Dear Family and Friends,

After sending our belated change of address cards I realized that some of you mistook them for an early Zeh Christmas card. I am sorry to disappoint you! I must admit that it was tempting to send only the change of address cards, but too much has happened this year to leave you with just an address change. So, here it is, Christmas Eve morning, and I sit starting our Christmas letter. My only goal is to get it to you before Epipheny!

As you know, we bought a house in March. We fell in love with its open plan and light filled first floor our first day out. But we hesitated. The seller (a local real estate speculator) bought it from a family who lived in it for 30 years. He ripped out the kitchen (the neighbors say it was pretty awful), and then put the house back on the market (we think he ran out of money). The kitchen was down to the studs and subfloor. As part of the deal they intended to complete the kitchen “to our specifications.” Between Bob, the paranoid, and I, the architect, we knew that was a risky proposition. So, we researched how much the kitchen we wanted cost, crunched the numbers, and put in a low bid for the house without the kitchen. To our surprise, the owner was open to our proposition, and, after some haggling, we came to an agreement. We closed in mid-March, hired a contractor by month’s end, and started work mid-April.

Thankfully, we didn’t live without a kitchen for too long. After closing, we put the condo on the market, and had it under contract in about a week with a mid-May close. We moved the weekend before closing. (Thank you to both sets of parents, Aunt Virginia and Uncle Johnny, Grandma Arrigoni, and the Martinez family, without whose help I would still be packing and cleaning our condo with a needy Susan underfoot!) Our cabinets arrived on time, 7-10 days after our move, and installation went smoothly. Since it would be another 3-4 weeks before our countertops were installed, our contractor installed a temporary sink with 18” of countertop on either side. What a blessing! After eating reheated leftovers in the basement for over a week, I quickly set up our new kitchen. It is the nicest room in our house.

Bob refers to our house as “the money pit.” It needs many improvements, including new windows and tuck pointing, then probably a new roof, new boiler, and a half bath addition to the first floor. After that is done, if it isn’t time to start replacing our replacements, we might update our circa 1970s bathroom! Until then, as Bob says, it works.

In the midst of our moving craziness, Susan turned two. (Thank you to the O’Brien’s for spending their St. Patrick’s Day eating pizza and singing Happy Birthday over a stack of blueberry muffins and two candles!) It has been amazing to listen to Susan’s language and thinking skills develop since then. She went from 6 or 7 word sentences to “why” questions, paragraphs, stories, conversations, recalling bits of memories from last winter, and imagination / pretend play in just a few short months. Lately, she goes “grocery shopping,” unloads the groceries into the “trunk,” and gets in the “car” to “drive” (sometimes one of her stuffed animals “drives”) home where she takes the groceries out of the “trunk.” And she is very nurturing in her play, “nursing” her baby dolls when they are “sad” or “hungry.”

While she still loves to be read to (we are making good use of our public library), she also pretends to read and write. She memorizes her favorite books and “reads” them back to herself, making up her own words if she can’t remember them. I think she wants to learn to read, though she doesn’t yet recognize all her ABCs.

Susan still loves music, especially pianos and singing. She often makes up her own tunes with her own words (we don’t always understand the words), and some days everything she says is to her own made up melody line. She picks up bits and pieces of things we sing at church and sings them around the house (the most recognizable is Marty Haugen’s Halle Halle).

The “choir baby” returned with both of us when we started back up in the fall. Now that she’s over the novelty of movement, she will sit relatively still at our feet with a snack or other activity, or submit to being held by Mommy or Daddy while we sing. Our choir has had a difficult start, with a new director, gaining two men, losing two women, and losing our clarinetist. It has been frustrating, but we learn something new about dealing with it each week. We are grateful for our Christmas season, which has been refreshing, renewing, and hopeful.

We are blessed to announce that our family size will be increasing by (hopefully only) one around the end of June or early July 2004. Susan is excited about the “baby behind Mommy’s belly button,” but has no clue what that really means. For example, one day, before I was pregnant, Susan asked what I was doing with some of her old clothes. I told her I was putting them in a bag to save for another baby. She asked, “Does Susan get to stay?” I told her, “Of course!” Content with my answer, she happily said, “OK!” and went on about her business.

I seem to be over my queasy days, and the fog of exhaustion is lifting. I am now quickly outgrowing my clothes. I am also trying to finish two years of continuing education credits for my architecture license in one years time – I won’t even want to think about it after the baby is born! In my free time I go to Jazzercise and attend monthly La Leche League meetings.

We’ve taken more car trips than usual this year, with several visits to Grandma Rawski for her surgery and move to North Carolina, one Meyer graduation, and four Meyer weddings (we made it to three weddings and one shower). Thanks, again, to the Riley’s in Indiana for their hospitality at least once each trip!

Our first camping trip with Susan was to the Quad cities over the 4^th of July with Grandma Marianne and Grandpa Ken. The humidity and mosquitoes were oppressive. Susan had a hard time adjusting the first night (after bedtime she asked “can go home now?”), but enjoyed the KOA pool, playing catch with Grandpa Ken, and watching fireworks in Bettendorf.

We took one whirlwind, week long family “vacation” at the beginning of September. It started with a weekend Ohio trip. Then we drove back to Chicago to fly to Lawrence, Kansas, to see our friend Andy Drummond get married, and flew back 24 hours later. We got in the car and drove straight to Maumee Bay State Park (near Toledo, again) for two nights of camping, and then drove to Wooster, Ohio, to visit my high school friend Jodi and her family. After dinner at a yummy Amish restaurant and a good night sleep, we were on the road back to Northwest Ohio for a Meyer wedding. It was quite a relief to drive into our garage the next night, sleep in our own beds, and do nothing out of the ordinary for the next week!

Susan successfully completed her longest car trip ever, from Ohio to North Carolina, for Thanksgiving. All of us sisters were in for the weekend, plus two out of three boyfriends, although we were all in the same place at the same time for only an hour. Christmas was much less eventful, spent at home and with Bob’s family at Grandma Arrigoni’s house. We did travel for the Meyer family Christmas celebration the Sunday after Christmas. Now we celebrated Epipheny today, I’m finishing our letter, and Bob needs to edit. I still hope to have it in the mail by January 6, and now that we have entered the 21^st century and own a printer / scanner / copier, it might even be possible. May you experience holiday blessings throughout the New Year!

Love and Peace,