The little woman and I have been together approximately 11 years now, and this is the first Christmas/Holiday letter we have written. I do remember sending out cards one year, but I don’t believe we included a snappy letter full of lies and half truths, so here it goes.

Pam and Nancy both ushered in the new year with new jobs. Nan got invited back to the company that laid her off in April 2010, only for a better position and more money, and Pam ditched the Catholics (before they ditched her–it was only a matter of time) to take up with Big Oil. I know, I know. From the frying pan into the fire. So pretty much, January – June went something like this: sleep, work, sleep, work, sleep, work, sleep, work. No lie. Quite a shock for Pam who truly enjoyed the previous eight years working roughly 8 months out of the year. For Nancy, it was justice and a long time coming.

Also, Pam and Nancy now live together full time for the first time in eight years. No more living most of the week in Bellevue and coming home on the weekends for Pam. Our therapists have profited a great deal from this new arrangement. To make herself feel better, Pam bought a new Jeep Wrangler that she can’t afford to drive to work on a daily basis.

We took our annual trip to Palm Desert in June, put on our bikinis and realized we had spent far too much time on the couch the past 6 months. Nancy turned 50 (fifty!) while we were there, and upon our return home we realized there had to be more to life than working and sleeping. Pam joined Extreme Fitness, and Nancy, admiring Pam’s fine slim ass, joined a running class in the Fall. We spent the summer eating salad, started exercising, and now we are thin. Awesome. Oh, and we just ran our first ever 5K!

We have reached that special time in life (we joined AARP) when our parents occupy more of our time than our children. The girls are pretty much launched. Anna graduates from WSU in May, and Taylor will finish her career at Sehome High School in June. We gotta start saving up as it promised to be an expensive spring. We are proud of our girls–I won’t bore you with a long list of their accomplishments and achievements, medals won, and astounding number of hours dedicated to helping the less fortunate. I think we are all looking forward their impending adulthood.

Mother did not break any more bones this year, so she was a bit lower maintenance than in 2010 when she shattered her left leg and moved in with us for 6 weeks. She did however require gall bladder surgery and hospitalization for a couple of days in July. She’s better than new now that that pesky organ and its associated stones are gone, and is almost done with her third and final year as president of Kingston’s Friends of the Library. She continues to belong to at least three book clubs and insists on reading the last chapters first.

Dad still lives in Mexico, on the Nayarit coast, a beautiful and amazingly cheap place to live, where he and his wife run a B & B and sell real estate. They have Mexican health insurance for $35/year and couldn’t be happier.

Pam took her semi-annual trip to Lake Wallowa with her brother and his family in early August where she at least got up on the wakeboard, if only for a few seconds, and completely enjoyed being Madeline’s and Liam’s auntie. She got to drive there in her new Jeep, top down! Try that in a Prius.

August found us in Las Vegas–a much needed long weekend in Sin City with good friends at Caesar’s Palace. Pam perfected playing blackjack in the pool, and Nancy didn’t mind as long as the chips kept rolling in.

One of us has been taking writing classes since January and is now working on her memoirs. Everyone should be very, very afraid.

And now it is freaking December, Christmas is just around the corner, and a whole year has gone by. We’ve had our ups and downs, and in the grand scheme of things are both quite aware, thank you, of our extreme good fortune: we have each other, we have our health, we have jobs, a house, a supportive family, and good friends. We won’t retire til we are 110, but what the hell? We’ve cheated death yet again.