Our 2011 Christmas Letter

This is the letter that I wrote to go a long with our Christmas cards. I actually tried to keep this letter to 1 page but it went a little over. I think I could have typed 5 pages but that might have been more of a chore then a pleasure to read. :)

Happy last day of 2011 everyone! I hope your 2012 is filled with many blessings!

Our 2011

Hi Family and Friends! Hope your year has been a great one. Our year has been filled with many, many blessings. Robert still has his job and is doing well and I was able to get a lot of photography jobs throughout the year. Robert was able to work his schedule out so that he could do the men’s bible studies on Monday nights and then he’d be home Wednesday mornings for me to be able to attend the women’s bible studies. Robert also plays on the church men’s softball team at least once a week and I was playing on the co-ed softball team up until the end of October. This year we started monthly family fellowship days at our house (and sometimes other people host). Robert or one of the other men share what God has put on their heart and we get to eat and fellowship for a few hours with friends.

            At the beginning of the year we got a new backyard! No we didn’t move. At the end of last year we had a retaining wall built that is around 8 to 9 feet high and a TON of dirt moved to fill in the backyard to make it level. So the kids went from a cement enclosed patio for their backyard to a big green backyard to run around in. For those of you who don’t know, my uncle Paul’s company did all the cement work and the sprinklers and grass. I highly recommend him and not just because he’ll be reading this letter but because he’s awesome, along with his workers. Good peoples! ;)

            Once we had our backyard we got to work planting in our garden boxes that Robert built with of course the 3 little eager assistants. Our zucchini were HUGE and so yummy, green beans did great and our tomatoes are still producing along with the strawberries. Robert even made his own batch of pickles with the pickling cucumbers. One of the four boxes is the kid’s dirt box. We figured that was the best bet in keeping little shovels out of the vegetable boxes.

            In the summer I started a blog for our family. Robert is supposed to help contribute but he’s only done 1 post. I guess he doesn’t have as much of a desire or need to type what is on his mind as I do. I post a good amount of pictures from our outings and activities if you want to check it out, it is at www.nunez-news.blogspot.com

            In August we got a new little nephew, Obadiah, AND we found out that I was pregnant with our 4^th little person! Woo Hoo for babies! I am due in April 2012 and no we do not know if this one is a boy or a girl. That information is only known by God and maybe the ultrasound tech if she saw anything during my ultrasound.

            Another exciting thing that happened at the end of August was Kiera starting 1^st grade. She’s a quick learner and very contemplative. She’s great with figuring out puzzles and patterns. My dad showed her how to do a Sudoku puzzle and it seems to just make sense to her. She’s reading stories to her brothers now. Domenic will ask her to read Curious George and she’s such a great big sister so her answer is always, “Sure, I’ll read that to you buddy”. She’s also a butterfly and bee expert. Seriously, she knows all the terminology for the life cycle of a butterfly and when she found a dead bee today she informed me that it’s a worker bee because it has pollen baskets. And of course when one is doing school the other two (especially Nathan) want to sit right there and absorb as much information that they can. Domenic counts, which is so cute. Nathan will tell me that there is a specific letter in a word. For instance, he’ll say, “there’s a “p” in the word apple huh mom?” And he likes to count in Spanish.

            We went to the mountains for my birthday in October. Last year we had rented a lodge in Arrowhead and this year we rented a cabin in Big Bear. It was cold and lots of fun. It snowed up there the weekend after we were there. We were kind of glad and sad about that. During our hike we saw a lone coyote that did not seem to care about us much, but it was one of the highlights of the hike. We had all the great comfort foods like chicken enchiladas and mom’s meatballs and of course we baked cookies and Robert made pancakes on my birthday morning.

            In November we hosted a boutique and fundraiser at our house. That was really fun! I had invited vendors to come sell their products. Most of them were handmade items so all unique kinds of things. The fundraiser was the bake sale that I baked everything for except the oatmeal cookies that my mom offered to make. Each vendor donated an item to raffle for the fundraiser as well. We were able to raise $240 that we used to buy gifts through the World Vision gift catalog. We bought a sheep and 8 chickens for a village and we also were able to get vital medicines where the gift would be multiplied 11x. So our $35 for medicine was multiplied into $385 worth of medicine! Robert and I agreed that we’d like to host another boutique/fundraiser again next year.

That is our 2011 year in a nutshell. Merry CHRISTmas!

Love, Robert, Alaina, Kiera, Nathan and Domenic