2010
In the recent weeks, Cara and I have been receiving a lot of Christmas cards from all sorts of awesome and caring friends. One family in particular, The Zinkiewicz family, likes to send along a little “year in review” letter. Now the parent’s of my friend have been sending one out for years, but since their sons are now married and having kids, they have both joined in on the fun as well. I found it kind of inspiring, so I decided that I would throw my hat into the ring and draft my own holiday letter. Only instead of mailing it like a respectable human being, I am just posting it on my blog. I hope you enjoy it, or at least read it through to the end!
Dear (Insert Your Own Name Here),
Cara and I are so thankful for making it through another year without any serious death or pestilence. We would like to send our heartfelt apologies to your family for the (Insert your specific tragedy here). We too have had some struggles this year, which I will get to later, but overall things have been extra awesome for us.
The year started off pretty decent for us, we made it through the past winter in the new house without so much as a light bulb burning out, so we were able to concentrate our finances on fun things like beer and clothes. January saw me heading to Minnesota to see an NHL game with Matt Wilson Miles, a new tradition for him and I!
February came up almost immediately following January and making good on a Christmas gift from Cara, we set off to St. Louis to see another hockey game and to celebrate Valentine’s Day. Little did Cara know I had a few surprises in store for her as well! I managed after a few missed chances to ask for Cara’s hand in marriage while in St. Louis. She, as most of you know, responded with a rousing “YES!”
Once I locked that down and put a ring on it, we moved into spring with little fanfare. We want to thank everyone who helped us celebrate our 30th birthdays (Mine in April and Cara’s in July). I think in both cases we were able to recapture a little bit of our youth! (Insert your name here), you were Crazy that night!
Cara proving once again how dedicated she is at her job was awarded the ‘Teacher of the Year’ award at school for 2010-2011. She milked that among her students and from me for quite awhile, but we are all truly proud of her for that! I started introducing her not as my fiancée, but as the teacher of the year! She told me to stop.
The summer was pretty cool too. We got out quite a bit on our bikes, even riding in our first organized bike tour, the ‘Tour De Lakes 2010.’ Cara on the other hand found an even better hobby. She signed up for a tennis program with (Insert your name here if you played tennis with Cara) and has made improvements in her game by leaps and bounds! She even managed to beat me once or twice when I was sick or something! She is currently cutting her teeth in the USTA circuit this fall and is looking forward to growing in the sport.
In July we thought it would be awesome to get another dog. Cara had been asking for one for a while, so for her birthday we went and rescued a sweet little Boston terrier. It turned out to not be awesome at all. We named him Dexter and if that is any indication, he tried to kill our dog Killian! A few stitches later and much to our chagrin, we sent Dexter to live with a friend. We will try again another time.
Shortly after that, our aging dog Killian was diagnosed with a cancerous tumor, which we had removed. He seems to be doing fine. He has been through a lot this year for a 10 yr old Boxer. Thanks for the prayers on that one!
Cara and I are truly blessed to have not only have found each other and a great home, but to all of you out there that have affected our lives this year (Four Loko notwithstanding). We are planning our wedding for 2011, so we are pretty confident that the coming year will be just as awesome as this one was. Happy Holidays to all of you and say a few prayers for our family members (and to yours) that are struggling with medical issues and such. We know how hard life can be sometimes, we are just thankful that we had some pleasant things to share this year!
Love,
Ian (and Cara who doesn’t know I wrote this yet)
