Christmas Letter

We only sent Christmas cards to a handful of family members and planned to send an email of our card and letter to everyone else, but I somehow never got around to doing that. Oops! So here's our Christmas card:

And our letter:

Dear Family & Friends,

Merry Christmas! It’s that time of year to reflect on the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ, and to be happy and spend as much time with as many family members as we can. It’s also that time to update those of you we do not get to see and talk to as much as others. Although we don’t get to see you, please know that our little family thinks of you often and we are constantly sending our love your way.

As we have since the end of July 2008, the Crolley family resides in Sandy Springs, GA of the Atlanta area. While we miss living at the beach and being super close to family, we enjoy living here and are glad we aren’t too far away from family. There is always so much to do in Atlanta and we have made some amazing friends.

Paul graduated with his master’s degree in counseling in June. He was immediately offered a job at The Road to Recovery (which is where he did his internship) as a bilingual psychotherapist – he coordinates treatment programs, mostly working with addiction recovery and anger management but also does some marriage counseling, dealing with people with theft problems, etc. In mid-October he took the National Counseling Exam, which he passed! So he is now a nationally certified counselor and is working toward gaining his full counseling license.

I am thoroughly enjoying staying at home. Some think this is an easy job, but I have told Paul on many occasions that sometimes I wish I had a job to go to so that I could have a break from the craziness of being a mom and constantly trying to keep up with an 18-month old all day long as well as the housework (which Paul is great at helping me with when I’m feeling overwhelmed by it all). Although I feel that way at times, I wouldn’t trade having the opportunity to stay home for anything. It is definitely a blessing that Paul and I can budget enough to make this possible.

Olivia turned 18 months at the end of November and is constantly learning and growing every single day. We have recently been working on having her learn her body parts and she is doing a fantastic job. We are constantly amazed at how fast of a learner she is. She loves to be outside
and giggles when the cold wind blows in her face. The porch is one of her favorite places at home and is always trying to open the door to go out there. For those of you who don’t know, we are raising her to be bilingual in English and Spanish – I speak to her in English and Paul speaks to her in Spanish. She understands both languages very well, but the only Spanish word she has said so far is “hola;” everything else she says is in English. We have faith that she’ll start speaking more Spanish soon since she understands it so well. Olivia also enjoys being around other children. She and I attend a play group every week, which is great for both of us because I get to socialize with other adults and Olivia gets to work on her social skills with other kids.

The three of us are patiently awaiting the arrival of a new baby to our family around March 7, 2012. In October we found out this bundle of joy we are expecting is a boy! We are so excited to have at least one girl and one boy in our family. Things have been going well with the pregnancy thus far – both he and I are healthy. We have decided his name is going to be Ethan Paul and we can’t wait to hold him in our arms.

Well, I think that about sums up the Crolley family for the year. We hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. We love you!

***I guess I should've amended the letter to say "I hope everyone had a merry Christmas and a happy New Year."