Heiss Holiday Humbug 2008

Perhaps I'm a little obsessive, but I've been thinking about this year's newsletter for at least 2 months now. Truthfully, it's probably been longer than that. Mostly I've been thinking about it because sending them out last year was a mess.

Last year was the first year we sent a Christmas newsletter out--you'll notice this newsletter is still volume three. Yes, that's because we forgot to send letters out the first year we were married. We wrote one. We just forgot to send it out and by the time March rolled around it just seemed a little silly to send them out. So we just didn't.

I'm terrible at things like this. Did I ever mention I never got around to finishing the thank-you cards for my wedding? That's probably going to haunt me to the grave. I'll be on my deathbed sobbing, "I didn't send out thank-you cards...and I habitually emailed out my Christmas newsletter...but I promise I'm still a good person!!"

At least this year we're emailing our letter because we live in Egypt, unlike last year when our lame excuse was that we didn't want to spend money on stamps (although if we lived in the States this year I would bet money that we still wouldn't want to spend money on stamps). Regardless, emailing just feels more valid this year.

Unfortunately I've procrastinated far too long and I didn't get our address book as organized as I'd hoped to this year (or at all for that matter) so if you got this twice or not at all, I'm sorry. It's not our fault we both like you and you happen to be in each of our address books...or that we never got around to adding you into our address book. Maybe next year I'll be organized. No promises.

Now without further ado I bring to you the Heiss Holiday Humbug 2008 (fully downloadable with the click of a button):


Our family weblog is epically long; I’ve written around 500 blog posts this year alone [edit: this is my 507th blog post this year...yikes]. So while I don’t expect you to read every word I write, I would feel obtusely redundant if I actually wrote a Christmas letter. Following last year’s trend I am using this opportunity as a shameless plug for Heissatopia. Just follow the links....

Two thousand and eight started out with a bang
I contuted my elbow; in a sling it did hang.

From that moment on the year only got better
Which I’ll summarize here in our Christmas newsletter...

A goal on my life list says, "Bake wedding cake."
That goal was accomplished, a big undertake.

For part of the cake we tried keeping pet fish
But each of them found a quick way to perish.

Andrew, in April, donned grad cap and tassel,
Left BYU, and became somewhat less vassal.

For although he stayed working there as his vocation
Our post-graduation freedom gave way to vacation!

We went on a road trip to see San Diego
And got real nice tans to boost up our ego.

Later we took off to Grover for camping.
The cabin had gone through a lot of revamping

So we slept in the newly constructed loft,
Rachel in a crib, us on mattresses soft.

Soon after that Rachel turned one—
She’s growing up fast and it sure is fun!

By this time she already knows how to walk.
She jumps, spins, and climbs and is starting to talk.

Our parents are sad that we took her away
To Cairo, Egypt, where we plan to stay

For two or so years—Andrew’s doing his master’s.
(We’ve been in school so long I wish he’d go faster!)

He’s currently studying at AUC
And in our spare time we get all touristy.

We’ve already hiked down inside the Bent Pyramid
And found it quite dull, dreary, dank, dark and humid.

But Egypt is great! We’ve our share of adventure;
Our future is unequivocally up to conjecture.

What’s in store for next year? I cannot divine.
But Merry Christmas and Happy Two-Thousand and Nine!

Love from,
Andrew, Nancy and Rachel Heiss

And that's basically what we did in 2008. Obviously we did a lot more than that since I wrote hundreds of entries about our life...feel free to peruse the archives if you're bored.