The Christmas Letter Kelli Wouldn't Let Me Send:

Dear Friends & Family,

It is that time of year again to share with you our adventures in this journey we call life. 2010 has been another year of magic, wonder… and some other stuff.

Merci, almost 7, is the newest member of the clan. She came to us from Haiti, following the earthquake, and has fit in quite beautifully. She is a lot of fun, and her cooking, tennis, deep-sea-diving, driving, parachuting, and origami skills are increasing daily. When she grows up she wants to be a Ballet Dancer and a grown up.

Michaela, now 11, is quite the talker. She continues to amaze the professors at the University with her intuition in foreign languages. It was fun for her to serve as Official Translator for Bono at the Bosnian-Serbian Peace Talks. She intends to spend this Holiday transcribing the first five Books of the Old Testament into Pig-Latin and Cantonese.

Caleb, now 13, is growing in leaps and bounds. Ten years ago, when he got his first set of building blocks, he seemed quite interested in large buildings. Who could have ever forseen that this year he would design and build his first skyscraper in Hong Kong; the new 108-story International Commerce Centre. It is great to have a budding architect at home as he made a new addition to the house and a wonderful gazebo for our garden. Martha Stewart will be filming her next show here in April.

Kolten, a curiously remarkable 16, is immersed with his Graduate School studies, and managed to co-author a paper on Multidimensional Customer Attribute Analysis by Conjoint Survey and accept a Nobel Prize for his discoveries in Quantum Physics. Along the way Kolten took three startups through their IPO. We are proud of his work serving on the Board of Directors of IBM, Coca-Cola, and Walt Disney. His modeling career is also budding into something no one saw coming.

Conor, a noble 18 years of age, has kept himself very busy with teaching under-privileged children in the suburbs to read. He is finishing up his master's degree in public relations. Combined with his degree in business marketing, Conor has already used dual talents to develop advertising strategies for such clients as Conan O’Brian (you may have seen his new “Grow-A-Beard-Bag-A-Babe” ad for TBS. . . an idea brought to you entirely by Conor!). He has turned quite a profit, and consequently is starting his own Nasdaq stock, partnering with Zach" Galifianakis, (BEARDS=BABES). We will let you know when it goes public so you, too, can invest!

Kelli had a very busy year. In between her work as President of the American Red-Hat Society and Senior Partner of Amazon.com, she introduced a line of children’s novels and hand-made active-wear. She remains occupied with the children and has introduced them to Yoga, gourmet coffee, and power walking. She still will not let anyone forget how she led the 1991 Women’s World Cup Soccer team to the championship in China, and how she rode a horse bare-back around the pyramids in Egypt in 1983. Yes, we are all very proud of you, Mom.

Michael, also known as ‘Dad’, was active with the kids teaching Merci Ballet, and helping to lower the boy’s handicaps to 5. In February he was let go by the church, and even though the charges of grand theft were eventually dropped, the legal fees sent us into bankruptcy. However, this gave Michael and the family the opportunity to squeeze a little traveling in this year. We started in Aspen, went to Belarus, the Congo, Denmark, Ethiopia, the Falklands, Greenland, Holland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Venezuela, and Zaire. Our trip sailing our new boat around the world was a great experience for the kids, we learned to communicate with Dolphins and discovered a new region of deep water volcanoes.

And Lady, our Old-English Sheep dog, learned to speak… Latin. Other than that, it was a very quiet year. So from our household to yours, all the Blessings of the Season and may your New Year be prosperous. Ours will be. We found out yesterday that we won the $43 Million Powerball Lottery.

Actually, none of the above is true (except for the part about Kelli in Egypt), but you have to admit it makes more interesting reading than what our lives have really been like! What is true is that our sincere prayer is that the blessings of this holy season fill you with joy and peace, as you enjoy God’s awesome presence!

The Crafts,
Michael, Kelli, Conor, Kolten, Caleb, Michaela,and Merci