Christmas greetings

 ‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring but one Lucy mouse (who never goes to bed until she’s absolutely certain everyone else has).

If you’re reading this, of course you have realized that we’ve opted to go a little higher tech on our Christmas greetings this year. Somehow the holidays snuck up on me, and while we could have probably managed to get paper letters out to all of you sometime before Valentine’s Day, we opted instead to go this route. What can I say? I’m a sucker for anything that makes my life even the tiniest bit easier, and while I always enjoy recapping our year and sending our best wishes to all of you, I hate the formatting-reprinting-margin changing hassle of actually printing the letter.

So here you go—our first digital Christmas greeting. My sincerest hope is that I will somehow find the time in the coming year to keep blogging our stories and laughs throughout the year. Check back now and then. Sometimes I actually get some fun stuff posted!

It’s been a quiet year in the Lueken house (well, as quiet as they get around here). 4 out of the 5 kids are in school this year. Grace and Sam are in 3rd and 5th grade respectively. Claire started kindergarten and Lucy started 3 year old preschool. All of them still attend Our Lady of Guadalupe Spanish Immersion program and keep us all on our toes running to games, meets, practices and concerts.

Gracie is our musician—continuing to participate in her school choir and taking up the trumpet this year. She also continues to swim competitively with DASH (Dubuque Area Swimming Hurricanes) which has her running up to the pool 3 times a week year round. She also played soccer and volleyball this last year and has been broadly hinting that she’d like to try out gymnastics sometime soon. Grace got an ipod touch for her birthday, and within about 15 minutes had figured out how to text message with her friends. We’re already catching glimpses of the teenager she seems eager to become.

Sam joined the Independent League baseball organization this summer, so we spent a lot of summer nights at the ball field. He also really enjoys basketball and soccer, and we convinced him to give DASH one more go around this fall. He doesn’t enjoy it as much as his sister, but he’s a good sport (most of the time) about practicing twice a week. He has decided that basketball is really his first love and I have to say, I’m thrilled. He even beat me at H-O-R-S-E this last month, which is a feat his dad has yet to accomplish in 13 years of trying.

Claire started kindergarten this year and is going along and getting along in her happy Claire way. She played soccer this fall and started dancing and basketball this winter. Of all our kids, she is the one who is most eager to share her Spanish with us, and it is so much fun to hear her practicing her vocabulary on all of us and her little siblings, though by the end of this year, she will likely surpass Chad and I in her knowledge of the language!

Lucy is in 3 year old preschool at St. Anthony’s and while Chad and I debated a bit on whether to leave her in her fantastic home daycare, or let her start preschool, our queen never had any doubt that this was her year to join the big kids at school. The dance studio agreed to let Lucy join Claire’s class even though they usually want kids to wait until they are 4. Even strangers can’t say no to the queen, but with that smile, who can blame them?

Clayton has grown up a lot in the last year (too much if you ask me!) His first word, and his first love is cars. He even insists on “reading” (and then carrying around) the car classifieds nearly every day. He is our rough and tumble boy’s boy, and our first baby to strongly and vocally prefer Dad to Mom for nearly every need. It’s a bit of a switch for Chad and I, and one I find at times refreshing, and at times disheartening. In my opinion, my baby should want to cuddle his mom more, but who has time for that? Certainly not Mr. Busy bear! Clayton attends a wonderful in home daycare with his cousins John Paul and Oliver Markham.

For Chad and I, it’s been a pretty uneventful year. We have all we can handle keeping up with the status quo! We did get to welcome a few new family members on the Markham side this year as my brother Brad and his wife Laura brought us my godson Oliver Thomas in March, and my brother Craig gave us two beautiful young ladies in new wife Michelle and her 3 year old daughter Payton in September. We took a few small family trips this year—a week in Okoboji (which Claire calls her “favorite place in the whole world”) and a long weekend in Chicago when the Hawks played Northwestern. I’m still with John Deere and Chad is still running Adams Architectural and Dubuque Window and Door. I blog sporadically, he runs sporadically, and we both race around town in our mini-vans running kids hither and yon every single day. It’s a busy, bursting at the seams life, but we wouldn’t have it any other way!

In closing, we would like to wish you and your families and friends the very merriest of Christmases and happiest of New Years. I often think if my life had a theme song it would be “Blessed”. It’s never more evident than at this time of year, when we hear from all of you and get to celebrate the birth of our Savior.

Love and blessings,

Chad, Dawn, Grace, Sam, Claire, Lucy, and Clayton