Morrow Family Christmas Letter #10: Christmas 2011

Morrows really dig Christmas.

Osama Bin Laden and Kim Jong Il are dead.  Oprah and Regis are out. Fear Factor is in. Wall Street is… occupied. The kids are asking for toys like President Obama asks the Iranian government to give back our downed stealth drone. And the interior of the Morrow home looks like a yuletide episode of Hoarders.  That can only mean one thing: It’s Christmas.  And Christmas means the Morrow Family Christmas letter.

Morrows love Christmas. And you love Morrows. Well… some of you do. Truth be told, somewhere along the line most of you just did something irresponsible to inadvertently land yourself on our mailing list of friends, family and other treasured Google contacts. Your punishment is that you are annually force-fed our family’s laundry list of “what happened to us in year two-thousand and whatever.” Well, the wait is over. The MFCL is here. And you are holding it. Probably weeping.

Matt and Rachael's Sunday School Class at Silver Dollar City

But before you gather the family for the annual reading, let us remember that this is a year of unmet expectations (we’re looking at you Rick Perry, Herman Cain and Albert Pujols).  And we can tell by your dithering attentiveness and the smell of vodka and sadness that we already may be losing you. So, here’s the deal: if you’ll just approach this year’s MFCL expecting something roughly equal in quality to 2011’s The Smurfs… we should all come out of this thing just fine.

You see, the Morrows could not decide what amazing family happenings to keep in the letter this year. So we had to form a Super Committee to recommend cuts.  If the committee could not agree on entire sentences to cut, then arbitrary, across-the-board cuts of one word per sentence would be applied.  We know what you’re thinking: “Those Morrows are out of their Smurfin’ minds!” But we believed in the process, and that, through the professionalism of each member (Annie and Alex), we could find a compromise. They were the best we had to offer. They worked hard, met often, pledged to bring civility to the process, and in the end, this was the result:

Matt is still at the.  This year he attended his twenty-year class.  He also discovered a highly effective ancient Native American cure for cold sores, which is.  He teaches a married couples’ Sunday School class, which he thoroughly. His highlight this year was attending Game Six of the. Eat your hearts. Rachael spends a lot of time making food and wiping.  She is still doing some consulting for.  She was honored to speak at the annual PKD banquet, still teaches in Awanas and sometimes.  Alex is four years.  He started playing T-ball this.  He loves animals, superheroes and “Angry.  We are so proud of him for graduating out of speech therapy and into.  Anna is in the second.  She loves horses, acting and.  She plays the piano and finally started losing her.  After twelve years, we said goodbye to our family dog and. We became fish. We are 2 and 3. We were so blessed to lead a mission trip to. We spent a wonderful week at the beach with. And we started growing our own. This year has just been. 

 

The kids in Cards gear when they visited the Big Guy!

The astute among you have already deduced the Super Committee was another disappointment.  The rest of you are just confused. Either way, there you have it. The recap (sort of) of the Morrows’ 2011.  We’re considering making a thrilling online “guess what’s missing” game out of it. “Considering” may be a little strong. It has crossed our minds. Check in often at http://morrowfamilychristmasblog.blogspot.com/ for photos, back issues of the MFCL, extended remixes, Christmas recipes, and more. You can even see if we ever got around to making that awesome fill-in-the-blanks game for the above year-in-review paragraph. If not, just chalk it up to another unmet expectation for 2011!

Bottom line: We wanted to take this opportunity to wish you a very Merry Christmas and a wonderful 2012.  It really doesn’t matter if your year more resembled the fairytale royal Windsor wedding or the trainwreck Kardashian one. We all have much to be thankful for.  No matter what is going on around us, the hope and peace that comes through Jesus Christ is available to us.  He is the reason we celebrate. And He is our one true hope.  May this year bring you increasingly closer to Him. That is our prayer for you and your family in 2011.  Merry Christmas!