Christmas 1982

Christmas greetings to you from all of us!

We are all well, busy, and involved; the younger ones are growing and their elders are mellowing (nice euphemism to cover gray hair, wrinkles, and the odd painful joint or two).

Cathy and Jenny are involved in singing at school in various groups, their grades look pretty good, they’ve learned to play football, and their current passion is an Apple computer recently acquired for the family. As long as it doesn’t keep them out past curfew, I guess we won’t worry.

Brian continues to live and breathe all sorts of sports. His soccer team finished the season respectably and now he begins basketball season. He’s got a great free-throw technique and managed to win six Big Macs for the family dinner at the church fiesta by shooting baskets — till they closed down the booth and told him to go away. He will learn BASIC programming in the spring through the school district; we hope he’ll find the computer is useful for much more than video games.

David is still into everything, constantly on the prowl, very verbal, and exhibiting the classic negativism of the two-year old. It takes five of us to keep him out of trouble, but sometimes the vigilante committee slips up and we find him decorating the bathtub with toothpaste or recharging his batteries with a mouthful of crayon. If we can survive another year without his being poisoned or bringing the walls down around our ears, we can all breathe easier.

Since November, Larry’s been numbered among the growing number of independent computer consultants; this represents a new stage for us since his incorporation and the acquisition of the computer, which all of us use except David (although he’s attempted several raids). Larry’s contract with Litton to work on an inertial navigation system will run six months or longer. The commute to Woodland Hills is longer than his previous one to Camarillo and his 50 hour per week schedule forces us to communicate very efficiently as we pass in the night. He’s been taking his running somewhat more seriously this year and has done two 10K runs this fall, both in the 48-minute range.

I’ve been teaching English as a Second Language to adults four nights a week since February at the local Adult Education Center and going to school at UC Santa Barbara on the weekends to complete a certificate in teaching ESL. With a little running and a couple of hours of Jazzercise each week, there seems to be hope that the ravages of children and the passage of time can be staved off for a while.

We’re all looking forward to a quiet peaceful holiday season and hope yours will be the same. Best wishes to you from all of us.