“It's the moooost wonDERful tiiiime of the yeeeeear!”  That was my Bing Crosby voice.  Hey, you surprised this letter is on time?!  Me too.  This year has been busy, but a bit more organized.  Well, Let’s start with Dayton:

Dayton finally learned English (and some Spanish) and has become a real talker.  He constantly steals the “brocky” from my soup (broccoli), he licks “yummypops” (lollipops), and a midnight snack of “coooookeees” and “chalky meewk” (cookies and chocolate milk), he likes “wabbles” for breakfast (waffles), and a cheese “much” for lunch (sandwich), he is particular about the appoes” he eats (apples), and he can’t live without playing “jooner” (Webkinz Jr.) on the “pooter” (computer) with his BFF Mio the cat who goes with him everywhere.  He especially likes to “cwap” and encourages others to do it too (you know, like an applause, tsk tsk).  He now asks for SoyJoy by name, yet he can recognize and clearly yell out, “BEER” in the store.  My spell checker is having a breakdown with this.  Dayton is a real dancer too, and asks daddy to play the Gummibear Song on the ipod.  We celebrated his 2nd birthday—his golden birthday—and if anything he has been more self-sufficient than terrible—knock on wood.  He is the typical boy in that he loves trucks, big trucks, cars, motorcycles, planes, “coppers” (helicopters),  ATVs, snowmobiles, basketball, running, video games, computers, candy (from daddy!), etc.

Emily has been amazing.  Good grades in school so far and she has taken up several hobbies.  She loves playing the recorder in music class and the flute in the school band, and just performed 2 winter concerts.  Her favorite subject is Art—and art at home too like cooking and baking desserts like diet root beer floats, cookies, and banana cream pudding with whip cream and graham crackers, and she has sewn some purses from scratch.  Emily enjoyed visiting Awana so much last year with her friend Eileen that she signed up—just in time for the pinewood derby, and she took home the 1st place trophy for Best Design (she designed it and finished it, I just helped her cut it up).  In a very emotional ceremony, she bridged with her ‘sisters’ from Brownie Scouts to Junior Scouts.  Over the summer she spent a lot of time with her friends, and a lot of her allowance on anything Pokemon!  When her friends needed money, they would sell her bits of their collection.  After school, Emily rides her bike to CEP—an after-school leadership/homework program (more like 1/2 homework and 1/2 play-date with her friends).

I, Ann, was diagnosed with diabetes just in time for my 39th birthday.  That stunk—BIG time.  But over a period of 9 months, and a mix of diet, exercise and meds, I was able to get my A1c (3-month blood sugar count) from a whopping 12.4 to just above a normal 6.4 (WAH-HOOO)!!  The doctor said, “Ann, you are the poster child of diabetes!”  (yeah, I just had to get that in there!)  Along with the dieting and exercising I lost another 15+ lbs.  The YMCA helped with that too.  I have also jumped on the Craigslist bandwagon, and wow is that fun.  I love getting money for something I might’ve just thrown away anyway.  My junk is apparently another person’s treasure.  I went with my friends to Door County, WI again over Labor Day (see picture of us 3 on horseback!), and this time without Dayton.  Greg took the kids to his friend, Will’s, farm in Brown County, IN.  That gave us girls the opportunity to be “responsibly irresponsible” and have a real ladies night out. 

Gregory turned the big 5-O in May.  Along with that comes new blood tests, heart checks, colonoscopies, and constant emails and letters from AARP.  Greg refuses to acknowledge them.  And of course, everything happens now because he is in his 50’s… he can’t remember this, he can’t find that, he didn’t hear that, he has to take a nap because, etc.—heck, that’s how it’s been for YEARS!!!  He’s just been making different excuses.  Since we’ve had the place up in Marquette, WI, we haven’t used our Hi-Lo trailer for a long time, so in the summer Greg let it go and sold the it.  He was sad, but we celebrated inside it with our last pizza dinner and a movie from Greg’s DVD collection—now over 1200 of them.  Our living room wall looks like Blockbuster.

Paul turned a big 3-0 this year in September.  He attended his usual anime conventions, and made more of his own new outfits for each of them.  He has been playing around with making his own anime videos on his computer too.  Last year for Christmas, he used his video camera and made a video for the family, starring Emily, about the excitement of decorating the Christmas tree, to the tune of Pee-Wee Herman’s Big Adventure—pretty clever and entertaining.         

We didn’t go to the Dayton HamVention this year for the first time in 10+ years.  We didn’t have much to sell, not much we needed to buy, and no one else wanted to go, so we went to Marquette instead.  It was nice not to celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary in cold, hot, rainy OH.  For the first time in a long time we spent a nice romantic evening together at the Ravinia Music Festival in Highland Park—wow was that wonderful.  This year we spent 2 weeks in Arkansas in a cabin, and the Miranda’s joined us for 1 of them.  It was a great time snorkeling, scuba diving, fishing, boating, tubing, tanning, swimming, skinny dipping, and relaxing.

 

We wish you and your family all the best in happiness, health, and faith for 2010.  God bless us all.

The Gately Family  -  Gregory, Ann, Paul, Emily, Dayton, and Max & Rufus

The Gately Family Holiday Newsletter 2009