December 2022
To Our Dear Family and Friends,
We hope this letter finds you doing as well as can be celebrating this special time of year! As I prepared to write this letter, I flipped (scrolled) through photos to jog my Dory-brain as to the happenings of the year and ended up soaking in the reminders of God’s goodness. It brought renewed joy and a sense of hopefulness. I solicited the kids to lend their elephant-like memories, which at times like this is helpful, to join me in counting our blessings from 2022.
After a season of careful searching, Nick is in the beginning stages of launching a company that creates software for fire departments, and his new office space is just 12 minutes from home. Cheers to a new adventure and a short commute! He was able to assistant coach three of our four soccer teams this fall, drive on Hannah’s super fun field trips, share his love of sky-diving with the kids at I-Fly, and has been identified as our resident Algebra coach for Emmy. Quality time together is a blessing all around!
A stand-out blessing for James was his Rad Rabbit Magic Camp this summer. He learned the character traits of a true magician and many jaw-dropping magic tricks. He performed them diligently and confidently for family, friends, and for the staff at both the pediatrician’s office and drive-through covid test site, bringing a little joy to their day and mine.
Julia and James have both morphed into bookworms and do lots of their reading while we're on the road. For a large part of the year, Julia has been devouring historical American Girl books and rereading Harry Potter in her backseat den. A year and a half after mailing a letter to the actress who played her favorite Harry Potter character, Luna Lovegood, Julia received a personalized signed photo that now lives on the front of our refrigerator!
Hannah and Julia paid forward a blessing, both donating hair to “Children With Hair Loss” this year. They have cute new styles, far less tangles, and there is noticeably less hair accumulated in the shower drains! Hannah has had covid twice, the flu and a gnarly cold this year, and while she was convalescing at home, she insisted on helping me clean and reorganize the house, making a sizable dent in her “to do” list (and mine!) Also, yay for her regenerated immune system!
The kids have spent the last few years searching regularly for a second dog on various adoption websites. Nick has been fully supportive, but I have waffled between wanting to let 15 year-old Molly live out her twilight years in peace and being aware that when “her time” comes the void would be gaping. None of the applications that we submitted for rescue dogs elicited a call back, which I saw as a clear indication that it wasn’t our time yet. In early July, my newly retired mom invited my sister and I and the kiddos (minus Emmy and Claire who were away at camp) to join her in meeting a litter of Havapoo puppies. We were instantaneously smitten. Mom quickly found her little pup, Lucy, before the woman asked if we wanted a puppy as well. Now, I don’t make decisions quickly, but we only had minutes until the next interested family was due to arrive. We prayed, called Nick, and just like that, sweet, sassy and sometimes spicy Sophie Horn, joined our family. Emmy’s face when she opened her eyes to see Sophie in her arms after walking in the door from camp still brings me to tears. For Molly, Sophie’s one redeeming quality is her delicious food bowl.
Emmy, our newly minted teenager, has had some personal blessings this year though some of them, I believe, she will appreciate as blessings at a later time...She played her first season of soccer with Daddy coaching the team, she got braces, and is participating in a Cotillion class that I signed her up for without her consent. What she does see as a blessing, though, is the opportunity to love on the babies in the nursery at church as often as she’s able.
You can imagine the joy that was felt on Easter when we learned that our family tree was growing. Uncle Grant and Auntie Megan were expecting our newest cousin! After nine long months of waiting, we couldn’t help but stage a “watch party” in the hospital parking lot for the final push (pun intended.) We played trivia, danced, observed local wildlife, toured the neighboring streets searching for Christmas light displays, and made an In-N-Out run before they closed; and then, just after midnight, Uncle Grant met us outside the Birth Center doors to share with us that Fiona Lilian had joined our pack! What joy she has brought us already!
We agree that the resounding winner, as far as the density of blessings, was our family trip to New York for Nick’s 20th West Point reunion. James counted 21 blessings! Topping the list was encountering cherished friends seemingly every time we turned around. We were last minute additions to the long-booked out “West Point insiders tour,” where we walked onto the library balcony in time to watch the 5pm dinner cannon fire. We were tipped off about the Army vs. Navy women’s soccer game and cheered our hearts out watching Army’s first win in 4 years! We blitzed through New York City with the Sacksteder crew and (literally) ate it up at Ellen’s Stardust Diner, after being told we’d get a table quicker as a party of 12 than as two tables of six (SERIOUSLY?!) We were entertained by the Broadway-hopeful wait staff who serenaded us between serving tables. We even had a police escort to the officer’s recommended breakfast joint in Highland Falls the morning we left. The blessings continued when we arrived, breathless, at the Aerotrain terminal at Washington Dulles with only 10 minutes until our second flight to SFO was scheduled to depart. When I turned on my phone, I found a text from United that said: “Take a breath, we’re holding your next flight for you.” Tears of gratitude and joy promptly flowed!
This year, God has faithfully answered so many prayers, big and small, past and present. Despite our best efforts, His blessings are too great to count. For now, we soak in the reminder of our ultimate gift, Jesus, God Himself, coming into this broken world to rescue us from our sins so that we can spend eternity with Him in Heaven. I pray that you would know the fullness of the Lord’s perfect love and be filled with His peace, hope and joy today and everyday. May you and your family be blessed abundantly in the new year!
Nick, Ali, Emmy (13), Hannah (10), James (9) & Julia (9) Molly (15), Sophie (7 months) ;)
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