Merry Christmas, 2003!

The Happiest of Holiday seasons to you and yours! This was a most fulfilling and fun year for us. We hope it was for you too.

Michael finished up a great kindergarten in June and is now in first grade with an equally wonderful teacher. Highlights of his year included playing the cymbals in his kindergarten class play (his least favorite part was "standing," in his words, but no one ever said that being a man of the boards was easy), learning to swim during the summer, and joining Tiger Cub scouts in the fall. Dave took Mikey to meet Bob the Builder at a local park during the summer, so we're hoping his life hasn't peaked at six. Given his penchant for having fun and getting into trouble, and his eye for attractive females, he should still have a lot of good times ahead of him, so there probably is little cause for concern. Well, until he can reach the pedals in a car anyway.

Emily is now in third grade, continuing with the same combined second/third classroom that she was in a year ago. In the spring, she was the youngest person with a speaking part in her school play, as a wolf cub in Jungle Book. Good parents that we are, we find it all too hard to say "no" when she drops our favorite line of the play - "Pretty please… with a ham hock on top…" - on us. She was selected for the Gifted and Talented program at her school. And of course, cheerleading, her main raison d'etre, took up much of the late summer and early fall. She is in a community Nutcracker production this month as, naturally, a "party girl."

Meghan really had a year for the ages. She finished sixth grade making honor roll each quarter, then raised the ante by making high honor in the most recent seventh grade quarter. She is active in several school clubs, and led the drive to organize a Creative Writing Club at her school. In October, the principal picked Meghan, out of more than 1,100 students, to write the student column in the school's monthly parent newsletter, and she'll be doing that for the rest of seventh grade. Other neat stuff for her this year: a trip to New York City with her grandparents (in which she toured the Empire State Building and the United Nations), spending a week inseparable from her cousin Molly in Rhode Island, her first trip to camp, moving up to Cadet Girl Scouts, and winning out over stiff competition to get a role in her school's fall play. Oh, and becoming a teenager. Pray - hard - for all of us!!!

Dave, who was last seen wearing an apron and carrying a laundry basket while looking for a job, finally settled into recruiting from home. He had some promising successes, although the distraction of having the kids around during the summer was trying, and he's looking to work from an outside office starting in January. Dave continues to wear an apron and carry a laundry basket and is, as Jackson Browne once sang, trying his best to "be a happy idiot and struggle for the legal tender." Aside from work, Dave helped establish an alumni Hall of Fame at his high school alma mater, is heading up the effort for his class's upcoming 25th reunion, and will be a "phone a friend" on an upcoming Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (tentatively set for December 19 - be listening for his "voice made for newspapers"). In all seriousness, taking nothing for granted any more, Dave has said that in many ways, this has been the happiest year of his life.

Katie decided to squeeze into this year every single thing she's done here and there in the past. For most of the year, she worked a demanding four-day schedule at the Rochester paper. This fall, she started volunteering again in Michael's classroom. She's on her fourth - last, she says - tour of duty co-leading Emily's Brownie troop. Emily is working hard on her to become a cheerleading coach next year, something that Katie, trying to avert an early onset of The Apocalypse, is doing her best to avoid. This all took place of course centered around our home, a place in which the background music sounds a bit like this: "Mommy!Mommy!Mommy!KATIE!!!! MommyMommy!KATIE!!!…" Needless to say, a big highlight of her year was the 20th reunion of her St. Bonaventure graduating class, where for one weekend, a chance to be young and silly and irresponsible all over again shoved all that other stuff aside, if only momentarily.

Our summer vacation was spent with Katie's parents in Prudence Island, RI, in an old house owned by descendants of Roger Williams. Time together is always precious, and this was no exception. There's much to be said for being someplace where swimming, talking, and reading are the only options.

As always, you can check out our comings and goings from 2003 and before on our award-winning (well, not really, but the few people who see it are polite enough to say they like it…) web site, which we encourage you to check out. We upgraded our camera this year, and sometimes had to surgically separate the new one from Dave - it complements his apron very well, actually - but we did get some memorable pictures for his troubles.

The happiest of holiday seasons to you and yours, and may your new year be filled with happiness and peace, love and prosperity, and plenty of reasons to smile!

Katie & Dave

(Other family photos are up one level)