Warmest greetings to everyone as we enter this holiday season!

How wonderful to come through the Y2K “crisis” unscathed, then be treated to… Dennis Miller on Monday Night Football?  Survivor?  Senator Hillary Clinton?  Butterfly ballots?  Let’s not even talk about Palm Beach voters (so that’s what they mean when they say democracy isn’t pretty…) or hanging chads.  Or “Who Let the Dogs Out.”

Can we flip that millennial odometer back?  Please?  And wouldn't “Al Gore and the Dimpled Chads” be a great name for a band?

Well, actually, at Planet George, populated by three sporadically non-dysfunctional kids, an occasionally incontinent canine, and us, trying to make sense of it all, it was a good year.

How fitting that in this, the first time in, well, a millennium, that the year ended in three zeros, Michael will go through a year with zero hospital stays, zero surgeries, and zero significant health issues.

After keeping Mom and Dad and an army of medical professionals on their toes for a few years, our son is now a strapping 31-pounder with an amazing resemblance to, yes, Charlie Brown.  When he’s not eating and eating, and eating, he spends the other four hours of his day enjoying his daily preschool, playing with his sisters, general destruction of property, and looking forward to turning four in February.  And we’re so happy that he’s developed into a “real boy” who is much more than a medical case history.

Emily would merit a separate newsletter, perhaps even a weekly one.  The most cartoon-like member of the family spent the summer stalking the 18-year-old lacrosse player across the street, including getting out of bed at 3:00 in the morning to leave him a love letter.  She’s a huge fan of TV’s “Power Puff Girls,” with Bubbles being her favorite.  In fact, Emily calls herself “Bubbles Love,” which suggests limited, if interesting, career possibilities for her down the road.  She started kindergarten this year and is the youngest person in her class – she only turned five less than a month ago – but is considered THE leader and smartest person in the class by the students, teachers, and parents.

Meghan celebrated her tenth birthday by having her ears pierced.  She also continued her love of theater by acting in a school production of “The Lion King,” being a Who in our town's “Breakfast With the Grinch” this month, and seeing the touring versions of “Les Miserables” and “Annie” when they came to Rochester.  She stays busy with her school’s conditioning club and Girl Scouts, in which for the third consecutive year, she sold the most cookies of anyone in her troop.  Right before her birthday, she got an expander installed in her mouth as the first step toward getting braces.  She’s doing great so far, although we haven’t yet told her about her upcoming payback decade of indentured servitude.

The word “renaissance” - literally “a rebirth or awakening” would aptly describe the year for Katie.  Not even six months ago, her days were filled with two children home all day, four weekly in-home visits from Michael’s teachers, and little else.  The coming of September put all three children in school, freeing up her mornings.  Among the many things that she’s done this year are some selective freelance editing and writing and increased volunteer involvement at the children’s school.  She also was Meghan’s girl scout troop cookie mom, meaning that we had nearly 800 boxes of cookies in our living room at one point.

Dave, though still not deeply enamored of his work, had another successful year, his best since 1997, and we’ll be somewhere in the Caribbean next year as a result.

What else from this year?

Well, everyone else finally persuaded Dave that his business laptop computer, seemingly welded to his side, did not constitute a household computer, so we got on board the PC revolution a mere decade or so after the rest of the world.  But we did get in in a big way.  Our email addresses are shown at the end of this newsletter, and Dave even put together a spartan web site, viewable at http://home.rochester.rr.com/dggeorge.  If you're reading this, you obviously found it.

Dave spent about 78% of his free time using the “Napster” music “sharing” service.  As such, we now have roughly 200 songs that others have “shared” with us.  Emily, urrrr, Bubbles Love’s, favorite is the Clash’s “Police On My Back,” the chorus of which appropriately asks, “What have I done?  What have I done?”.  Yes, Emily, see your future, be your future.

We raised more than $3,500 this year for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, by far our best-ever year in the charitable cause nearest and dearest to our hearts.  And yes, Meghan is still healthy - very healthy thank goodness.

Lights, camera, action:  Our family was invited to be in a promotional videotape for Ronald McDonald House of Buffalo, so in April, we spent a Saturday enduring the joys of retakes and waiting (and waiting) for the lighting to be right, all in the name of another good cause. This got us invited to an event at the House where we met Phil Hansen of the Buffalo Bills and his wife Dianna.

This summer’s family vacation took us to Boston, where among other things, we saw Plymouth, parts of the Freedom Trail, and rode the “Make Way for Ducklings” swan boats.  Before that, Dave and Katie chased away the late-winter blues in the Bahamas on Dave’s company trip.  Despite the absence of swan boats, and our kids, we managed to have a splendid time.

Everyone is healthy, everyone is happy, “Who Let the Dogs Out” can’t last forever on the charts, and Hillary’s term is over in six years.  May the same sense of peace and happiness prevail in your household.

Dave & Katie

Be in touch!
Dave
Katie
Meghan
Our infantile web page, with this newsletter in living color!

Meghan, Katie, Emily, Michael, Dave Bristol Harbor, RI August 2000