Christmas Letter

December 2008

Happy Holidays Friends and Family!

Looking back on 2008 our family had a wonderful year! We took a family trip to New Orleans this summer and also spent some time in California with family and friends. At home we liked visiting the Memphis zoo, having picnics by the Mississippi River and walking around downtown Memphis. We especially enjoyed the friends and family who came to visit us!

This month we were blessed with another beautiful daughter, Rachel. Her chubby cheeks bring us a lot of smiles! She is sleeping and eating well and only cries occasionally. She is the most wonderful Christmas gift our family could have received!

Mary has grown and learned so much this year. She will celebrate her second birthday next month. She really enjoys talking, reading books, playing with friends and being near her baby sister. Mary is great at learning new words, naming letters, recognizing colors and singing songs. Her memory amazes us and is usually better than ours! She is especially good with people’s names. She remembers the names of neighbors, friends, family and characters in books and movies. At church she yells out the names of everyone she knows. Mary has tons of personality and is a joy!

Murray finished his first year and a half of optometry school, only 2 ½ years to go! He enjoys learning about the human eye and vision. He received two awards this year at convocation. We are proud of how well he is doing and how hard he works. He is still a scout leader for the 11 year old boys and had fun taking them on a campout. He does home improvements whenever he can and has finished projects like painting rooms, refinishing kitchen chairs and barstools, and adding closet shelves. His big project this summer was adding a bedroom upstairs, which included hiring contractors and doing some of the work himself. The room became a guest room and my sewing/project room, which gave Mary a toy room downstairs, so wonderful!

I had a fun year being home with Mary and expecting Rachel. Mary is endlessly entertaining and I am so happy to spend my days with her! I tried new things this year like tending a baby in our home, visiting an orchard to pick peaches and apples, canning peaches and making bread. I also learned a lot with several sewing projects. I organized a moms group with three activities a week. Some of our activities included making pizza at a pizzeria, visiting a fire station, weekly park days, picking apples, library story time, swimming and a Halloween costume party. I had fun serving as a secretary for the primary children at church - it was such a great place to be!

There is much to be grateful for and we feel abundantly blessed. We hope you all are doing well and we wish you a very happy holiday season!

Love,
Margaret, Murray, Mary and Rachel Pratt