The past couple years I have foregone the whole sending of Christmas cards. I blame 2020/Covid (or it would just be plain laziness on my side, but...I prefer to blame the pandemic!). What this means though is that no one gets to receive our wonderful Christmas letter. I have realized that this is very unpatriotic of me. Oh wait, wrong holiday! It is very Bah Humbug of me to deprive you all of our spectacular Christmas letter. So...the Pederslie Holiday Christmas Letter is back!! (Cue confetti, balloons and cheers now)
Hmm, maybe I quit writing the Christmas letter because our lives are quite boring and there is nothing new to tell anyone. But I will try (or at least come up with some really believable, exciting sounding stuff so you don't think we are lame!)
This past year we have been traveling to Tucson quite a bit. As you all probably know, Shelby goes to school at the University of Arizona in Tucson. We have tried to visit her at least once a month, and since she has had a job working as a desk assistant at one of the dorms, we have been going to her instead of her coming home for long weekends.
It is great that we can work remotely as we worked from Tucson last February for a week. Then I went to visit Shelby over Easter. She was done with her first year of school in May, so we packed up her dorm, put it and her car in storage, and flew her home of the summer.
We went down to see her the weekend of her birthday. Our baby turned 20!! She is no longer a teenager! I am still in shock that she is an adult now and that we have kept her alive these past 20 years! It was touch and go a bit during those pre-teen years! Her BFF and her parents went w/us and we rented a house with a pool and hot tub and went to a U of A/ASU hockey game. OMG, hockey games are fast paced and fun!! (But cold!).
Then because of her work schedule, we also spent Thanksgiving with her in AZ. We ordered a meal from Whole Foods, which wasn't too bad, and vegged and watched Christmas movies.
Back in February we had to make the very hard decision to put our beloved puppy, Harley, down. We found out she had bladder cancer prior to that. Even though she really remained a very happy puppy, you could tell she was in pain and tired of it all. We were really hoping we could have held off until Shelby was home on Spring Break so she could see her. But we called Shelby that day, asked for her opinion and let her say good-bye. Hardest...decision...ever. It's been almost a year and there are still days where I am like "Oh Harley is going to come running out to greet me!"
Chad has been traveling quite a bit for work. He is still at Astronics. I have to say, it is kind of nice when he is gone, and Shelby is away at school - it's like I get these mini vacations where I can do what I want and watch what I want and no one judges me!
I am still working at Spacelabs. I go in one day a week which is a nice break. I get to see other people besides my spouse and I can get away from the cat who thinks if we are home she should have our undivided attention. She addresses this by climbing up on us, walking across our desks and then taking a nap on our keyboards. Good thing she is cute and fluffy...
So, back to Shelby, since her life is probably more exciting than ours! She started her sophomore year at U of A (though I think she classifies as a senior...IDK...something like that because of her doing running start in HS). She switched her major after the first semester from Nursing to Business. She actually likes things like Statistics and Accounting! Weird kid! She made the Deans list Spring semester. She had thought about transferring to a school in WA for her second year but then made the decision to stay at U of A so as not to prolong her time at school. However, she will have all the pre-req's done after spring semester and is planning on doing the remainder of her degree online. So come May, she will probably be back in WA! (Yay!)
So that is basically our life in a nutshell. We work, get annoyed by our cat, go see our kiddo a lot then come back home and do it all over again.
Happy Holidays!
Steph, Chad & Shelby
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