2010 Christmas Card and Letter

Hey Everyone!

Keelie stopped taking her naps, so our blog updates have been lacking. I used to work on the updates while she napped so she wouldn’t climb in front of the computer and ask to see more pictures. This update will also be serving as our environmentally-friendly (all-electric!) Christmas card and letter, which should work just fine, since you are here reading it.

We’re so excited about wishing you a Merry Christmas…

Can’t you tell?

“Lemme tell you about what a great deal this is, lil’ brother. We go to sleep, and when we wake up, there are new toys over there under the tree!!!”

Print that out, if you must have a tangible card.

This year has been mostly another boring one. which is good. Once again, we didn't lose our home, I didn't lose my job, no major crimes were committed against us, we didn't have to file a lawsuit against anyone, none of us suffered a major illness or injury, and the dog didn't die.

But we WERE interviewed for a podcast called “The Enthusiast Enthusiast”. We talked about being Disney enthusiasts.

Unfortunately, we did have two family passings this year. Aunt Vicky, the honorary grandmother for whom my younger sister was named, passed away after years of declining health. My stepbrother Justin also left us; he was too young to go. Both are missed!

On a positive note, we’ve been able to enjoy the growth of Keelie as she passed her third birthday celebration and Kyle as he enjoyed his first. And he did enjoy it…

Unlike his cousin Lainey, who had her celebration together with Kyle’s, Kyle had no problem getting messy with cake.

Kyle is almost 16 months of age and he still doesn’t sleep through the night except for rare nights here and there. I heard a lack of sleep may efekt mentle abilly tees, bud eye havn no tissed uh problum.

Kyle is a daredevil climber. He also has quite the temper. Not sure where he gets that. Ahem. He likes music a lot and will dance to it when he can.

Speaking of dancing, as we said in a previous update, we enrolled Keelie in dance class (ballet and tap) since Kori enjoyed dance classes when she was a little girl. Keelie’s class had a recital at an Anaheim holiday event.

She loves going to dance class, but it is hard to get her to pose for the camera with a good smile. We have to take the good shots candidly. Keelie also enjoys Sunday school, educational programming, and long walks on the beach. Uhm, well, ok I made that last one up.

We didn’t take any trips this year. Our free time that we spent out of the home was mostly spent with family. It is always nice to have the grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins entertaining the kids because otherwise, given their ages, when we are out somewhere with them all of our energy and attention goes into making sure the kids don’t maim themselves or other kids, don’t break anything, don’t get stolen, and don’t miss a trip to the restroom or changing table. Take heed all of you who are planning to become parents.

Although we didn’t take trips, we did use our annual passes to take the kids to Disneyland frequently and now we also have Knott’s passes, so the kids are going to visit there regularly, too. Thanks to the grandparents who have contributed to both sets of passes!

That’s our year in a nutshell – er, uh, blog posting.

Whether you are celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ and worship Him as Lord and the One who has saved you from your sins… or are enjoying other festivities and traditions of the season, we wish you a Merry Christmas and a very happy and healthy New Year.

Below are some of the better pictures from the last several months… at least the ones that aren’t incriminating, if you care to look…

Please keep in touch!
–Ken, for the Pellmans of Anaheim
December 2010
KEPellman [at] yahoo [dot] com

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Kyle enjoying a park in late August…

Keelie posing for Granddaddy Keel, expert photographer…

Puma, Uncle Steve, Kyle on my lap, and the back of Granddaddy Keel’s head…

Keelie at the Huntington Library, thanks to Grandma Kathleen…

Grampa Pellman holding his youngest grandchild…

Keelie ready for it to get dark on October 31…

Keelie enjoying a local park…

With Nanny at Teddy Bear Tea at the Langham…

Kyle is all dressed up and ready to wreak havoc with a crayon…

See ya next time!

Year in Review 2008 - And Keelie Pics

There's a brief year-end message below. If you want all of the details... just click through the archives of this blog. This is the alternative to those paper Family Christmas Letters.

First, a few pictures of Keelie! She likes playing in our backyard...

She likes telling Daddy a thing or two...

She likes playing with Shelby and Honey (the storied doll).

She likes wearing shades and making offers you can't refuse...

(The bear refused... and now look at him!)

She likes playing with her cousins Macon (pictured) and Blaine...

She likes dancing with Aunt Kirby and the singing snow man...

She is blessed to have all of her grandparens, aunts, uncles, and cousins nearby most of the time.

Okay.... if you must have a paper letter from us, print this update out and cut out the "letter" below...

=====CUT HERE=====

The Year in Review 2008

Greetings to you and your loved ones! What a year it has been.

I didn't change jobs. I still have one, thankfully.

Kori continues to be an excellent mother to Keelie, and thanks to our biggest news of this past year - our move into a house - she's also proving to be good at fix-up projects around the house. Getting the house was made possible by the settlement of the lawsuit we had been pursuing, plus the downturn in the market and our financial discipline. [NOTE: If you don't have our new address, e-mail us at KEPellman [at] yahoo [dot] com. Our old address was the one with the "G2" condo number.]

Keelie, going from sixth months to eighteen months, has grown and learned so much.

She also, thankfully, learned to take real naps. The move was good for her - giving her more room to play around. She's finally starting to talk verbally, having been able to say quite a bit in American Sign Language for a while now.

The only real trip we took this year was for Uncle Gary's funeral. That took us back to Illinois in June.

Since we all live in Anaheim, it has been only a matter of coordinating schedules to spend time with Kori's siblings and parents. We also try to make somewhat regular trips to Pasadena to see my siblings and parents, and sometimes they come to us. We even hosted a Thanksgiving dinner for the first time (with a lot of help from our families).

Kori and Keelie have been to some meet-ups with other moms and toddlers, and every three months or so we make the monthly gathering of some former coworkers of mine.

One of the ways we're keeping in touch is via MySpace – but even more through Facebook (see the links in the right-hand column). I wonder if those sites will be superseded by something else by this time next year? Well, if you haven't done so yet, connect to us there anyway. Of course, you are also invited to write to us at KEPellman [at] yahoo [dot] com to let us know how you are doing and what you've been up to.

We're enjoying our new home, and each other – and of course we continue to enjoy our families and friends. We just celebrated Christmas in Pasadena and Anaheim with family.

And finally... here's the family Christmas picture, where everyone looks good and is smiling happily and sincerely into the camera...

Thanks for reading and thanks for your love, friendship, and support throughout 2008. We hope you had a great Christmas. We look forward to 2009 and pray the New Year will be a great one for you, full of health, happiness, and His love.

The End of the Year

Welcome to our last update of the year. Our Christmas letter is below, after this short update covering this past week.

Visions of sugarplums...

Last Sunday, Nanny came down to see Keelie, as she hadn’t seen her in a while, partly due to a trip to central Florida. Keelie was really happy to see her, and while Keelie was off of our hands, we got some chores done.

Keelie reached SIX MONTHS OF AGE during the week! Yay! That meant another trip to see her pediatrician. Our precious little girl was upset by the shots, but was over them quickly. Her reaction was subdued compared to her screaming getting her 4-month doses. Keelie also checked in at the 50th percentile in height, so she’s smack dab in the middle of average. Amazingly, though, she has more than recovered from the rough going early on with her weight. She’s now in the 75th percentile! There’s proof for sure that she has some of my blood.


Here's an example of how Keelie has grown. That picture above is Keelie at 26 weeks. The one below is Keelie at 10 weeks.

Here are some pics of Keelie in her bassinet.

This is where she has been sleeping.




Everything goes in the mouth.

Ain't she adorable?

Friday night, we started Keelie on “solid” food. Up until now, her diet had been almost nothing but breast milk.

There have been signs that she is mentally ready for variety. For example - she used to spit out some of her medicine if we weren’t careful, but now she not only will happily drink it, she will grab the oral syringe we use to give it to her and she’ll hold it herself.

She’s also reaching for our glasses and plates whenever she can. In this video below, you can see her trying to grab the spoon.


So that’s what we’ve been up to since our last update. Here’s our end-of-the-year message...

The Year in Review 2007: State of the Pellmans

We’re not sending out a lengthy Christmas letter this year, since everything we’d put in it had been right here in this blog, and as you’ve read, we’ve been occupied with the baby. Here’s our brief-as-can-be end of the years message...

Greetings to you and your kin!

The first half of the year was mainly about preparing for the arrival of Keelie. The second half of the year has mainly been about taking care of Keelie. Any parents who remember having their first child can relate, I’m sure. It is an event that changes everything. Keelie has five grandparents, nine actual aunts and uncles, and two cousins in the area, many of them right here in Anaheim. So, there has been lots of visiting with family.

There hasn’t really been too much excitement.

Professionally, I settled into my new position.

Didn’t have as much time for freelance writing.

We took a couple of trips, but no long out-of-state vacations. March was the trip to San Diego/La Jolla scheduled around a wedding. November was the trip to Philadelphia scheduled around a Bar Mitzvah.

Throughout the year, we got together with multiple times with three friend groups. Homecoming (our friend group from church) officially disbanded this year by absorbing into a larger group that has official meetings at church. We hope to still get together with everyone from Homecoming for lunch or something here and there. One of the families moved to Africa, so it is a little harder to meet up with them. Then there are the current and former Disneyland cast members that Donna keeps going as a group by mailing out invites to monthly get-togethers. We’ve made it about every three months or so. Finally, there’s a group of Disney enthusiasts (some of whom are professionals within the corporation) who get together for dinner and home theatre entertainment and sometimes field trips. We’ve only met up with them twice since Keelie was born, because the home theatre sessions aren’t really at the time or place for a baby. Each of these three groups have been great social support and fun and needed adult contact.

So far, there have only been three times we have gone somewhere without Keelie. The first was the “Weird Al” Yankovic concert in October. The second was the “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” anniversary event in November. Finally, there was our anniversary this month.

We did lose a family member - Kori’s paternal grandmother, who had been beyond interaction for a while. And, one of my heroes who I had been fortunate to have casually known over the years, died suddenly at a fairly young age.

Our legal matter, in which we are the plaintiffs, is continuing with the possibility of being resolved in 2008.

So, it wasn’t a big year for changes other than Keelie’s arrival, which was change enough!

Kori is a terrific mother. It has been such a pleasure to watch her take care of our little girl. Four years ago, Kori and I hadn’t even met in person yet. And here we are, married and proud parents.

Thanks for reading and thanks for your love, friendship, and support throughout 2007. We look forward to 2008 and pray the New Year will be a great one for you, full of health, happiness, and His love.

Merry Christmas!