Christmas 2015

THE PATTINSON TIMES

We end this year appreciating the warmth and protection of home, and the security of our family and friends and hope that others around the world will soon be able to experience the same privilege.

The writer of this Xmas letter experienced a landmark birthday this year (not 29 any more) and while a bobcat was the gift requested, it arrived with a crew that dug in the pool and created a new landscape complete with pergola, fire pit and swim spa.  When the job was finished, the bobcat went home ensuring the safety of the neighbourhood.

For Tony’s Mums’ birthday, he travelled to England to spend the week with her.  Unfortunately, our summer tornado warnings caused him to miss his Toronto flight setting off a cascade of disasters, including arriving the next day, only to have to take a bus from London to Liverpool.  Somewhere in his travels he was robbed of his passport, credit cards and cash leaving him to wander about England like John Doe until he was able to obtain a passport to return home.  As a result we’ve established a new house rule that Dad is not allowed to travel alone anymore.

We celebrated our 25^th wedding anniversary in June by getting “inked”.  Given the permanent nature of a tattoo we thought we were probably safe to say this marriage is really going to last.  So now we each have an arm imprinted with a two-cell embryo, and a statement that our life began on June 15, 1990.  Speaking of new beginnings, we witnessed my nephew Adrian marry Meredith this year, followed closely by the engagements of my nieces Lindsey and Sarah to their longstanding boyfriends.  Next years holidays will involve travelling for weddings and family reunions…great reasons to pack a bag.

The girls are fast and busy and we get short of breath looking at the week’s schedule.  Grace joined the swim team this year and has already picked up a few first place ribbons.  She continues to do gymnastics and has amazing core strength placing her with the 10 year olds on the swim team.  Thanks to big sister Lily’s instruction she is mastering flip turns and all the strokes.  Grace remains hooked on science and lately has decided that being an astronaut is her long-term goal and has begun to grow her hair out like “Astronaut Barbie” so she can at least look the part.  She loves school and seems to learn easily, saving us from having to learn grade 2 again.  

Lily is awesome in the water but magic on the track and completed a strength and agility program at our university this summer, experiencing running with a parachute and other such body breaking challenges.  She is a good-natured kid despite closing in on the teen years, overprotects us all, and has decided that she never wants to leave home.  We’re trying a variety of cognitive techniques rooted in the science of neuroplasticity to help her and she seems to be having an easier time understanding her schoolwork which is a good thing, because I can’t do grade 7 math.

While we try to keep up with the kids, they can both beat us in a race and when Grace challenged me to do a flip turn on the monkey bars, Lily stepped in reminding Grace “don’t encourage her, she’ll just hurt herself”.  Fitness has become a strong focus at our house, and Tony and I are still regular gym rats, challenging each other to work harder in the weight room.  Our gym was taken over by a leading Canadian body builder this year and Joe trains Tony once a week, while keeping a watchful eye on whatever trouble I manage to get into.

Aside from life’s hectic pace, we still manage to drag ourselves into work each day, making babies and catching babies.  Despite our long-term incompetence in managing electronic devices, we’ve decided to switch over to an electronic medical record system in the office in 2016.  This process will require that our EMR team possesses nerves of steel and probably some sedation if they are going to successfully negotiate us through to shredding all of our paper charts.  If all else fails, the kids, who seemed to have been born with a computer chip in their brains, will show us how it’s done.

Please have a wonderful Christmas with the ones that you love and if you’re in our neighbourhood, stop by for some cheer and chaos.

Love, Tony, Mary, Lily, Grace, Bella and Sophie