As much as we'd like to write a long personal note to everyone on our Christmas card list, there's just never enough time. So, as many people do, we try to write a short personal note, and include a Christmas letter. We do our best to be creative: past letters have taken the form of an end-of-year-report (complete with graphs), a list of 365 things we *didn't* do that year, and a personal-and-holiday-themed Harper's Index (example: "Percentage of total distance for which we shall be jingling: 100"). But the most fun we've had doing Christmas letters is doing "Christmas letters" for the past two years. It takes a lot of planning, which is half the fun. Okay, most of the fun is actually going to these places, but planning the photos is fun, too. Anyway, everyone got sent a printout of "MERRY CHRISTMAS" last year, and a printout of "& A HAPPY NEW YEAR" this year. I don't know what we're doing next year - perhaps just an exclamation point? - but we have about a week to start thinking about it.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all!(Click on each thumbnail photo to discover where we were. Or feel free to go directly to our 2005 and 2006 Flickr sets.)