Christmas Letter 2006

Hello and welcome to Christmas Letter (“The Letter”) 2006! Warning, some material may not be suitable for all audiences. Ok, well, that’s not really accurate, but based on our focus groups, people who read The Letter aloud to their cats found that the cats immediately started hyperventilating and banging their heads against the wall. This drove cat lovers crazy, but not nearly as crazy as when cat haters found out and began going house to house reading The Letter aloud – caroling style – at houses where cats were known to reside. So now I’m forced to issue this warning. And while we’re at it, since I’m sick of all these lawsuits associated with The Letter, please note the following: The Letter should not be used as a flotation device, worn as a fire-retardant garment, or ingested. You can not fly unassisted while reading The Letter, nor lift four times your body weight. You should not operate heavy machinery while reading The Letter, and anyone who experiences any of the following symptoms following reading The Letter should consult a physician (or holistic healer, shaman, witch doctor, or toll booth operator) immediately: depression, euphoria, runny nose, runny ears, runny hair, back ache, head ache, stomach ache, heart ache, God complex, incontinence, TBTS (throbbing big toe syndrome) or Shingles. Nausea, however, is a known side effect and, quite frankly, fairly common. OK, with that out of the way, we can get to work. The 2005 Curtin Quiz went quite well, so here are your bonus questions:
1. 2006 has been a great year for Emma (now 7 and a half) because she: a) hasn’t been adopted by Madonna yet.; b) is as cute as ever and growing by leaps and bounds (and waaaay too fast); c) continues to be very active in soccer, skiing, Irish step dancing (she was just moved up into a group of older girls – I mean, can Riverdance be far behind?), and theatre (this year’s production was The Trolls and I don’t wish to brag, but the entire crowd could be heard whispering, “Who is that troll in the back row next to the forty other trolls in the back row, she’s really carrying the show!”).
2. Our Julia is: a) a precocious Kindergartner who absolutely loves school; b) a dancer extraordinaire because she has added Irish step dancing to her staple ballet class; c) an art project, drawing, painting, paper macheing, gluing, pasting, coloring, scissor-cutting, dollhouse building, light construction project managing fiend who has produced so much artwork the past year that the pile has joined the Great Wall of China as man-made things you can see from space.
3. Annie, our two and a half year old: a) is so verbal and smart that she is actually somehow turned five years old while we weren’t paying attention; b) never goes anywhere without her pillow and blanket and emergency backup blanket; c) says at least three things a day that have us belly laughing (including my personal favorite a few days ago when Emma and Julia were running to Kat arguing and crying, Annie looked at me and said, “jeez Daddy, everyone is freaking out!”); D) stubbornly insists on growing up despite our best efforts to keep her “our baby”.
4. Our Fish, Al the First (author of The Curtin Christmas Letter 2004): a) caught the last train for the coast when his Christmas Letter was optioned into a movie deal; b) is fronting a reggae band, ‘Big Al and the Guppies of Freedom’; c) miraculously turned from dark blue to red and is living a quiet existence in the fishbowl on our kitchen counter; or d) has gone to the great fishbowl in the sky, but because Emma is so sensitive and Daddy didn’t want to face up to his fatherly responsibilities, he made the unfortunate decision to try to get rid of the body and replace Al with a new fish (Pope Al the Second) and fool Emma into thinking that it was the same fish but at the pet store all the water is tinted dark blue, so he actually grabbed a red fish, but didn’t know it until the new fish was in the tank and Emma immediately saw it and started crying because she thought Al was sick and going to die (staggering irony there), so Daddy had to convince her that Al had just changed colors and is living peacefully in his bowl on the counter, which after 30 or so minutes of uncontrolled wailing, he was finally able to do due to the two specs of blue that (thankfully) exist on Al II’s fin. Note: If you see Emma on a regular basis, THE CORRECT ANSWER IS c)!
5. My wife Kat is: a) a retail clothing magnate; b) a finalist for the head football coaching job at Boston College; c) a limousine service for the Curtin girls; d) still crazy after all these years; e) as beautiful and wonderful as the day we were married; (by the way who else is singing Paul Simon right now?)
6. Kat and I celebrated our tenth anniversary: a) blind drunk in the basement wondering where it all went wrong; b) in an emergency room where I was treated for a massive head wound for making the previous joke in front of my beautiful wife; c) with a tremendous trip to Real Del Mar on the west coast of Mexico with our dear friends Ash and Jim Ford in a place so fantastically amazing that I still can’t believe we were there. (And a special shout out to Ashley’s Mom, a longtime secondary reader of The Letter) (And, as a special bonus parenthetical, Jim recently took me golfing at Pine Valley, so if you’re wondering who the Curtin Friends of the Year award goes to for 2006, well, the polls are now closed and we are projecting a winner).
7. I started a blog at http://pscurtin.blogspot.com/ because: a) I always wanted to be an astronaut and the “blogosphere” seems about as close as I’ll get; b) I want to annoy you with this inane banter more than once a year; c) I wanted to write more and this seemed like a better option than bathroom walls; d) I am an idiot. (but check it out if you want – the old Christmas Letters will be there as well as new posts every week or so.
8. We want to wish you a happy holiday season and blessed 2007 because: a) it seems more appropriate than Happy St. Patrick’s Day; b) we are contractually obligated to do so; c) you are among the people we love, like or tolerate – for now. HAPPY HOLIDAYS AND A SAFE, HEALTHY 2006!