12/24/15

From our family to yours

The official Burlando Family Christmas letter.





Greetings from our family to yours.  I decided to write a Christmas letter because it's important to keep in touch with loved ones and perfect strangers on the internet. Just in case you just haven't had your fill of my family via the various forms of social media I spent too much over sharing on, here is a festive overview.  

As you can see we live in a winter wonderland.  Otherwise known as a place that looks beautiful and magical for about a week during Christmas and then quite instantly transforms into "It's so cold! Why do I live here? We have to plug in our vehicles for crying out loud!"

Here is a run down of the family pecking order. 

Our eldest daughter is 14.  She does teen ager type stuff like playing basket ball, going to youth group events, and trying to escape her home any way possible.  Her current hobbies are doing her hair, spending obscene amounts of time primping, obsessing over makeup, posing for selfies, feeling chronically embarrassed of her parents, and teasing her younger siblings. 

Our eldest son is 12.  He is not quite a teen ager but he is as tall as his mother and is as moody as his father.   Even as I regularly exclaim "Good lord what is that smell?!!" it is fascinating to watch a boy slowly morph into a man.  We found a perfect outlet this fall for his gratuitous amount of energy.  It turns out he really likes to run.  Which could come in handy because his little brother may end up bigger than him someday and pay back will be rough.  

Son #2 is 9 years old and is loving school.  We are loving having him in school too.  
His hobbies are watching people do stuff, repeatedly asking obvious questions, and eating noodles.  

Son #3 is turning 9 next month.  He is the family comedian and generally a happy guy....as long as no one messes with his Mine Craft world, gets in his way, says the wrong thing, or suggests he do something he doesn't want to do. His hobbies are watching TV, eating apples, and following me around asking for the App Store password. 

Daughter #2 is as sweet as ever.  She has smile that is pure sunshine and a giggle that can melt ice. She has also recently traded her preschool biting streak with full on punching.  She's pretty good. We may have a future UFC star on our hands.  I'm putting my money on this one.  

Foster Daughter is still stuck with us.  She seems ok with the arrangement.  That may be because she has lived with us since she was a newborn and has nothing else to compare our family with.  Her stubborn streak, sense of humour, and ridiculous amount of energy are good survival tools and she fits in perfectly.

The Father of the pack has been working very hard building a sound proof addition on our house.  He's hoping to move into it early in the new year.  While wondering how he ended up with five children, despite having a vasectomy after three, I snuck in a sixth.  He now insists that we are "done".  For real this time.  No really, for realz.  More real than the last four times he has said that.  

The mother of the pack has many hobbies.  These include being woke up at night, making appointments, driving kids around, cleaning up messes she didn't make, and counting down the hours until wine O'clock.  






It's a long winter.  Sometimes you just need a hotdog cooked over a fire....when it's -20 degrees Celcius.  




They're all on the naughty list. Every last one of them. Even the cute one. 


Cece still hoping sure can use her charm and good looks to change her fate of getting coal for Christmas. 




This one has the good looks but completely lacks ability to charm.  The look on his face suggests he's pretty sure Santa might kidnap him and take him to the north pole to work as a toy slave. 



With the current state of the economy and a rising concern about the use of fossil fuels we decided to forgo modern methods of transportation.  It's really very efficient mode of travel if you aren't concerned with things like warmth, comfort, speed, and distance.  








So from our family to yours.  
Yule Tide greetings.  
May your New Year bring with it an abundance of chocolate, coffee, and Netflix marathons.