Bright and warm Christmas wishes to all my friends and family near and far! I’m attaching here the photos from my Christmas card and our 2009 Christmas letter. I hope your holiday is safe and joyful and filled with the people you love.
December 2009
Dear Friends and Family,
It’s been a full year here in the Dotzour household! The days and months fly by…though sometimes the minutes pass verrry slowly.
I was startled to realize that on January 1 this year, our little Sylvia was only 10 months old. And now, here she is almost two. Our crawling, squalling baby has turned into a running, climbing, speaking toddler before our eyes! That girl! She’s a delight and a handful and a dimpled firecracker. She’s gregarious and charming and filled to the brim with passion. These days, she and Andrew are playing together as good buddies, and their giggles (and occasional howls) echo through our home.
Andrew is four-and-a-half, and he’s sweet and goofy and earnest and loving. Early this year, Andrew cultivated a fascination with writing letters and words, and over the course of the year, he’s become an avid reader. What a world this opens for him! My heart fills up when I watch him read books to Sylvia. Such a sweet guy he is. Andrew has been going to preschool three mornings a week at Monona Grove Nursery School. I can’t believe that next fall he’ll be in kindergarten!
Bryan continues to enjoy his work developing software at OpGen. They are inventing a process to make optical maps of bacterial DNA, which could in the future help doctors identify when patients have antibiotic-resistant infections. Hopefully they’ll make some big strides in the upcoming year! When he’s not working hard at OpGen, Bryan’s usually found playing with the kiddos or playing chess online or at tournaments.
Over the last several years, I have spent an inordinate amount of time working on photos and my website. This summer, with a lot of support from Bryan, I launched a photography business so I could spend even more time working on photos and a business website! Running my own business has been an amazing experience. I specialize in lifestyle portraits of kids and families, and on weekend mornings, you’ll often find me running and crawling around with my camera after young ones. My mom had a passion for natural light photography of children…she even had business cards made…so it feels good to be developing a profession that was dear to her.
2009 is making a postcard finish with the eighteen inch snowfall we got last week. I hope your Christmas celebration is merry and bright and that you find peace and contentment in 2010.
With much love,
Althea, Bryan, Andrew, and Sylvia
To keep up-to-date with our daily joys and crazy moments, check out dotzourfamily.com. I just wrote my 900th post!
For more info on my new business, visit altheadotzourphotography.com