2012

*Happy Xmas 2012*

Hello again everyone, and welcome to the Martins’ Christmas Card Letter for 2012. We’re glad you could join us again to catch up with your favorite Martin. We’re coming to you live from Leesburg, where the trendy wear Uggs over their Carhartt overall pants and more than 50% of the people are not chewing tobacco.

It’s been a year of lots of fun, but pretty settled. The elections, of course, dominated our Fall. And Summer. And Spring. Virginia was a “battleground” state this year, which meant lots of visits by the candidates, lots of activity and lots of ads and signs everywhere. The Electoral Process! How exciting! A quick word of advice – and this is just from me – if you ever do get the opportunity to live in a “battleground” state, I’d really, really suggest moving to Wyoming. Or killing yourself. Six of one… A full month after the election and I still wake up, nightshirt drenched, screaming “NO ON QUESTION 7!!!” But the good news is we did qualify for Federal disaster aid when self-multiplying candidate yard signs clogged over half the lanes of several major commuting arteries into DC. Your tax dollars at work, and we thank you.

Ever since then, we’ve been spending a lot of time as a family building a fiscal barrel in which to travel safely over the fiscal cliff. It’s slow going since we keep having to compromise with the conservative cooper helping us build our barrel. I keep saying we should use bigger staves in our barrel to protect us better, but our cooper says we should just shave less wood off of the existing smaller staves and they will magically become bigger. In any case, we’re not worried, as it’s only all of our money. (Editor’s Note: Congress may have, in fact, acted to resolve the whole “fiscal cliff” thing by the time you get this letter, making this whole paragraph sort of irrelevant and not funny anymore. So I should probably take it out if I think it’s likely Congress will do their job. Oh, wait, I left it in, didn’t I?)

But national politics aside, family politics is all local, and locally, we have actually had a great year, every one.

Aly is a Senior in high school (when did that happen?), still at VES and has done super well at classes, competing in swimming and cross-country, fulfilling a demanding job as a Senior Counselor (kind of like a school-wide RA), and handling many AP and honors classes. She has completed her college applications for early decisions and admissions and whatnot, including a barrage of tests, essays and forms. And now the waiting begins for the much anticipated fat envelope! She’s applied to six colleges, so we’re really excited that she has a list of schools to choose from that offer her everything she has worked for. We are proud of her and excited for this next phase of her life.

Jack continues to do well also. He is a big first grader. He loves his school and his class and his teacher. He’s learning so much and we’re mostly still keeping up with him. I’m going to start taking night classes to prepare for third grade, though. In spring this year he played his first real team sport, Flag Football. In his first season as a NY Giant, his team was undefeated and won the championship game in about 7-tuple overtime. He continued in the fall on the Leesburg Jaguars, with not as many wins but with as much fun. Jack’s also been continuing on with Tae Kwon Do, and is now a Gold Stripe belt, nearly ready for the Green belt, at which point he’ll become a socialist, open up a food co-op and offer subsidized housing. That joke was for those of you who also grew up in Prince Georges County, the rest of you should just keep going.

Jean remains at her job with Accenture. She has travelled on a few exciting trips this year. She went to India for ten days, has made a couple of trips to London, a couple domestic trips, and as I am typing this she is in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Other than the exciting travel, she enjoys her commute up 7 steps to the chick loft from our bedroom where I bring her morning coffee and lunch (sometimes). She maximizes her time and gets our money’s worth out of our high speed Internet basically talking to her team and bosses and customers all day long on the phone, and geeking out on “BI” in her PJs.

Rob (who now refers to Rob’s self in the third person) has spent most of this year working as a self-styled *Independent Film-maker* (video guy) for a local high-tech company, Basho, which puts on Sumo tournaments and/or sells database software. The work has led to a couple trips out to San Francisco, one where I got to work with double-in-law-first-cousin-once-removed Warren Jones, who is an *actual* film-maker. And it has been an excellent opportunity for me to still do a little work while mainly taking care of the kids and keeping up my coffee and lunch deliveries to the upstairs executive suite. I even do housework when I have nothing else to do or Jean yells at me. Jack and I also started cub scouts this year, and I am the Tiger Den Leader for his group of 10 first grade cub scouts. I have newfound respect for Mr. Newell and Mr. Smith, my old Scoutmasters after running only a couple of meetings with the cubs. Contrary to popular belief, managing ten 7 year olds is not as easy as managing one 70 year old. But they are full of fun and adventure and it is a good excuse for me to get my camping gear back in shape after all this time just taking up lots of useful space in the garage.

We had two big trips this year. The first was in the Spring for Aly’s spring break, when we combined a drive down the eastern seaboard to visit colleges (Rob, Aly and Jack’s College Visit Road Trip, rated PG) with our first cruise. We went on a Disney cruise, and it was amazing. It’s hard to explain how it could possibly be worth what they charge for it, but it was a terrific vacation and Disney, despite all the bad things that can be said of them, really know how to take care of some guests. We got a chance to visit with Uncle Steve and Aunt Karen briefly in Florida since we sailed out of Port Canaveral.

Our second big trip was in August when we headed out west for a two week visit to the National Parks. Aly and Jack both came with us, and we saw Yellowstone, Tetons and Glacier. It was my first time in Yellowstone since the early 70s, so ho hum, been there done that. But it was new to Jean and the kids. We stayed in cabins in the parks most days, along with one night in a Bed & Breakfast in Montana that had its own captive wolf pack (a pack of wolves bred in captivity that couldn’t be released into the wild, not wolf capturers). So we got a close up look at some wolves, followed a few days later by a glimpse of some wild ones in the park. Throughout our trip we also saw deer (2 kinds), elk, marmots, mountain goats, bison, pronghorn, squirrels, salamanders, bison, grandma Linda, coyotes, fox, moose, bison, bighorn sheep, grandpa Ron, eagles, falcons, osprey, bison, black bears, grizzly bears and bison. There were a lot of bison. And we got to spend the second week with Grandma Linda and Grandpa Ron up in Glacier, which was fun for all. Jean and Rob did a 10 mile hike up to a lake with icebergs in it, and everyone had fun watching for animals and learning about glaciers and geysers and animals and horseback riding and stuff.

So that’s our story for 2012. It was a pretty stable year for us, overall. For those of you who celebrate Christmas, Happy Christmas. To our Jewish friends we say חַג שָׂמֵחַ. To our Muslim friends, an extremely early (or extremely late) كل عام و أنتم بخير. And to our Mayan friends, adios forever. Happy new year to All, though, and may you have an excellent and prosperous 2013.

Love, **Aly, Jack, Jean, Rob, and Buddy**

         There used to be cute pictures of us riding horses in Yellowstone. Think of us in your mind. Then put in horses. There you go.

*You can see more of us, as usual, on your Internet machine at **www.alyandjack.shutterfly.com***

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