2006

Merry Christmas!

The little portable heater is at my feet, i-tunes is cranking out songs that take me back to times spent with those who will receive this letter. You’ve heard all the excuses before about why it took me so long to get started on this little literary project. No need to repeat them, it’s all just folklore now anyhow. And we’re off.

January

Really, by now you know all about what happens in January.

And even if I express it lyrically,

Nothing really exciting happens.

Darling Emily has a birthday, this time number 18.

Incidentally, the pony was a no show again this year!

February

Jane had her gall bladder removed last month but I didn’t have a good way to insert it into the artsy poem above. She’s fine now and doesn’t even miss it. If you ask me, it really wasn’t much of a gall bladder anyway. Sarabeth won a gold medal in the state music contest for her skills with the violin, which really makes me proud. And it astounds me a bit also. When a child first starts to play a musical instrument, sometimes the notes aren’t quite what they should be, but they are officially notes. Maybe they don’t belong in the song they are playing at the time, but they are used in some song somewhere. The same can’t be said for the violin. Sound waves never perceived by human ears are emitted on a regular basis. I deem this climb from auditory science experiment to gold medal winning performance a musical miracle. We’re proud of our youngest!

March

Sarabeth turned 13 this month. This really wasn’t much of a big deal for her since she has considered herself a teenager for the last couple of years. The only other significant happening during this month was the first signs of Senioritis starting to appear in Emily. The prognosis is terrifying. If the majority of this letter seems to focus on Emily and the last few months of her high school career, that is because the associated events took over our lives also. Every now and then I will throw in a photo of one of the rest of us just so you remember we are still around.

April

The big news this month is that Emily has decided where I will be sending my retirement money this fall. She had it narrowed down to Butler, here in Indianapolis and Wittenberg University in Springfield, OH. Much to our delight she chose Wittenberg, which is 2 hours away. I feel that part of going away to college is the “going away” part.

May

Emily’s last month of high school. Tennis was big this month for Emily. Her team did the best they had since she started her freshman year. Em played mostly doubles and this was probably the most fun she’s had since she started. She also decided to play outdoor soccer. I think the idea was to participate in as many extracurricular activities as possible to lessen the chance of spending any time focusing on academics. Soccer was good and she enjoyed playing throughout the summer. Now it’s time for an uncharacteristically typical Christmas letter moment. The one thing Jane and I were probably proudest of was that Emily was in the top 25 of her class. This was a class of about 550 kids, and she was taking all honors and AP classes. The school had a fancy dinner at a local hotel and awarded each of the 25 with a plaque, and a watch. Each student had the opportunity to invite a favorite teacher who was also awarded a plaque and both the student, and the teacher had a chance to say a few words. We invited my mother up for the evening. This was the night that I really felt good about Emily’s decision to become a teacher. If she can affect the life of a kid the way these teachers had, she’s going to be rewarded far above anything I could ever do. Now, back to the silliness! Another important event was Emily’s prom.  I guess she looked really pretty, and her date was a fine young man. I don’t really know for sure because Sarabeth and I were in Evansville, Indiana for a soccer tournament. Here’s a good picture of Sara scoring on a header. At least that’s what we like to tell those that didn’t actually attend the tournament. Score or not it was a fun weekend with a good group of parents and daughters and assorted siblings.

June

Graduation day finally arrived. My mother and my sister Teresa deserve some sort of medal for service above and beyond the call of duty. They joined us for the actual ceremony. Since they showed up, I thought that I’d better go. Marky then subbed for Teresa and came in to help with the open house the next day. All sorts of people and assorted family showed up for the open house. Emily made out like a bandit. While she was trying to figure out some sort way to become a professional graduate, living off of graduation gifts, poor Sarabeth was still in school. Finishing up 7th grade was not all that exciting. She had to suffer through the rest of the month before she could start her summer break. But we managed to have a bunch of fun the rest of the month. Teresa made it to Emily’s graduation because she was in Cincinnati anyway. She was performing her play Eenie Meanie at the Cincy Fringe Festival. After a couple of performances in Lexington she took the show to Louisville. We loaded everyone up and headed south for a chance to see her perform. She wrote the play and is the best and only actor in the play. The show was great, and the audience was full of family and friends. Go online and check the reviews! After the play we all went to dinner and laughed and giggled and ate things with tentacles. At least Dave Emery and I did. The next weekend the Beck girls came to see me here in Indy. Actually, Jackie’s daughter Brooke was a Kentucky All Star and was in town to play the Indiana girls. We’re talking about basketball here. Dennis, Lynn, Jackie and I went out to dinner Friday night. We had a great evening and then the next night everyone went to the game and out to dinner. Billy, I was serious about that invitation to come up for a race. Just say when. You will notice that Jane didn’t make it to dinner with us Friday evening. That’s because she was having her own reunion with her college friends. Barb was in town from Florida. Jill came down from Ft. Wayne. Jenny and Jane were already here so it was time to party. I’m not really sure what all they did that evening. Jane really never told me anything about that night. But I’m going to assume that they spent a lot of the time talking about how much they love their husbands and what great guys they are. It only makes sense.

July

Sarabeth is out of school. Summer officially begins. So, Emily goes to Young Life camp in Minnesota with a bunch of her high school friends for a week. She has a fantastic time even if she ends up sick the last few days. But she gets back and gets healthy so we can get started with our family vacation. We had to push it back a week so we could go to the RCA Tennis Championships. We spent a bunch of time there and thanks to my man Miguel spent the day watching the finals from really nice seats. Now this is a lesson to all my friends out there. See how easy it is to get mentioned in my Christmas letter? Just give me something really nice! The day after the finals we headed north to the Mackinac Island area. We had a great time. We spent some time on the island, drove across the bridge and headed to some of the state parks in the UP. Our hotel was on the lake, and we spent a good amount of time just floating around in the water. Mackinac Island is really a neat place. All sorts of history and cheap T-shirt shops rolled into one fantastic vacation spot. The only motor vehicles allowed on the island are ambulances. Ever seen a UPS guy riding a horse and wagon? You can have your packages delivered Next Day Mare. Now that’s funny! As you can see, the roads were not real busy. The best part was the trip into the UP. The parks were absolutely beautiful. All of our pictures looked like they came off of a calendar from the Hallmark store. But here’s one of my favorites. Jane and Sarabeth just being cute. When it came time to start back to Indy, Jane decided she wanted to go one of the many casinos that had billboards along the highway. It would only be about 2 hours out of our way but what the heck; I think the girl was feeling lucky. And a couple of weeks after the last time she went gambling I was watching a new HDTV in my family room. So, we drove and drove and finally found this casino. It wasn’t quite what we were expecting. It kind of looked like an old Stuckey’s. I don’t think they even put up a new sign. I think they just replaced the name with the word CASINO in the same yellow, blue and red so they didn’t have to paint the trim on the building. We dropped Jane off and the girls and I went across the street and wandered through the Wal-Mart. We were going to call her after awhile and we were going to swoop through and pick up Jane and all her money and continue our trip south. So, the time comes and I head to the casino parking lot. I call but she never picks up. I keep calling and no response. So, I leave the car running with the air going and the girls sleeping and locked inside. After about 15 minutes I found her and we head back to the car. By the way, she didn’t win anything. At least she said she didn’t. Anyway, the reason I tell this tale is so that you will ask my daughters when you see them about this part of our vacation. Ask them to describe the looks that they got from people leaving the casino when they saw two little girls locked in the family mini-van as their parents were inside gambling away their lunch money. We probably left 30 seconds before Child Protective Services arrived on the scene.

August

August started with the tennis boy’s trip to Las Vegas. Scott, Jim, Miguel and I went to seek our fortunes. That would be the fortunes that we had left there from the previous trips. Those nice gentlemen in Nevada are just holding the money for us. It was a nice idea, but things didn’t turn out as planned. This was a fun trip for me, but not very profitable. Near the end of our stay, I gave a guy $5 and he was supposed to guess my weight. After being insulted by his guess I got to pick my own prize. It may have been just a stupid court jester’s hat, but I wore it with pride. At least I won something. I got back just in time to kiss Sarabeth goodbye as we sent her off to the 8th grade. And then a few days later Jane and I celebrated our 30th anniversary. What a beautiful woman. I just wish I would have had enough money to buy her the gift she deserves for loving me and putting up with me. But I do think she kinda liked the jester hat. A few days later it was time. Time to take Emily to college. Our little girl off on her own. I had a lot of people ask me if maybe I teared up as we drove away. No, because God had prepared me for this moment. You see, Emily never got a job this summer. It just didn’t work out. She made Paris Hilton look like a migrant farm worker. And the month of May started with, “May I go over to Catie’s?” June was, “I’m going to Catie’s” and by July it was Jane and I asking each other “Where’s Emily” and assuming she was at Catie’s. The girl was getting on my nerves. This was God’s way of getting us ready to send Emily off to college. But maybe my eyes did water up a little as a realized what she was starting and all of the people she would meet. People that would be a part of the rest of her life. You know… Christmas letter people.

September

This was a neat month. This would be Wayne’s month! I got to go to Barcelona. As in Spain. It seems the good people at HP thought if they sent me to some exotic location and surrounded me with beautiful scenery, beautiful women and lots of food and alcohol that maybe I would be persuaded to spend a bunch of money on some of their equipment. Well, I was willing to be part of such an experiment. And I’ll do it again. Anytime. They spent all that extra money that you pay for those tiny little ink cartridges for your desktop printer on me and a bunch of my work colleagues from all over the world. I was there for just 5 days, but they were action packed. They had all sorts of parties and activities for us and all we had to do was sit through a few dog and pony shows and look interested. It was great. We had plenty of free time to wander the city and see the sites. I took special care to study the historical and cultural significance that Barcelona has played in modern civilization. Anyway, it was great fun in a great place at a great price. I got home just in time for Jane’s birthday. Her birthdays used to be more fun because I could always tease her for about 3 weeks about being 2 years older than me. But now that being 2 years younger than her isn’t really all that young, the thrill has worn off. I think I gave her a nice HP matching pen and pencil set. A week later I went back to Vegas again. It was work this time. I spent most of the time meeting up with friends and talking about how much fun we had in Barcelona. I also got to spend time with my buddy John from North Carolina. You all remember John don’t you? We just get to see each other about once or twice a year so we had a bunch of catching up to do. We had a great time just talking.

October

Our annual trip to Brown County was a little tricky this year. We had to work around Emily’s college schedule. Not much to say except it was colder than usual, but as you can see from Jane’s photo, the colors were fantastic. I wish all of you that are wearing shorts as you open my Christmas letter had a chance to experience this kind of autumn. Actually, by the time you get this letter maybe everyone will be wearing shorts. Here is a photo Sarabeth and I trying to snuggle and keep warm. Emily did make it for the weekend, and we got to do the usual stuff. We do the same things every year. We have our own set schedule. By now we’re kinda like migratory birds following our instincts. Except migratory birds don’t typically need to stop in every jewelry shop.

November

Enough years have passed, enough letters written.

Re-read the old ones and you’ll remember.

It’s cold and gray, it’s nasty living, but

Kentucky calls us back for Thanksgiving.

December

These last couple of months were a bit rough on the Willis family. My mother died at the end of October. Thanksgiving and Christmas were really different. It’s something that we all knew was going to happen, and though we thought we were prepared for it, it didn’t make it any easier. But after we got over feeling sorry for ourselves because something we loved was taken from us, we had a chance to look back and appreciate a neat lady’s life. I learned all sorts of things through the ordeal. I learned how amazingly strong my sisters are and how proud I am of them. I learned how the sight of friends across a room can really lift your spirits. I learned stories about the many lives my parents touched. Stories that were told for the first time the night of mom’s funeral. And I learned that I want people to laugh during my funeral service. You’d think after all that learning I’d seem a little smarter in this year’s letter. As you can see, just like every year the last photo is a bunch of Willis’ gathered for Christmas. Things have changed, but that tradition will live on. Next years photo may have a different background but it will have pretty much the same cast of characters.

That’s it. But since I don’t want to end on a downer, and we have a little space left I thought I might end with some random photos from a summer trip to get ice cream. Do you see what I have to put up with? I have never been so embarrassed in my life! Where do they pick this stuff up anyway!

And here are pictures of the boys. They haven’t changed a bit.

That’s all for this year. It was special for us and we hope your year was special too. We’ll be thinking of you as we address the envelopes. Hope you have a happy 2007.

Wayne, Jane, Emily and Sarabeth