Saturday, January 09, 2010

For the record ...

I thought I would cut and paste our year-end newsletter, just for the record.

Dear friends,

We hope you are doing well this holiday season. Even though we keep up with so many of you through blogging and Facebook, we still can’t shake this annual newsletter habit. It’s just too fun of a tradition to exchange letters during the most wonderful time of the year!

Baby girl number three is due to arrive on January 30, 2010. We still don’t have a name for her, although we do have a new favorite name every week. This was the first pregnancy where we had a 4D ultrasound and it was simply amazing.

Although we are all looking forward to the new baby’s arrival, Clara (age 2 ½) is the most excited. She will press her lips to mommy’s tummy and yell, “Hey baby! When you going come out?” You will most often find her tending to a baby doll or pushing a doll stroller around the house. She also loves to “read” books to herself, turning pages and exclaiming, “Oh! That’s such a good story!” She loves to belt out “Jesus Loves the Little Children” at the top of her lungs, to anyone who will listen. She loves to laugh and share a joke and wears her emotions on her sleeve. We predict that she will be our world-traveling child because she always tells us “I go there someday” and “I do that someday.” She wants to see and experience everything. Clara is also the most extraverted child at the library classes we attend. She always wants to sit up front, ask questions in the middle of the story, and “help” the teacher with puppets and bubbles.

Meredith (age 4 ½) has turned into a young lady before our eyes. This year she learned how to read. She also constantly writes notes and leaves them all over the house. She spells everything phonetically. Her sister is “CLERU.” She wrote her mom a note one day, “IM SORE FOR BN BAD MOME.” (“I’m sorry for being bad, mommy.”) Meredith has completed her second semester of ballet lessons and was very excited to go to The Nutcracker Ballet this year. Meredith loves to catch bugs and let them crawl up and down her arm; she has asked for a bug vacuum for Christmas. She plays pretend for hours and hours. It’s sweet to see her and Clara play together and enjoy each other so much (well, okay, as long as Clara agrees to play by Meredith’s rules). Meredith is reflective, academic, sweet, and generous. She loves to spontaneously give things away to people, whether it is a toy, a note, a wad of quarters, or a flower she’s picked from the yard.

Amy is currently 7.5 months pregnant and feeling especially tired these days. She is still wondering how she will accomplish anything with adding a newborn to the chaos? Probably the most rewarding thing she did this year was help Meredith unlock the mystery of reading. She decided to buckle down and begin more formal preschool instruction with Meredith this fall, and Clara joins in when she can. It seems like she is just figuring out one phase of parenting when a new one presents itself. This year she is a table leader at MOPS, even though the gals at her table are more encouragement to her than she could ever be to them. She tries to forget about the ever growing to-do list as much as possible and enjoy her small children. Easier said than done!

Kevin is also known as Big Chief Ugamug around our house. He holds pow-wows with his little Indian princesses when he comes home from work and they adore him. This was Kevin’s first full year to work at his firm, Kroger, Gardis, and Regas, since being admitted to practice law in Indiana. This year has been a very busy one career-wise. He has done a remarkable job juggling all of his responsibility at work and helping to hold down the Koons Fort as well. This year Kevin masterminded and executed numerous projects around our house. We can’t believe it’s been a year since we moved in! He is still waging war against the crab grass in our backyard. But we predict he will win sometime in Summer 2010. He is very determined.

We wish you all a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

The Koons Family

1 comment:

~ PragyaN ~ said...

wow, this was a total refresher of the year..!!