Since I am not able to mail our Christmas letter out to EVERYONE (that would cost A LOT of money in stamps!!). Here it is for everyone to read :)
Hello everyone! December 2009
Every year I look forward to writing our Christmas letter, but this year I have been procrastinating it because it has been a pretty difficult year for us. All in all we have had a lot of good things happen along with the not so good things, though.
Our biggest and best thing that happened this year was the birth of Caleb Anthony! What an absolute JOY this little boy has been and it was definitely a year that we needed it. After going into labor 2 days before my scheduled c-section, he was born at 8:10am on Saturday March 14th. He was 8lbs. 8 oz. and 19 inches long. He is a total mama’s boy, but does love his time with daddy as well. He and Jacob already have so much fun together and I can tell they are going to be close. It’s fun to watch their relationship start to develop, even this early on in their little lives. He is just starting to think about crawling so I am preparing for life to get a little more interesting with 2 mobile boys.
Jacob turned 2 in August and is really talking up a storm. He learns about 2-3 new words a day now and it is amazing to watch him develop his language skills. It’s also making for communicating with him much nicer. He still has certain words that only I can understand, but it just means I have to “interpret” a lot. Being able to communicate with your child is an amazing feeling. He is growing like a weed right now. I think both of our boys are going to follow the Miller genes and end up nice and tall. We’ll see! He is such an amazing little boy and we feel very lucky to be his parents.
Matthew is a senior in high school this year. We can’t believe he is almost done with high school and getting ready to move onto college. After a little coaxing from Cale (my brother), Joe and myself, he filled out an early application to
Joe is still working in IT at The Cobalt Group. He is really enjoying his job and they seem to be doing well and are actually hiring people, which is a good sign in this economy. They went through a bit of a re-structure that shook up his department a little bit, but his job seems to be secure which is a very good thing. On January 4th, 2009, he will celebrate 2 years since his surgery and he has lost about 175 pounds in those last 2 years. He is looking and feeling really good. He has been working on getting Jacob his ski equipment so that he can start teaching him to ski. We were actually able to take Jacob up to the mountain for the first time a few weeks ago (we had a really early snow dump, which was fun!). He absolutely loved skiing and I think it is going to be something that the two of them will do for many years. I know Joe is anxious to get Caleb up there as well, but he has about 2 years to go before that is going to happen J.
I have had a very interesting year. About 1 week before I was due to have Caleb, I found out that I was going to lose my job. I was given about 5 days notice and my last day of work ended up being 2 days before I went into labor with Caleb. I had been with my boss for almost 3 years and we had been through a lot together and had become very close. She had been at the company for 22 years, so it really shook people up. It was pretty devastating to both of us. Since I was about to have Caleb, there wasn’t much I could do so we just rolled with it. We pulled Jacob out of a bad daycare situation and I was really enjoying being home with the boys, although we were pretty dependant on my salary. I started thinking about going back to work, but in order to put both of our kids into a good daycare, it just didn’t make financial sense. I started thinking about going back to school for nursing and when I talked to Joe about it, he was 100% supportive. So…after a lot of soul searching, we decided to do it. We had to move out of the only home our boys had ever known and into a VERY small rental house in order to make this happen, but we know that it will be worth it in the end. Thankfully I was able to transfer all of my credits from
Even though this has been a very trying year for us, we have many things to be thankful for and I am extremely thankful that Joe and I have built such an amazing and strong little family.
Wishing you all a wonderful holiday season!!
Joe, Carleigh, Matthew, Jacob and Caleb Stutzman
