Ah yes.  The annual Christmas letter.  A time for your friends, family, and people you met once at a social gathering, to tell you all about their fabulous year. Obviously reading daily Instagram posts about being #blessed aren’t enough, I need to read an entire year summary of how you have your shit together.  The only one telling the truth in a Christmas letter is your great Aunt Margo describing all about her aches and pains and how the winter was really long and depressing because her arthritis acted up. The good thing about Aunt Margo is her honesty.  She sits in a chair and makes afghans all day, but she owns that; there is nothing fabricated in her Christmas letter. I vote to be more like Aunt Margo and write an authentic Christmas letter versus those “fake” ones where no one is telling the truth.

Fake Reality
Merry Christmas everyone! What a great year 2016 was!  Our family, as always, had such an amazing, inspiring, vegan eating filled year with so much fun! January started with our annual trip to the Cayman Islands where we swam with dolphins, soaked up the sun (wearing SPF 100 of course), and dined on porcini and fennel salads at all the expensive restaurants.  I am so blessed to have such awesome little travelers on our hands!

This year our boys turned 4 and 2 and we can’t believe how fast they are growing up! The day our youngest turned 2 he even told us he wanted to try wearing undies and that was it time to give away his diapers to other babies. Well that was easy!

In the spring, we planted our very own vegetable and herb garden in our backyard.  Our oldest gave us the idea to build our own greenhouse out of purely recyclable and sustainable materials. Because of course he did.

The summer was so busy!  We have so many friends that our social calendar was packed! Little Johnny even had his first time at the water slides.  You guessed it…LOVED IT! Memories made.

In the fall our oldest started pre-school and is already at a grade 8 reading level.  We are so proud.  You should see all the 1st place trophies he has collected so far.  Even though everyone gets 1st place, we know that our child really deserved it.

Well that’s all that’s new from our little family.  This year we will be spending Christmas in the mountains and have tracked down some of the original Von Trapp children to sing Edelweiss to our kids as they snuggle around the fire on Christmas Eve!  Wishing you many blessings this year and always.

Honesty
Merry Christmas everyone!  We started off our year dealing with frigid temperatures and pants that I had trouble doing up.  Right after New Year’s, we settled back into the routine of daycare and our time-sucking work schedules, which I have taken to enjoying as it gives me a break from making my kids snacks all day.  I’d like to say I live for the weekends, but I really live for my lunch hour where I take naps at my desk.  And like every year, we did not plan a winter vacation because we spend that money on diapers and mini waffles.

Our boys turned 4 and 2 this year.  So now we have one who can “kind of” put on his shoes and the other one can do absolutely nothing.  We did get a lot of new play equipment for our backyard this year (a playhouse, water table, sandbox).  However, our boys prefer eating dirt, so it was pretty much a waste.

We spent the summer at the lake where we went boating (2-year-old cried because we wouldn’t let him drive the boat into the bush).  We went to the beach a lot (4-year-old cried because sand got in his shorts).  Also, it was our 2-year old’s first time to the water slides and you guessed it…he HATED IT.  He refused to go down the slides and wanted to spend all his time putting his hands down my bathing suit in the hot tub.

In the fall our oldest started pre-school and swimming lessons.  Aside from eating all the cupcakes on a tour of a bakery, school is good.  Swimming lessons, on the other hand, was not so smooth.  I wasn’t aware you could get a “time out” during swimming; good to know.

That, in a nutshell, sums up 2016.  We will be spending Christmas travelling 10 hours away on icy, snowy highways listening to the joyful cries of my children whenever we run out of Teddy Grahams or we can’t connect to Wi-Fi.

Merry Christmas everyone and I look forward to making plans with some of you in 2017 and then not following through.

 

About the author: Carmen Beauchesne is a teacher in the crime fighting business, lives in the Canadian prairies, and has 2 boys, a pre-schooler and a toddler.  She spend most days eating salad alone at her desk at work, dreaming about going to the bathroom without having to clean it first.  She has been published on yummymummyclub.ca and you can check out her blog at www.funnygirlproblems.com and on Twitter at twitter.com/sadeatingsalad.

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5 Comments

  1. Dawn Marie Reply

    Oh Carmen you crack me up! I totally get where you are coming from, as I too struggled with “just how much honesty do I share with Auntie Doreen who is married to the Baptist minister and can she take it?” Lol!
    Keep the stories coming they’re great.

  2. Hahaha, if more HONEST Christmas letters were a thing, I might actually contemplate sending out Christmas cards. Love this article! Great read.

    • Thanks Jessica! I’m so glad that you enjoyed it! I also feel that way about honesty Christmas letters, which is why I decided to write my own! Thanks for reading:)

  3. This was so funny. It’s a much better read when it’s honest! It’s like people who send out Christmas cards with the kids crying and tantruming instead of the ‘perfect family’ photos you know probably took hours to get. 🙂

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