December, 1995

Dear Family and Friends:

Another year nearly gone. Where does the times go? We are still catching up from the birth of our son Timmy. Life is an incredible thing; we pray your lives our as full and rich as ours.

The first part of our year was preparing for Timothy Michael; the rest of the year has been spent watching him grow. He has always been very attentive, not much of a blob. At 9 months, he’s “talking” a lot now and is very close to crawling. He has been a true joy. Our priorities have shifted to give him the time he deserves, and our laundry is now not just an every other week experience. We have been so lucky as Timmy is such a HAPPY baby!! Having Timmy has been so great; we decided to do it again. Timmy is expecting a brother or sister in mid-May. No, we are not CRAZY!

Judy has had a very busy year. As if having a baby wasn’t enough, her law practice at Bank One has become very national, representing clients in all states in which Bank One has a presence. She has no chance of getting all of her projects done as she only fights the largest fires each day. Nevertheless, her Myers-Briggs personality test says she’s a person who thrives in crises. Thus, she actually enjoys her job most days. In her spare time, Judy is the chair of the Ohio State Bar Association Young Lawyers. She’s not breaking the news to her boss about baby #2 until January, after our Florida vacation.

Andy has learned a lot this year. If it has anything to do with the Internet, he has probably heard of it. His company, Support Technology, is a 7 person company. He has become a jack of all trades. He does some design of Internet web pages, graphics, customer support and what ever else he finds on his desk . Andy is there for the learning experience and hopes that all of his efforts will pay off. One of the projects, took him on trips to Carlisle, PA, Indianapolis, and Las Vegas. The travel has its high points, but he missed his son who is not yet conversational on the telephone like his wife.

The Gruenbaum family tried to have other projects this year as well. This year we had our garden at Andy’s grandfather’s house. It was close to Andy’s work, but still hard to get to very often. We did some small amount of canning, but we both believe last year was the canning summer for the record books. We found children are not conducive to everything that was done prior to having them. We seem to cook from scratch less, eat out more often, pick up many assorted messes of unaccountable origin, change our clothes for other than our own sloppy eating, have the TV off in our bedroom before the news comes on, hear the cry of our child amongst a multitude, play germ/virus tag, function on less than a desirable amount of sleep, and throw around soaked diapers with incredible ease and accuracy. Yes, our lives have changed, but we wouldn’t change a thing. Happiness has a whole new meaning now and we thank God for the blessing he has brought into our lives and hopefully yours, too. Have a Merry Christmas and may the life of the baby Jesus be a reminder to us of the true meaning of this holiday.