ Click on either blue hyperlink to see my posts. Save my blog and my del.icio.us site to your favorites/bookmarks so that you can easily find them again. I will keep adding to them for all to share. Optimal health is a matter of choice, not a matter of chance. Save a place in your bookmarks or favorites for cheerychristmas.blogspot.com too for next year's Christmas letter. Save a place in your hearts for us.
Wishing you a happy, healthy holiday season and a prosperous new year.
Sue, Joe, Tommy, Davey, Jamey and Mikey
