Merry Christmas

Well it's that time of year again, and we decided to try a new way of delivering our greetings to you. There are so many of you with whom we want to reach and share our love that sending letters wasn't going to cover it (plus we're not sure we have everyone's current address anyway). So this year we are going to reach out through e-mail and Facebook by creating a blog just for a Christmas letter filled with photos from our year!

This year has brought a lot of change to our little family. After our move from Nashville to Provo last year, we thought not much could be different. But as we look back, much has changed. Our biggest news is that as of June 1st, we are now officially homeowners. Most of the first five months of the year were spent looking for a house, and finally we found a great four-bedroom home in the Edgemont area of Provo. Uncle Mark, our real estate agent, was very patient as we looked at what seemed like hundreds of houses, but we finally both agreed on a place. We thought finding the house was hard work, but then we moved in...

Most of our summer was spent working in the yard that had been neglected for quite some time. After countless hours of weeding, mowing, trimming, taking truckloads of green waste to the green waste dump, more weeding and mowing, we finally finished just in time to start raking and blowing leaves. The garden is ready for planting next year and we can't wait. There is still a lot of planting to do next year in all the flower beds, but we guess that will always be the case.

We did manage to have a lot of fun over the summer, too. We got to go camping at Navajo Lake with the Burdette clan, have a fun family reunion in southern Utah with the Nordstrom family, and enjoy lots of cooler-than-normal summer weather here. The girls learned to ride bikes without training wheels, and if they were outside they were riding their bikes.
Juliana had a accident on her bike with our neighbor's truck as he was leaving his driveway, but luckily emerged with nothing more than a couple scrapes and bruises (and a new bike!).

Steven sold his beloved bike in May in hopes of buying another, better bike, but those plans got put on hold after we found out that our car needed a new transmission. :-( So he took up running, and got to run in Tony's Ragnar Wasatch Back Relay team in mid-June. It was an inspiring event, and lots of fun getting to know Tony, Susan, Sabrina, and the other members of the team better. It was so fun that he decided last minute to run in the Deseret News Marathon on the 24th of July (Pioneer Day here in Utah). Megan and the girls were glad to wait for him at the finish line and cheer him on! It was his first marathon and he finished in just under 3 hours and 20 minutes! He almost qualified for the Boston Marathon, and plans on running a sub-3-hour marathon next year with some new running friends.

Summer went by quickly and the school year began again. The girls started first grade, and suddenly Megan's days were much more free. They love school and learn so fast. The elementary school started a French immersion program this year in first grade so the girls are doing that. It has been so much fun to see them learning, and good for us to keep our French in good form. The girls spend half their school day receiving English-language instruction from one teacher, and the other half in French with another. So we decided to put them in different classes, and we think it's been really good for them. Megan gets to volunteer in their classes each week. They are reading chapter books like crazy (mmmm librarian genes) and love doing math problems, too.

Megan has been enjoying a little extra free time, but couldn't just keep it empty. She has been learning to play violin with instruction from her good friend Marianne, realizing a dream she has had for a long time. Megan also took a family history research course at BYU focusing on English and Welsh genealogy. It has been fascinating, and a good challenge to use her brain in that way again. Finally, she has also been looking for a job that she could do part-time while the girls are at a school, but so far nothing has materialized.

Professionally, it has been a long, stressful year at the Music and Dance Library for Steven. After a long self-study of the library's activities and an external review, library administration is instituting many changes that we hope will improve library services and collections for students and teaching faculty. There's still lots of work to be done in the upcoming transition, and hopefully 2010 will bring more normalcy and less uncertainty than 2009 proved to have.

2009 has been one of the most interesting, stressful, and fulfilling years of our lives, and we're constantly reminded of how thankful we are to have you all for friends and family. We feel fortunate to be able to communicate regularly with you through the Internet, and especially pleased to have visited with so many of you here in Provo this year! Please know that you are all always welcome to drop by or stay at our home if you're passing this way. We wish you a happy holiday season, and may the new year bring you happiness and joy.