Christmas Letter 2012

I decided to put our Christmas letter for this year on our long neglected blog as some family members have requested that I continue to update it. I figured this would be a good summary and maybe I could move on to more consistent updates in the future. This also allows me to post more pictures than I would be able to put in a paper Christmas letter. We had a very busy, but exciting year. I am sure that several things happened before May, but last May our oldest, Scott, graduated from Georgia Tech. He majored in bio-chemistry and also received a minor in piano. Tech is a tough school and we are quite proud of him.

About a month after graduating, Scott married Rebecca Austin! They met at Camp Westminster and had been dating about two years. Becca is a lovely lady and we are thrilled to have her in the family. We were thankful that Eric's parents and twin brother could come all the way from Oregon and that his older brother could come down from New Jersey. It was a nice time with extended family and a beautiful wedding. Scott and Becca are currently living down at Camp Westminster and Scott is working for the camp as temporary facilities manager while looking for employment in his field. Becca is finishing up her Master's in Social Work at Georgia State.

Anna, Elizabeth and Grace were thrilled to be flower girls in the wedding.

We continued our family tradition of running in the Peachtree Road Race (10K) on July 4th.

We were able to go to St. George in August with Kim's parents. It was a nice relaxing time after the busyness of wedding preparation.

Amy and Katie are doing well. Amy is finishing up her last year of nursing at Emory. She has maintained a 4.0 GPA her entire college time and has truly enjoyed being in nursing school. Katie is in the middle of her sophomore year at Georgia State. She has decided to major in nutrition. She still has interest in photography and is the official photographer for Peter's football team.

Peter continues to love and play football. His team is still relatively new so they have quite a few challenges, but Peter has done very well. He won the award for Best Offensive Player and he was selected to the league All-Star team. Because his team is small he does play both offensive and defense, but his preferred position is running back.

Dance takes most of our time. Molly, Emily, Matthew (tap only), Anna, Elizabeth and Grace all take a variety of dance classes (mainly ballet and tap). Last summer (on the day Scott graduated!) Molly auditioned for Praise and Motion, a Christian Dance Company, which is based out of the studio where we dance. She made it on the invitational level and that has been a wonderful experience for her. However it does put us at the dance studio most days of the week.

Molly and Emily were still able to participate in the cross-country season. They run on a great little homeschool team and their team won 1st place in the state meet in their league.

Matthew is playing soccer on an Academy (stepping stone to the select team). He is a tough little player (having older brothers helps). One fun aspect of this is that Matthew plays on the same team with his cousin Dawson (behind him in the white headband). They also tap together. Matthew and Dawson were born only 2 days apart and it has been great to have the cousins able to do several activities together.

The dance company that Molly is in puts on a Christmas program each year called The Gift. This was a wonderful experience that we were all a part of (Eric and Peter were on the Tech Crew). Emily and Elizabeth were also (along with Molly) able to be in a minor part and is was a wonderful show.

Elizabeth is the second from the end without the shepherd.

Eric is still working at Emory. He was promoted to Associate Professor this year for which we are grateful. He was also elected elder in our church. I (Kim) continue to homeschool and juggle everyone's schedule. I picked up a new hobby this year - shooting. A good friend got me into it and it is a lot of fun. I even own a gun now! I still enjoy running. Amy and I try to run once a week out at Stone Mountain and that is one of my favorite things to do. And once again we ran the Atlanta Half-Marathon along with my sister.

We are thankful for God's great blessings to us over the past years and we look forward to 2013.