And Holidays to You Too!

We sent out our annual Holiday Letter this week, recounting the minutiae of our lives in 2013.

Number of times we had breakfast tacos during the year:  23 (though this could rise in the next 13 days)
Hours of viola practice:  23.4
Hours of viola practice recorded and reported to viola teacher:  69.1
New mammals introduced into Smith family ecosystem: 2
Number of new mammals that routinely smell like poop:  1
Miles ridden (rode?  roden?) on bikes, family cumulative:  3,982
Major renovations undertaken:  1
Follow-up renovations we did ourselves:  1
Total number of "popcorn" dots scraped off of ceiling in aboveformentioned renovations:  39,396 (this number could be off be as much as 17)

You get the point.  Our list goes on for quite a long time.

Number of scintillating facts about the Smith Family in the 2013 Smith Family Holiday Letter:  602

We love getting other people's letters and holiday pictures as well.  Especially ones that track the same metrics as we do, so that we can do some cross-family comparisons.

Two holiday cards that we received have left me somewhat puzzled.  The first was a holiday letter from our contractor.  It's not that we didn't finish our relationship on good terms with him.  We didn't.  It's more that I would have thought that his holiday letter should have arrived in June 2014.  And that it would come postage due (already with a perfectly good forever stamp but requiring additional, completely unjustified postage).

The second was from Richard, our Austin American Statesman delivery guy.  He left us a holiday card with his name and address inside, with the reminder "Guy who delivers your newspaper."

I sent him a Smith Family Holiday letter, but I don't think he has the frame of reference to understand and put into context our various family success metrics.  For instance, when the letter reports "Number of songs on Abby's ipod - 132," Richard neither knows the genres or has any clue who "Abby" is.

And then it occurred to me that Richard wasn't interested in getting our Smith Family Holiday Letter. I noted the address and saw that is was only a few miles from my office.  So now, each day after I read the paper, I drop it back off at Richard's house.

You're welcome.