Hello to all. I thought I would share our Christmas letter with our regular and casual readers. It has been important to keep as many things as possible in the “normal” range. Given my illness, this has been quite a challenge for Kristine and the girls. Best wishes to all for a joyous holiday season and good health and happiness in the New Year! – David

Dear family & friends,

Wishing you joy and peace this Christmas! What follows is a little note from each of us.

Erin: This year in late April my grade (grade7) went on a trip to Quebec city. I had so much fun. In the summer I had a great time at camp and at the family cottages. This school year I am in grade 8 and I am sure there will be so many great memories. I am on the yearbook committee helping with layout and design and in the band. We are getting ready for a national band competition this spring in Ottawa and have been asked to play in many places. My favourite subjects are drama and science. I think 2009 has been a good year!

Catherine: Last spring I got to go to NYC with my school band and loved it! In the summer I spent a month at camp in the LIT program. It was an amazing experience. I’m in grade eleven now, and mostly I like it. I have a lot of math homework, but I also get to take music, dance, and anthropology. They are my favourite subjects, so they make school better. I’m starting to think about what job I want to do when I grow up, and right now it’s between an elementary school teacher, and a cultural anthropologist.

David: I am still in bed, but making very slow progress. Besides watching many movies and keeping up with people and events on my computer, I have kept a blog, largely on climate and lyme-related issues. One opportunity that came my way this fall was to be featured on CTV’s investigative news show W5 when they did a piece on lyme. Since then I have been getting a lot of calls, emails, and facebook contacts from across Canada. Many from fellow lyme-sufferers who were deeply touched by such a high-profile show finally giving some visibility to a disease that has taken its toll on so many Canadians, and yet for many reasons, some obvious and some unfathomable, remains largely invisible.

Kristine: I have kept very busy being a mom, caring for David, ever learning more about lyme disease and chronic illness, keeping the home (with help from kind people) and finding time and space for myself. Work has provided lots of opportunities to grow and try new things over the year. Most of the this has been pretty exciting. One sad thing that happened this fall was that our little puss “Kootka” finally died at age 20. We all miss her, but Erin was especially attached to her.

There is a lot of pain in having someone ill for so long with so few answers and so little the system can understand or offer. But pain forces us to grow and (hopefully) sands down some of our rough spots. We are reminded at Christmas that God hasn’t just created us and set us adrift, staying aloof to our circumstances, but instead, has gotten down and dirty with us. Imagine, the life force of the universe coming to experience all the ordinariness and pain that we know as people!

Love David, Kristine, Catherine & Erin