Happy Holidays to our Friends and Family,

For at least as long as I've been writing these letters, Alyson and I have had a plan – every other year we put up our artificial tree and go to Massachusetts for the holidays, but on the opposite years we stay in Maryland and get ourselves a real tree. As I write this letter, I am fretting over our tree as it isn't drinking enough water. What are we going to do if it doesn't start? I am, however, looking forward to a nice quiet Christmas at home this year.

To Our Friends & Family:

One of the best things about writing this letter each year is that it gives me the chance to pick my head up out of the trenches long enough to examine the past year. Sometimes it just seems to zoom by in a blur of shapes and colors. I do something similar at work and dread it as I never quite feel like I've accomplished enough. On the other hand, I only hope I have room for it all in this letter.

Being relatively new parents, the urge is strong to just go on and on about our son. The format for this year's letter (with a very nice family picture - I hope you enjoy it) does limit things a bit more so I'll do my best to strike something of a balance. Caleb has really grown up over the past year, moving from being our little baby to a little man in his own right. These days he has a handful of words and signs that he uses to communicate with us, but he has no desire to be a performing monkey and will often clam up shyly if he catches us trying to make him perform. His first word was 'Squirrel' (SKRL) but that was quickly supplanted by the much more useful (and masculine) words of 'Ball' (BAH!) and 'Car' (CAH!). No (or Nah) is also starting to make an appearance. Beside's that, he's eager and enthusiastic when it comes to helping out around the house - doing the laundry or insisting on dragging that heavy bag of trash down the hallway to the garbage shoot. He doesn't have to, but he knows that you're supposed to grunt when carrying heavy things so he does it just to keep up appearances.

Of course, Alyson and I do have lives outside of our son. I started out the year having surgery - my first (and hopefully last) kidney stone. Somewhere in the midst of everything we even found time for travel. There were two trips up to Massachusettes in the spring and summer when we were able to introduce Caleb to my side of the family and on the second trip we had the opportunity to say goodbye to Babci before she mercifully passed on. She will be well missed this holiday season. More happily, there was the trip to Florida for Alyson's cousin's wedding in July. Caleb wasted no time in charming the Papianni clan.

In September and October, Alyson participated in an event hosted the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The idea was to reach out to more and varied artists in the community. Alyson submitted a number of sewn pieces in response to 'prompts' (short fictional writings) that painted a Washington Irving-esque mood of American history. The results can be seen online (http://ghostsofachance.com/). I unfortunately missed the in person showing as I was off on my own adventure. In April, I applied for a short term assignment in Afghanistan. The timing and the assignment shifted a little but in the end (6 months later) I spent a week there in October learning about the project and creating a database to track the projects' accomplishments for reporting. Afghanistan itself was an interesting place. The people I met were quite friendly though at times I felt a little trapped in my hotel room.

Just the other day at work, I was informed that the plan for the coming year is to focus on making existing projects run more smoothly. In other words, stop for a moment and try to make sense of the shapes and colors as they whirl by. In a season where things seem to be going faster and faster, we wish you a moment to stop, take a breath, and catch up on some of the many beautiful things as they whirl past you.

Happy Holidays,
Alyson, Bill, and Caleb

So it seems as though I haven't made a post in quite a while. I'm not sure what's been keeping me from posting. Been busy and distracted with work and life and whatnot. Right now I'm at my parents new house. Well, its my grandparents old house but they've been making modifications to make it their own.

Caleb survived the trip up to MA without much issue. We got up to New Jersey on Sat and then drove the rest of the was up to MA on Monday. We managed to get the travel times to match more or less with the little guy's nap times so it wasn't bad.