December, 1992

Dear friends and relatives:

Greetings to you and yours as we once again enter into the magical season of Christmas.  This year has been a year of change for the Gruenbaums, especially for Andy.  During the past year we have bought a house, Andy quit his job, went back to school (for a while), disupted the flow of his resume, and is currently working 2 jobs (60+ hours per week).  Now that you know what is coming, you have a couple of choices:

1. go and wrap some gifts and when you come back you can hope we have solved our own problems without dragging you into them; or
2. you can brace yourself and read on, knowing our souls will be bared.

We are enjoying being homeowners.  We have done a few projects here and there, but our most enjoyable project was our garden.  We chose the appropriate part of our yard to carve out for our agricultural endeavor. After the preparing of the land for the indoctrination of the production organism, we planted the tomatoes, peppers, cabbage and zucchini.  Although we let our plants down by not watering as faithfully as we should have, the garden produced a nice supply of fresh veggies. Now that summer is over and winter is upon, our dining room is commonly known as the Gruenbaum greenhouse.  Andrew’s house plants are taking over.  Death has also visited the inner arboretum and is never taken gracefully.

Andy’s work history has suffered as of late.  After plotting his departure from Rose Products for quite awhile, he finally quit in April.  (We did take our vacation to Florida before he gave his two weeks notice.  Andy then became a student at Ohio State for two quarters taking mostly math and computer classes.  he was closed out of most of his classes this fall, and decided not to continue for now.  While searching for a job, he has been working, but it has been a sometimes half-hearted looking with the knowledge of a possible move. (Judy is looking for new employment opportunities, not necessarily in Columbus).  He is selling cellular phones again and working a customer service job 4 hours a night.  Thus, his resume does not flow smoothly.  We think 1993 will bring some stability to our lives.

We want to take this time to especially thank all of you for your continuing love and friendship throughout the year.  It is one of our greatest blessings.  To those of you from whom the miles separate us, we want you to know that we think of you often and pray for your well-being and happiness.  (To those of you who didn’t make it to this part of the letter, we hope you are glad you decided to do your Christmas preparations rather than read our letter.) May the peace and joy of God’s love be with you throughout this Christmas season and for the new year to come.

Sincerely yours,

Andy and Judy Gruenbaum