2009

So this is the way I start this letter writing process. I take last year’s calendar and look through it to find the important stuff. And I put some notes down on a scrap of paper by the computer. And then I go through the pictures we took to see what else might make it into the letter. And more notes get added to that piece of paper. And then the paper lays there for a few weeks. By the time I finally decide that I have to start this letter, my scrap of paper has changed. Jane has added items. Things that she believes merit inclusion. Important things. To her. I mean really, do you people care that on a Monday night in February she had a higher score than me at bowling? This letter is supposed to touch on the high points of the Willis family’s journey through 2009. If I filled it with such trivial anomalies, it would be 20 pages long. And you wouldn’t want to read all that would you? So, as writer, artistic director and editor of this letter, I must put my foot down. I have certain principles that I refuse to let her sever.

January

This was Emily’s month. She started it off with a trip to Washington DC to attend the Presidential Inauguration. I guess this would be a good time to introduce you to Jeff, Emily’s boyfriend. He will pop up a few times in this letter. He is the masculine looking one on the right. It was his parents’ political connections that got them into a fancy ball. I’m sure she would like to express her thanks them and to the State of Michigan. They had a wonderful but hectic time. It was a neat bit of history that she got to be a part of and will remember for a very long time. And right about now I should be commended on my editing skills. You wouldn’t even believe all of the political comments I have typed and then deleted. And some of them weren’t really all that complimentary to the party in power. Imagine that! This was also the month that Emily had her 21st birthday. As we all know, this is a big day. She is officially a grownup now. She can buy booze. Since she is now an adult, I think it is time to let her and the rest of the world know the truth. No matter what I said, I never really considered buying her a pony for her birthday. Ever. You’re a big girl now, buy your own pony.

February

There are a couple of things I treasure more than my principles that I don’t want severed. On Monday the 9th, Jane beat me at bowling.

March

And now it’s time for Sarabeth’s special month. She had two major events on the calendar. The first is the removal of her braces. This was a big deal. The doctor took them off and she looked very pretty. She went from this to this. Pretty impressive huh?                   But the really neat thing was her 16th birthday. As soon as possible after the birthday, Sarabeth had her driver’s license. Emily officially became a grownup in January and now Sarabeth officially thinks she is a grownup. I guess Jane and I finally realized the girls were growing up one weekend when we went out to dinner. Jane, Emily and I had a couple of drinks and Sarabeth drove us home. Early in the month I went to Louisville for a high school reunion. We had 3 classes celebrating together. It was 36 years ago that I graduated high school. Not quite sure I enjoyed typing that sentence. I had a chance to see a lot of you that are reading this letter right now but there just wasn’t enough time. We laughed and joked but didn’t get a chance to really talk like old friends should. Maybe we should have our own little reunion sometime soon. Maybe I should start to work on that. I need to give Tony and Debbie Fisher special thanks for providing room and board for the weekend. Guess I just did.

April

I had nothing on my notepad about April. Luckily, Jane filled in the blank for me. She noted that you need to have your hummingbird feeders out by the 15th of the month. Now this is really important to Jane, and a bit amazing for the rest of us. Jane has always been terribly frightened of birds, but in the last couple of years has developed some sort of bond with hummingbirds. We have feeders everywhere. I will sit quietly in the living room and stare at those feeders. No birds. As soon as Jane walks out and slams the front door, she is surrounded by the little things. They actually make a special trip to come see her. It’s like the birds in Cinderella. The birds just flutter around her. I don’t think Jane sings with them like Cinderella did. Hummingbirds of course don’t know the words…so they…well, you know what they do. Speaking of singing, Jane and I went up to Ball State to see our friend Joe Levitt’s faculty opera recital. It was a fantastic evening. Jane and I were out on a school night, and at a classy event too! And the music was beautiful. Joe has some serious talent. I might suggest he work on his enunciation a bit though. I really couldn’t understand a word he sang. It might as well have been in a different language. Just a hint there buddy!

May

Another big month for the Willis family. Since school and soccer practice are so far away and because Jane and I were really tired of taking her and picking her up from both of those places but most of all because Emily got a car at that age, Sarabeth got a car. A cute little girlie PT Cruiser. I was going to get her a brand-new Lamborghini but I figured it would be too hard to spell in the Christmas letter. It really wasn’t that hard! My bad, sorry Sara. Sarabeth really thought a photo of her car deserved to be in the letter. It’s the short blue one. Both girls finished school this month. Sarabeth went to work at the daycare and Emily went to Africa on a mission trip. She went through her school to a little country call Lesotho.

They were there for about 5 weeks. They worked on all sorts of projects, from painting schools to building chicken coops to working with AIDS patients. She had a chance to experience things that she will remember for the rest of her life. And maybe some things that might end up shaping that life a little bit. They finished the last part of the trip with a visit to Kruger National Park and had a chance to see the Africa that we all see on TV. She brought back a bunch of great photos. As you can see, she bumped into Jeff while she was there.

June

Emily came home from Africa, stopped in Indy for a couple of days and then left to take her Young Life kids to camp for a week in northern Michigan. She then spent the rest of the summer in Springfield working a few different jobs with the university. The rest of us stayed in Indy. We stayed pretty close to home this summer since we were going to take our summer vacation in September. And that’s good since Sarabeth was hobbling around on crutches. Seems that a spring soccer injury was a little more serious than first thought. For you parents with youngsters out there playing sports let me give you these words of advice. “You’re fine, get up and walk it off”, though excellent advice and actually quite therapeutic in its own right, won’t fix a broken leg. We did manage to see “Wicked” again when it was in town. It proved to be one of the most exciting Tuesday nights of the entire year!

July

This month was about the same as the last. Jane and I went to work, and Sarabeth hobbled to work. Emily came home for a few days, and I ended up getting a nice picture of my ladies. Thought this might be a good time to share one of those photos. But Jane didn’t like that one so I had to use this one from LA. The end of the month my sister Nancy was coming to Indy for a church conference. She was going to be staying with us for a few days, along with 3 of her friends. We didn’t get a chance to spend much time together because she was always at some sort of function. But it was a great excuse to get the house clean and for that I will always be grateful.

August

This was a fun month. Well at least for me anyway. Jane’s brother Jon came to stay with us for a while. The reason is not important, but you can probably guess. And it was great. I love my girls, but the dogs and I appreciated having another guy around here. We would sit up and talk till it was way past bedtime. And he watched “The Usual Suspects” with me and now someone else understands references to Keyser Söze. And we would sip a little whiskey every now and then. It was really cool. It was like all the good parts of having a little brother. And then it got really wild. It seems that part of the deal with Jon living here was the fact that his boys got to stay here half the time. And when I say boys I’m talking about 4 of them that range in age from 16 to 8. It was loud and dirty and fun and a lot like being back in the dorm at college. I got to know my nephews better and enjoyed every minute of it. Thank you Jon, Ben, Ian, Matthew and Nathan. It was great. While all this was going on Emily started her senior year at college and Sarabeth began her junior year in high school. A couple of days after she started, Sarabeth went in for knee surgery. So, she was back on crutches and on the soccer bench instead of the field for almost all of the season. But she should be as good as new eventually.

September

It was finally time to have our summer vacation. My niece Lauren was getting married in LA. I figured we would let the girls miss a bit of school and make a vacation out of it. So the 4 of us headed out a few days before the wedding so we could do some of the tourist stuff before we did the wedding stuff followed by the family stuff. One of our first days there we made a college trip to UCLA. Sarabeth got a hoodie and an excused absence from school that day. Another one of our trips was a tour of the Warner Brothers Studio. Not just any tour but a VIP tour. Not everyone can get a VIP tour, that is unless they pay an extra $27.50 a person. Didn’t see anyone famous but saw a lot of the sets used on a lot of shows. We did get to have this picture taken from the set of “Friends”. Just one of the many perks of being a VIP. Another excursion was to the wax museum. Never been to a wax museum before. Never really thought it would be much fun. But as you can tell by the photos on the envelope, it was just stupid fun. I felt like such a tourist, all I needed was black socks and wingtips to wear with my plaid shorts! Let’s talk about the wedding. Mike, welcome to the family. Lauren, you did well. Mike, you did better. I hope your life together is as much fun as the reception. This wasn’t your typical reception. Oh sure, there were a handfull of dull people there. Hey, it’s a wedding. But mostly it was full of brothers and sisters and neices and nephews and a whole slew of cousins. The fun kind of cousins. And Mike and Lauren made sure everything was well documented. Here’s a pic of my siblings and me. Siblings is an odd word. What do you think of the cool black and white LA photo? Very back page of a classy magazine. Maybe inside front cover. Calvin Klein Cologne ad stuff. Except Bob and I have our shirts on. And we don’t have big bushy eyebrows. And of course, there’s the balding thing. But our sisters look like models! Except they’re smiling. We did get what I think is my new favorite photo of the girls. Let’s start the next page with that.

The next day we all gathered at Teresa’s house. We just kind of hung out as people waited around to go to the airport. A few of the cousins stopped by and I did get to see my Aunt Marlene for the first time in a number of years. And we did have a chance to celebrate Jane’s birthday. One quick chorus of “Happy Birthday”, a few bites of fancy gourmet California cup cakes that came from a store that does nothing but sell $4.00 cupcakes and it was official. Jane was a year older. She took advantage of her first senior citizen discount at a coffee shop in the Burbank airport. The next weekend we visited Emily at Wittenberg. Had a great time and did all the typical college weekend stuff. Got to see one of Jeff’s football games. I know they won but I can’t remember how many yards he gained. Since in reality, this is just your basic Christmas letter, let’s say it was 162 yards.

October

This month is my favorite. It is always fun. It started with a business trip to New Orleans. I had a chance to catch up with a lot of people that once upon a time were business contacts and over the years have become friends. We talk a little business and then start telling stories and showing pictures. Somewhere in the conversation we realize this once-a-year ritual has been going on for about 25 years. Let’s do it again next year Jeff. And see you in a few months Ken. Got home and a week later we are in a cabin in Brown County. Of course, there was no way that Emily and Sarabeth were going to be off at the same time. But we worked around it. Emily and Jane spent the weekend down there and then a few days later Jane, Sarabeth and I had our time together. Here is a picture of SB and me. There aren’t any photos of Jane and Emily since they walked around their entire time here taking a bunch of artsy pics. Trees and moss and leaves and chairs and t-shirt shoppes and dancing monkeys. Here are a couple of examples to show you what I’m talking about. As you can see, they got some very nice photos. Really nice frame worthy stuff. But I know what you’re thinking. “He had all those pictures to choose from and he picked these? I wanted to see a dancing monkey!”

November

Not much room here and that works out just fine. We had a nice family Thanksgiving. Jane’s sister’s family joined us along with brother Jon. That’s the highlight of the month.

December

Jane added another little note to my list. It just says “Jane’s Oldtimers Lunch”. She has her own group of work friends that have been together since they first started in nursing. They all still work for the same hospital, but that hospital is 10 times larger than it was 30 years ago. So at least once a year they meet for lunch and try to catch up. They did it again this year and Jane came home happy and full of stories. Friends sure are fun. It was decided last year that the Willis family Christmas this year was going to be in Indianapolis. I figured we might as well do it at our place since we are the only ones that live here. So, we cleaned house, made a bunch of food, ordered a fresh blanket of snow and opened our doors. We ended up with the group you see here plus Amanda who was standing behind the camera. Should have been 5 more but travel arrangements proved tough for our newlyweds and the new parents of the family. They should be back in the picture next year. We had a wonderful time doing what we always do. Pretty good bunch of people. I wish you all could meet them. As you can see from this other photo, Christmas took its toll. I think my girls slept for 2 days. Actually, that’s not all that unusual.

So that’s about it. Once again, our year was exactly six pages of excitement. Isn’t it weird the way it works out like that every year. I enjoyed remembering all of the good times we had this year and all of the good people that were a part of those times. And as we address the envelopes, we’ll remember good times we’ve had with each and every one of you. If you happen to think of some fun time we spent together and feel like laughing about it again, give us a call. Or an email. Facebook even! We would love to hear from you!

Here are a couple of pictures of the boys to finish this thing up

Merry Christmas,

Wayne   Jane   Emily   Sarabeth

If this wasn’t real life, I could end this letter right after the h in Sarabeth. But some not-so-good things happened this year also. And we can’t pretend they didn’t happen. Jane’s father Roger Finley died in March. He was a good man that helped a lot of people. I can only hope to accomplish half the things he did during his life. We miss him a bunch. And in September, my Uncle Dave died. I always liked him. I liked it when he and my dad were together. We would laugh for hours. Not sure what else to say, but I thought I had to say something. It’s OK though, these guys are both in heaven now.