Bless Us Everyone

Have a wonderful Christmas everyone!  I'm taking next week off from work and blogging, except maybe to visit with you guys.   Below is Robb's annual Christmas letter.  

Enjoy!  Love McVal

Christmas 2017

Merry Christmas and welcome to the 2017 edition of the McVal Family Christmas letter. 2017 will go down in history as the year we survived a whirlwind of chaos. Better known as the year our daughter Maddy got married. More on this later.

Ryan continues working at a British themed pub/restaurant in XXXXXX called XXXXXXX. In his free time, he continues to play his guitar, write music, and perform at local clubs and play video games. His excitement in his newest hobby of coin collecting peaked and waned during 2017. Ryan and his son Leon are living with us. They both really enjoy video game sleepovers in Ryan’s room and playing games late into the night.

Leon is five, attending kindergarten at the local elementary school, and is enjoying riding the bus and going to class. Sometimes a little too much. Leon is becoming a very good reader at a surprisingly early age. He is constantly sounding out words and reading everything from books to billboards, and even presents under the tree. He still doesn’t understand why there should be any presents with names other than his. Leon is still into his computer games and video games. This comes in handy during our drives back and forth from our house and his mom’s. One day he treated me to a 45-minute narration of the happenings in his “Goat Simulator” game. (Yes, this is a real game.) Leon enjoys Legos. He loves following the instructions and building the sets. He also seems to enjoy making traps out of loose Legos around the living room to catch the unwitting barefooted family members. Leon dressed as Luke Skywalker for Halloween at our house. Ryan dressed as Darth Vader. Lots of lightsaber battles. I’m surprised they had time to get candy.

Now for Maddy news. Despite the news of Maddy’s engagement to Matthew McT in last year’s Christmas letter, she surprised us all by getting married last June. At least that is how it seemed. Maddy started off the year luring us into a false sense of security by student teaching, first in southern Minnesota, and then Wisconsin, casually making wedding plans. All the while she was secretly planning to actually get married. In May, Maddy and Matthew graduated college. After the graduation ceremony, there was a service announcing new teacher placements. It was announced that Maddy would be teaching kindergarten in a Lutheran elementary school in Wisconsin. It was perfectly located for Matthew to attend graduate school for Library Science. It was then that it hit us, they were getting married in less than a month. Luckily, we work best in a crisis. Mostly due to all the practice. While Val was literally sewing like the wind (3 Amigos reference) on Maddy’s wedding gown, flower girl dress, her own dress as Mother-of-the-bride, and not to mention 40 table runners for the reception, I mostly caught up on Netflix and worked on my father-of-the-bride speech. In the brief period of time between the graduation and wedding, Val finished the dresses, finished the table runners, now used at nearly every family gathering, and made a gazillion side dishes for the wedding. I used our smoker grill to prepare umpteen pork loins and we made plans to haul everything to Minnesota for the wedding. The main whirlwinds of chaos were the logistical challenges of moving everything to the farm hosting the reception, decorating, picking up last minute necessary items, getting the food prepared and thousands of other things I’m forgetting. In the wonder and joy of the day, the important things were accomplished and the minor things became less urgent. It was a beautiful wedding and reception and we were overjoyed to simultaneously lose a daughter and gain a son-in-law. We cannot thank everyone enough for all the help along the way. After barely resting up from the wedding, the following week we helped Maddy and Matthew move to their new apartment in Wisconsin. They were blessed with lots of help from their new congregation in moving in. Now after several months there, they are well settled in. Maddy is enjoying the myriad of challenges in teaching kindergarten, and Matthew is hard at work with two part time jobs and graduate school.

Meri. Where do I begin? She turned 17 in January and has spent most of the year with activities keeping her away from home. She has been in choir, jazz band, fall play, spring musical, local community theater, All-State vocal, marching band, pep-band, honor choir, and yet still found time to hold down a part time job at a local nursing home. Meri was the maid-of-honor in Maddy’s wedding. The Sunday after the wedding, Meri left on a school science trip to Florida for a week. In March, Meri went on a band bus trip to St. Louis, and Nashville. Meri is a senior in high school this year and is anxiously looking forward to graduating and moving out. Her plans include attending Iowa State and not living at home. This past summer, Meri performed three times at the Iowa State Fair. Once for 4-H, once on the grand concourse, and once in the Bill Reilly Talent contest. All three times she performed songs she had written, singing and playing the piano.

My mother Margaret continues to live with us. She spends much of her time being involved in church and Bible study and taking care of her little dog “Teddi”.

Val continues telecommuting for XXXXXXXXXX. She is active as a Sunday school teacher and various sewing projects. I continue to work at XXXXXXXXXXXX, and play the bagpipes whenever people want me to, and quite often when they don’t.

Every year I look forward to Christmas. The meaning of Advent is preparing or looking forward to Christmas; to the birth of our Savior. God is gifting us with what we most need, a savior to redeem us from our sins. As promised through the prophets, God has shown us mercy, rescued us, and given us salvation through the forgiveness of our sins. Have a merry and blessed Christmas.

Love the McVals

Robb, Val, Ryan, Meri & Leon (and two McTs, Maddy and Matthew)