December 6, 2007

Family and friends,

Season’s greetings! We hope this note finds you and your family well, safe and happy. Although we’ve never felt the need to include a holiday missive with our Christmas cards before, this year was especially full and blessed, so here goes…

Last Christmas, one of our twins, Chris, announced his engagement to Katie Green. This was the first sign of how much our family would grow this year!

In February, Lexie, a beautiful pure-bred Weimaraner, joined our family. Now a year old, she continues to amuse us daily and has become a faithful companion and friend. Training her has been a challenge, but she is very smart and learns fast. She is every bit the house pet but very energetic. We get plenty of exercise taking her on daily walks.

In March, our oldest son, Josh, who lives in Trinity, Florida with his wife, Jessica, called to tell us that they were expecting their first child – our first grandchild. During our summer vacation, we found out that it was going to be a girl!

Our other twin, Brian, graduated from University of Texas at Arlington with his Bachelor of Music degree with Cum Laude honors. He spent the summer doing a little work, teaching private lessons, but basically just relaxing and spending time with his girlfriend, Amber Allsbrooks. Brian is now attending graduate school at UTA, working on his Master’s in Music Education which he plans to complete by the end of 2009.

In late May, Nathan and I left for two and a half weeks in Europe. We visited Paris again and spent some time seeing Parisian sights with Mary and Jill Kennedy (Linda’s brother Michael’s wife and daughter). Then we went to Valencia, Spain to watch the Louis Vuitton Cup finals. For you non-sailors, the finals determine which of the challengers would compete against the defenders, the Swiss, in the America’s Cup sailing event. We watched one LV race up-close and in-person from a spectator boat, seeing the Kiwi’s beat the Italian’s. Sadly, the U.S. team had lost in the semi-finals but seeing Cup racing live was still exciting!

After leaving Valencia, we spent a few days in a Mediterranean beach town called Benidorm with a friend, Ria, who was a wonderful hostess and made our visit such fun! Next, we drove across the Spanish countryside to Madrid, spending the last few days of vacation sightseeing and visiting museums like the Prado and the Reina Sofia. After a long trip filled with good food, family, friends and adventure, we returned home tired, but happy.

Back home, Nathan finished his Master of Information Systems degree in July leaving us finally free to enjoy our much-neglected hobby, sailing! Also busy at work, he is now wrapping up his second year as a Bank of America employee following the merger with MBNA. He has his hands full but is enjoying the challenges. We are both enjoying the opportunity to see more of each other afforded by his work schedule which now involves working from home three days a week.

The rest of the summer and early fall were pretty calm, but things got busy again in November, when Josh and Jess presented us with Kaili Rayne Eaton at 7 pounds and 20 inches! She is beautiful and we were able to visit them in Florida when Kaili was not yet a week old, spending five days enjoying our role as first-time grandparents. We look forward to someday hearing her call us Nana and Papa.

In the next week, Chris will be graduating from Stephen F. Austin University in Nacogdoches, Texas with his Bachelor of Music Education with Magna Cum Laude honors. Next spring, Chris will join Katie in the graduate program at SFA. This past fall, Katie started teaching 2nd grade at a primary school in Diboll, Texas. Between work, school and wedding plans, they have very busy!

On December 21, we will all gather in Arlington, Texas to celebrate Chris and Katie’s wedding. The date has special significance to Katie as it is her maternal grandparent’s anniversary. The next day, they leave for their honeymoon in Rome, Italy. We wish them a wonderful trip.

We have Linda’s mother, Thelma, and younger brother, Steve, coming from California for the wedding and spending Christmas with us. In addition, Josh, Jess and Kaili are coming out from Florida. We will have a full house, but it will be great to have the family together for the big event and the holiday.

As we said, since this was such an eventful year, we decided it would be nice to share the news of our busy and growing family. Please let us know your news. Our email addresses are lme928@gmail.com and nate.eaton.jr@gmail.com. You can see pictures of our busy year at http://eaton.homedns.org.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Linda, Nathan, Brian and Lexie