Christmas Greetings

‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring but one Lucy mouse (who never goes to bed until she’s absolutely certain everyone else has).
If you’re reading this, of course you have realized that we’ve opted to go a little higher tech on our Christmas greetings this year. Somehow the holidays snuck up on me, and while we could have probably managed to get paper letters out to all of you sometime before Valentine’s Day, we opted instead to go this route. What can I say? I’m a sucker for anything that makes my life even the tiniest bit easier, and while I always enjoy recapping our year and sending our best wishes to all of you, I hate the formatting-reprinting-margin changing hassle of actually printing the letter.

So here you go—our first digital Christmas greeting. My sincerest hope is that I will somehow find the time in the coming year to keep blogging our stories and laughs throughout the year. Check back now and then. Sometimes I actually get some fun stuff posted!

It’s been a quiet year in the Lueken house (well, as quiet as they get around here). 4 out of the 5 kids are in school this year. Grace and Sam are in 3rd and 5th grade respectively. Claire started kindergarten and Lucy started 3 year old preschool. All of them still attend Our Lady of Guadalupe Spanish Immersion program and keep us all on our toes running to games, meets, practices and concerts.

Gracie is our musician—continuing to participate in her school choir and taking up the trumpet this year. She also continues to swim competitively with DASH (Dubuque Area Swimming Hurricanes) which has her running up to the pool 3 times a week year round. She also played soccer and volleyball this last year and has been broadly hinting that she’d like to try out gymnastics sometime soon. Grace got an ipod touch for her birthday, and within about 15 minutes had figured out how to text message with her friends. We’re already catching glimpses of the teenager she seems eager to become.

Sam joined the Independent League baseball organization this summer, so we spent a lot of summer nights at the ball field. He also really enjoys basketball and soccer, and we convinced him to give DASH one more go around this fall. He doesn’t enjoy it as much as his sister, but he’s a good sport (most of the time) about practicing twice a week. He has decided that basketball is really his first love and I have to say, I’m thrilled. He even beat me at H-O-R-S-E this last month, which is a feat his dad has yet to accomplish in 13 years of trying.

Claire started kindergarten this year and is going along and getting along in her happy Claire way. She played soccer this fall and started dancing and basketball this winter. Of all our kids, she is the one who is most eager to share her Spanish with us, and it is so much fun to hear her practicing her vocabulary on all of us and her little siblings, though by the end of this year, she will likely surpass Chad and I in her knowledge of the language!

Lucy is in 3 year old preschool at St. Anthony’s and while Chad and I debated a bit on whether to leave her in her fantastic home daycare, or let her start preschool, our queen never had any doubt that this was her year to join the big kids at school. The dance studio agreed to let Lucy join Claire’s class even though they usually want kids to wait until they are 4. Even strangers can’t say no to the queen, but with that smile, who can blame them?

Clayton has grown up a lot in the last year (too much if you ask me!) His first word, and his first love is cars. He even insists on “reading” (and then carrying around) the car classifieds nearly every day. He is our rough and tumble boy’s boy, and our first baby to strongly and vocally prefer Dad to Mom for nearly every need. It’s a bit of a switch for Chad and I, and one I find at times refreshing, and at times disheartening. In my opinion, my baby should want to cuddle his mom more, but who has time for that? Certainly not Mr. Busy bear! Clayton attends a wonderful in home daycare with his cousins John Paul and Oliver Markham.

For Chad and I, it’s been a pretty uneventful year. We have all we can handle keeping up with the status quo! We did get to welcome a few new family members on the Markham side this year as my brother Brad and his wife Laura brought us my godson Oliver Thomas in March, and my brother Craig gave us two beautiful young ladies in new wife Michelle and her 3 year old daughter Payton in September. We took a few small family trips this year—a week in Okoboji (which Claire calls her “favorite place in the whole world”) and a long weekend in Chicago when the Hawks played Northwestern. I’m still with John Deere and Chad is still running Adams Architectural and Dubuque Window and Door. I blog sporadically, he runs sporadically, and we both race around town in our mini-vans running kids hither and yon every single day. It’s a busy, bursting at the seams life, but we wouldn’t have it any other way!

In closing, we would like to wish you and your families and friends the very merriest of Christmases and happiest of New Years. I often think if my life had a theme song it would be “Blessed”. It’s never more evident than at this time of year, when we hear from all of you and get to celebrate the birth of our Savior.

Love and blessings,

Chad, Dawn, Grace, Sam, Claire, Lucy, and Clayton

A Royal Entrance (albeit 3 months late)

Note to Readers:  I just found this post when I was going to publish our Christmas letter.  I know why it is so delinquent.  I couldn't figure out how to get the darn picture right side up and after several fruitless attempts, I gave up.  I don't want to shortchange the queen--so I'm posting it as is.  Lucy shouldn't pay the price for my technical shortcomings, right?

 

Not to be ignored in this month of happy firsts, the queen embarked a few weeks ago on her first day of pre-school. Somehow, while her big sister’s foray into kindergarten 2 days earlier made me wax all sentimental, Lucy’s important first just made me chuckle. And come to a realization that has been a long time coming (the rest of you probably all figured it out already).

But, to begin really at the beginning, Lucy has been asking to go to school almost as long as she could talk. By the middle of last year all of the early childhood staff and most of the students knew Lucy by name. Tina (the sweetest director ever) had taken to calling her “my Lucy” and saving any of the especially tasty afternoon snacks for her.

The older kids all attended daycare centers, so preschool was an easy decision for them. They were already in the preschool building all day, the only thing we had to do for preschool was fill out a dozen more forms per child (seriously—how many places must I enter my address and phone number? And how many times, nevertheless, must I STILL see our last name butchered with not enough or too many vowels in all the wrong places? But I digress) and buy a backpack. Lucy, however, has been attending a wonderful in home daycare since she was 1, and for the first time, Chad and I were faced with the decision—3 year old preschool or not? Of course, that question is rhetorical. The queen had decided for us months and months before it occurred to us to consider it.

And so she began. With great joy and anticipation, she bounced out of bed and pulled on the clothes she had carefully selected the night before. (I must admit they were, indeed, hand me downs. But really—could she have looked any cuter regardless?) She actually owns a new (ish) backpack with her name embroidered on it which she received for her last birthday. It was about this time that she insisted on packing and carrying a book bag every day (just like the big kids) and asking her daycare lady to provide her with “homework” (just like the big kids). Each afternoon, she would dutifully pull out the coloring sheet that Stephanie had given her, find her crayons, and sit side by side with her big sister and brother. As they struggled through multiplication and spelling words in two languages, she would frown at her coloring, carefully select a new crayon, pause, scrutinize, and color some more. (Really, was this girl ready for school or what?)

For real school, however, she opted for an older backpack of one of the big girls. But really, who cares if it is a bit scuffed up when it is purple AND pink AND has sparkles AND a picture of Tinkerbelle on it? Oh she was ready, alright.

But still—STILL—I had my concerns about that first drop off. Given everything I’ve just described, it seems ludicrous to even imagine this girl would have any first day jitters. And yet, we have a bit of history with our slightly prone to drama queen and big talk about big kid activities up front, and then wailing, tears, and terror at the first drop off (swimming lessons—two tries! And bug camp come to mind). So I wasn’t sure how the first day would go. I had taken the first day drop off duties from Chad and loaded everyone up with no more than the usual amount of yelling, threats, and general chaos. Lucy just beamed the entire time, chattering merrily about the friends she would make, the toys she would play with, and the lunch and snacks she would enjoy. We climbed in the van and zoomed off (we always have to zoom) and dropped Clayton off with Stephanie. Off we went to school where we took the big kids to the elementary school drop off. Lucy and I parked and hopped out, heading for school.

The whole while, I was watching her closely, waiting for the first signs of impending panic, but she was cheerful and chatty as usual (she is quite the talker) all the way into the building and down the hall to her classroom. When we arrived at her classroom, we met with our first potential pitfall of the morning. A pretty little pigtailed girl clung to the denim clad knees of her daddy on whose face I recognized the universal fatherly expression of a difficult drop off: half irritation, half sorrow, total longing to be somewhere/anywhere else. I smiled sympathetically at him as we edged around him (they were blocking the door), and glanced cautiously at my own little first timer. She still looked eager and happy. I helped her find her hook and hang up her bookbag. Her teacher came over to greet her briefly, quickly turning her attention back to the sobbing girl in the doorway. An aide stepped forward to take the hand of a little boy whose lips were beginning to tremble as well as another girl who was breathing quite shakily and clutching a blanket to her cheek. Another boy peered curiously at Lucy as she approached the little cluster, no hint of tears on his round little face. “Great,” I thought. “3 out of 5 criers.” I was afraid Lucy would pick up on their obvious distress and allow her mood to descend to the tearful fear of her little peers.

I should have known better. Always a surprise and completely reliably her own little self, Lucy showed no hint of nervousness or tears. “Bye, Mom!” she chirped.

I responded with exactly the words I should know better than to use, “Are you okay, honey? You aren’t scared, right? Are you sure?” As though the sight of half her peers weeping into their blankies wasn’t intimidating enough, I had to imply SHE was the oddball to remain confident and ready. “Yes!” she said, with the charming, dimpled smile that is the real secret of her extended reign over my life.

“Okay,” I said, mustering all the cheerfulness I could and swallowing my own intrepidation. “I’ll see you tonight.”

“Okay,” she said, turning her sweet face up to my kiss. Then she bounced off to the story rug without so much as a backward glance.

I walked slowly down the hall and into my day with a chuckle and a small shake of the head. That girl is going to OWN that school, and she is going to love every minute of it. Even better yet, they aren’t going to know what hit them. She’ll have them all wrapped around her finger by Halloween.

A long time ago, a group of children came up with a name for their unusual willingness to follow another talkative, slightly bossy little girl. Back then, they called it the “Dawn Said” rule, which basically described a strangely compelling eagerness to comply with “Dawn’s” directions. She was a benevolent leader, of course, but not one who tended to take lightly to dissent, either.

I think it’s clear that a new reign is beginning. It is the dawn of the “Lucy said” era. Long live the queen.