Season's Greetings

So DeNae ran a contest a couple of weeks ago where you could enter to win the greatest prize ever: she would write your annual Christmas letter for you. The thing is, I have never, in many many many years of being a grownup, sent out a Christmas letter. I don't know why, other than if it involves stamps it sucks away my willpower. If it involves the post office, it will never happen. If it involves the post office at Christmas time, that actually translates into an Urgent Care visit while doctors search for the cause of my sudden and mysterious hives.

Anyway, this is DeNae's letter for us. I thought what I sent her was already pretty funny, but then, she DeNae'd it, and . . . hahahahahaha! It took me a long time to calm down enough to call my husband and read it to him over the phone. I didn't change a thing except to add our signature. And photographic evidence.

I might actually go to the post office this week.

Season’s Greetings from the Jacobson Clan

Christmas 2010

You can stop buying lottery tickets, because you’ll never get any luckier than you are at this moment. That’s right: You’re on the “Inaugural Recipients List” for the first ever Jacobson Family Christmas Letter! I know! I’m terribly happy for you!

Our year has been so spectacular, even the Kardashians’ Christmas letter comes off sounding like an ad for tube socks by comparison. We don’t apologize for being awesome. You play the hand you’re dealt.

Speaking of hands, I’m delighted to announce that Kenny still has two of them, as he has discovered a talent for wood-working. He’s quite the wood-carving alchemist; no matter what he sticks on the lathe (a ’67 Volkswagen, for example) it comes off as a wooden bowl. Yep. We’ve got a whole lotta wooden bowls around here. Bowls, bowls, bowls. Far as the eye can see. The kids wear them instead of bike helmets. We sold the crib; Eden sleeps in a big ol’ wooden bowl.

Not that I’m complaining, particularly since Kenny is also a self-employed contractor for Allergan, a company that makes Botox, Latisse, and Juvederm. He heads up their Wooden Bowl division, which you have to admit is a natural fit given the faces most celebrities are sporting these days. Kenny’s also the 11-year old scout leader, shepherding a troop that has set a scouting record by earning their wood-working merit badges a breathtaking thirty-seven times.

James is in Kenny’s scout troop, and this year received his Arrow of Light. For those of you who are not up on scouting awards, the Arrow of Light comes right after the Stubbed Toe of Darkness Award. It’s a very coveted award. James loves doing homework, and spends every waking minute at the kitchen table with a song in his heart and a Number 2 pencil in his fist. He would rather do homework than anything else in the whole wide world. Seriously. He donated his Razor scooter and all of his video games to Habitat for Humanity so he would have more time to do homework. He is also very close to earning his Procrastination merit badge, but then, what scout isn’t?

Grant has taken upon himself the necessary task of decorating our new house. He’s got an impressive eye for detail. No kidding, the kid’s a wizard with a Magic Marker. Give him a blank wall, and he’ll have crafted a masterpiece inside ten minutes. Fortunately, we have a few dozen wooden bowls to hang up to conceal his work product, at least until he gets a decent agent. What? Like he was just going to give it away? He does hold regular informal exhibitions, however. You may have read about his hugely successful “Play-date” series of events. “Thursday Play-date With Juice Box and Dinosaur Shaped Miscellaneous Chicken Parts Hors D’ouevres” made the Times’ Lifestyle page, and was also the answer to a whopping fourteen crossword clues in that same edition. He stays humble, but it isn’t easy.

In March, Eden proved that you can never play too much Mozart for gestating infants, as she, brilliantly and without any instruction manuals whatsoever, went and got herself born. And at just nine months of age she can crawl, eat things off the floor, and play ‘Rondo alla Turka’ on the Sousaphone. Reports that Mozart un-Facebook-friended Eden over her choice of musical instrument are grossly exaggerated and just plain hurtful. The real reason he un-Facebook-friended her is that he died 350 years before Facebook was invented. I hope that clarifies things for everyone.

For my part, I finished and submitted my third manuscript – LDS fiction, not Sousaphone compositions; do try to keep up – and my first two books will be released next year. “War and Peace” and “The New Testament” promise to be big, big hits, and I’m so excited to see this latest novel – “Thinner Thighs in Thirty Days” – in print!

As research for that last project, I, with malice aforethought, took up running. I now run one mile every day, if you don’t count the sixty miles I log hunched over and chasing Eden, hollering, “No, no! We don’t eat daddy’s lathe! And spit out that Sousaphone! Icky! Icky!”

You may already know that the entire family is very musically adept. I set a goal of learning one hymn a week on the piano, a plan that was going swimmingly until week two. Now, it’s been modified to ‘a measure a week, unless I don’t feel like it.’ After four months, I’m eight measures into “Count Your Blessings”, which means I’m learning it as quickly as most ward choristers conduct it. I’m proud of that. James also started piano lessons, and has learned to his genuine astonishment that contrary to everything his friends have told him, playing the piano does not cause terminal geekiness. Being in sixth grade, however, does.

Kenny is taking fiddle lessons, in part because of his love of music but mostly because he hates the neighbors. If their dog doesn’t stop barking all night, it’ll be the bagpipes next. He is so not kidding. Grant is the family band’s lead singer and choreographer, making a name for himself by creating a hot new dance genre combining the graceful lines of Krump with the psychedelic energy of the Minuet. We call it ‘capering’, but in the Times crossword puzzle it’s referred to as “The Krimpuet”.

We love our new home, we love the library we opted for in place of the dining room (because you can always order a pizza while reading “Jane Eyre” but you can’t do it the other way around and stay out of jail), we love our new ward, we love being a family, and we love Christmas.

Here’s hoping this finds you happy, healthy, and surrounded by all the things that make you smile.

And if that includes wooden bowls, then you need to come for a visit.

Have we got a wall for you!

Love,

The Jacobsons