12.17.09
Christmas Letter 2009
Lukosky kids Christmas 2009
Merry Christmas and Happiest of Holidays!
Another year has flown by all too quickly.
We have had a wonderful year! The kids have grown into amazing little people who are such a joy to be around. Mostly anyway – ha! Except when drama and hormones take over!
One of the highlights of this year was that we took a cruise though Alaska’s inside passage with Kym’s parents this summer. It was breathtakingly beautiful and something we’ll remember forever. You can view the pictures of our trip below. We especially enjoyed ziplining through the rainforest, whale watching, kayaking, and viewing glaciers on deck while enjoying hot-from-the-oven cookies and drinking hot chocolate.
Kym continues to be the family chauffer. Much of her time is spent either sitting in front her computer working as a Community Program Manager for MSN Money or sitting in the car taking her kids to and fro. In between she is dedicated to her fitness program, doing elliptical, running, and biking. She’s volunteered this year for the Spoon Foundation, an organization that is working to change micronutrient policy in orphanages and she continues to be active in the kid’s PTA. All this while managing our house in Florida and working on breeding Denali. We bred him twice this year and are very excited about the potential for these puppies. You can view his website here.
John likes photography and put his talents to work when he volunteered to take directory photos for our Kazakh Adoption group earlier this year. He also took the photo for our Christmas card, of course, and tons more throughout the year. Alaska was a photography bonanza of course. He’s still enjoying working at Allyis as a web developer specializing in Microsoft SharePoint.
To our shock, Emma, who is now twelve, taught herself how to play guitar this summer and has become a prolific and lovely song writer. She took on learning the guitar with great passion and we’re all impressed with how far she’s come in so short a time. In the fall, she started going to the International Community School in Kirkland. It is known to have rigorous academic standards and once again Emma has risen to the occasion. Emma began a gymnastics class this summer and still attends weekly. As if all these achievements weren’t enough, Emma lost over 20 lbs this year! We are very proud of the young lady she has become.
Dinara, who turned 11 this year, has hit the preteen years running. We just can’t believe how mature Dinara has become this year. She finally got her own cell phone and needless to say, loves it. Dinara is such a cheerful girl. She is so much fun to be around. Dinara’s favorite activities are cooking, being with friends and watching movies. She is doing excellent with her after school tutoring and catching up on Math. Dinara blew us away and did fabulous on her state academic progress (WASL) testing. She’s made tremendous academic progress during the past year. We are very proud of her in so many ways!
Noah is now 9 and a very balanced kid. He took a Lego Engineering Class where he learned to build more complex structures integrating machines with Lego blocks. His grades are excellent (as always). He’s continued reading and recently became hooked on the Warriors series of books. Now he’s on to the Harry Potter series! All these academics don’t slow him down socially; he’s very popular in school and continues to charm everyone he meets. He thinks next year he wants to start taking up blogging about gaming. He seems drawn to computers like a moth to a flame. Wonder where he gets that from?
Noah and Dinara are on their second year of piano and both love it. They’ve been taking group lessons after school and we think we are going to move to private lessons next year.
We travelled to Florida over Thanksgiving and shared dinner with 30 members of our family at our home there. The kids had a fabulous time with all their cousins. It was great to be together with people we love. It was also a time to say goodbye to Lillian Preuss, Kym’s maternal grandmother. We had a small private informal service with
Fred’s brother and wife and Kym’s sisters. It was a beautiful service. We’ll miss her.
We hope that you and yours had a blessed 2009 and we wish you prosperity, health and happiness throughout the coming year.
In case you haven’t found us there yet, we joined Facebook to help stay connected.
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Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays!
John, Kym & the kids