Because today was one of those days where nothing exciting except knitting (and oh by the way, the knitting project of doom is DONE DONE DONE!) and drinking coffee and poking randomly at the computer happened, I instead give you the letter we sent out with the Christmas cards, all of which finally got into the mail today (phew).

Dear friends and family,

Yet again, here we are at the end of the year, wondering where it went. This year was, as always, a mixture of good and bad, with ups and downs all along the way.

Both of us continue to be in good health, though Jennifer suffered a bout of carpal tunnel syndrome which was easily resolved with a month or two of Ibuprofin and a wrist brace. Richard’s allergies and asthma are fortunately largely under control at this point, which is certainly good for his work schedule.

There hasn’t been much in the way of travel this year. Jennifer hosted her sisters at our house for their annual sisters’ weekend this year. While they toured Old Sacramento on Segways and gorged themselves on sweets, Richard headed down to Monterey Bay to explore Cannery Row and the Aquarium. And this summer, we flew up to Washington to spend time with Jennifer’s youngest sister and her family.

Our cat population has had some significant changes this year. In August, we lost our 19 year old cat Sebastian to kidney disease. We miss his friendly demeanor and his loving nature, but not his habit of yelling at the top of his lungs at all hours of the day for no discernible reason. And then, just over a month later, we lost our 14 year old Tangerine to endocarditis, an infection of the heart. We’ll miss her friendliness and her playfulness as well.

After losing Sebastian and Tangerine, we decided that our house felt too empty with only four, so we adopted two new kittens: a gray tabby that we named Rupert, and a gray tuxedo kitty that came with the name Ingrid. Both kitties are extremely energetic and full of enthusiasm (you can see a picture of Ingrid lurking in our Christmas tree in the at the top of this letter, and she and her brother are the reason we’ve not done much decorating indoors this year!) and keep us quite entertained with their antics. The remaining four adult cats thankfully remain in good health, if not as enamored of the adorable newcomers as we are.

Both of us have enjoyed successes in our creative endeavors this year. Jennifer has been baking and canning up a storm. She began participating in the monthly Daring Baker challenge, and has made streudels and milano cookies and many other delicious goodies that Richard has been happy to help consume. And aside from the usual jams, jellies, and butters, this year she also tackled pickling and pressure canning. She also is still just as obsessed with knitting as before, and has been doing a lot of test knitting for several designers. This summer she took Second Place at the California State Fair with a knitted lace shawl, and also had an original sock pattern published in the knitting journal Knotions. Richard, for his part, completed his self-imposed project of writing a short story a week, having written a total of fifty-three short stories in a one-year period. He also had a short story, “The Bride Price”, published in Issue #10 of Shimmer magazine (check out Shimmer at http://www.shimmerzine.com).

Both of us participated in National Novel Writing Month in November this year, and we both reached the goal of completing a 50,000 word novel in that period of time. Richard’s novel Code Monkey (which can be found at http://www.mossroot.com/codemonkey if you’re interested in reading it) is still a work in progress, as is Jennifer’s own untitled novel.

Our foray into gardening continued this year. We planted regular tomatoes, several varieties of cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, and potatoes, as well as some berry bushes. The regular tomatoes and the cucumbers produced pretty well, but we were totally overwhelmed by our cherry tomato harvest. Each week produced an average of at least four pounds of cherry tomatoes, and one week we brought in nearly ten pounds. Fortunately Richard really likes cherry tomatoes, as do his coworkers. And since Jennifer enjoys canning and jarring vegetables, we now have several jars of pickled cherry tomatoes for our enjoyment.

The pickled economy, though, did take its toll on us. We both still have our jobs, thankfully, but are both on reduced hours, at least for the time being. Hopefully, this should only be a temporary situation for both of us.

So overall, it’s been an interesting year for the Crawford household. We hope that 2010 is a joyful and prosperous year for all our family and friends.

Happy holidays

Richard and Jennifer and all the cats

‘Tis the season for Holidailies.