Dear Family and Friends, (A Christmas Letter of sorts...)

Hello All! Merry Christmas!

How are you? I hope everyone is doing well.

Time has gotten away from me once again...

So, to catch you up on the doings...

To start with, we are all doing well. We've had the standard colds this year, but no one got the swine flu! We are all still alive! We are happy and enjoying life here in Murrieta. All three girls are doing well in school and are busy with their own friends and activities.

Chad has been working mainly in Modesto for the last six months. He started his own company, Allen Electric, and has been very busy getting it up and running. He still has contacts there in Modesto(/Manteca), and amazingly enough, they are still building houses, a few at a time. He is usually gone about 10 days and home about 4 days, gone for 10, home for 4. He stays with friends, works 14-16 hour days, then crashes on an air mattress. I'm in awe of the things he does for our family. We have discussed moving back, but alas, none of the five of us want that... Here at home, we are busy and miss him in the evenings, but have found a way to make it until he comes home again. The nice thing is that when he is home, he is home.

In general, I have adjusted to this disjointed way of life. Not unlike, I imagine, a woman who is married to a firefighter or truck driver or business person who is gone for days at a time. I have found a way to be okay when he is gone. The girls' various schedules keep me pretty busy and so I don't really have a whole lot of time for dwelling on the fact that he isn't home. We talk on the phone many times a day and I can keep him apprised of all the excitement here at home. Things like Abbey winning the coloring contest in her class, to Emily getting nominated for Freshman Homecoming princess. Progress reports show up great on a text message... The hardest part, I have found is the constant changing of gears. Shannon the Sort-Of-Single-Mom, Shannon the Wife, Shannon the Sort-Of-Single-Mom, Shannon the Wife... It gets difficult to go back and forth. For now...that's just the way it is.

Emily...

Emily is so old now it makes my head hurt. I'm really having a hard time with how quickly the time is passing. She is a freshman now, and my freshman year is the year where I feel like I can remember almost everything with perfect clarity. How on earth is it possible that my kid is that old when I feel like that was me about 3 years ago. Anyway, she is maturing and changing and growing, both physically and emotionally. She is taller that I am. She ran cross country in the fall (I blogged about it here and here)and has already started conditioning for track in the spring. She is doing great in school. I look at her and I can't believe she is MY daughter.

Megan...

Megan, too, is older than I'd ever believe my children would get. Seventh grade for goodness sake! She is a hard worker and is the kid who always comes straight home from school and does her homework without being asked. In August she started taking dance class again. She is IN LOVE with dancing once more. If she isn't doing homework, she is wearing her ipod and dancing. She dances all through the house, on the trampoline, to the mailbox... Her hip-hop class recently danced at the local opening of the Michael Jackson movie. They were amazing. So amazing, in fact that her teacher wants them to start competing. It will be fun to see where this goes.

To see Meg dance, click here. (She is the shortest one on the far right hand side, standing behind the chair. The video is incomplete...we had technical difficulities...)

Abbey...

When Abbey was three, she promised me that she wouldn't grow up. She would stay my little baby forever. Well, that promise is broken. She tells me that it isn't her fault, that God just made her to grow up. She's right, I guess, but I still can't stand it. She is learning algebraic terms and functions. I am almost unable to help her with homework anymore and she is only in fourth grade. Or should I say, "She is already in the fourth grade?" She played soccer this year and LOVED it! After her first practice she told me she was already sure she wanted to sign up again next year. Her team was great. Every girl was a nice person and her coach was amazing. It's been fun watching her fall in love with something because she has never really found that "one thing" before now. She has tried ballet and t-ball, and tumbling and art classes. Not until soccer did we ever see anything resembling passion!

Well, we hope you all have a Merry Christmas and a very Happy 2010! If you are ever in Southern California, we'd love to see you! Come stay with us... we're only an hour from Disneyland!

Love, The Allens