Christmas Letter 2000 Revisited

    Having more spare time than desired, it seems a reasonable thing to do is go through boxes and reduce clutter in various room in the house.  After opening one such box in our "home office", I came across a few copies of our Christmas letter from 2000.  It is retyped here (because I don't think there's a digital copy of it anywhere).  I hope I'll be able to use italics and bold fonts that were part of the original.  Here it is:

                                                                   Christmas 2000

Dear Friends:        

       Feeling the pinch of rapidly advancing postage deadlines, we have selected 20 words, more or less at random from our trusty Merriam-Webster Dictionary (Springfield, MA, 1994) with the intent to use each of such selected words in a complete sentence as part of our traditional, though unconventional Christmas letter.  There is no guarantee that the vocabulary word will be used correctly.  The words are:
          chink              locoweed                        cling                      dishevel
          gavel              impregnable*                  docket                    om    
          mutation         tenderhearted                velveteen               whaler
          finagle            sodium thiosulfate          earthly                   grapefruit     
          deadly             volunteer                       wampum                kinematics

The first year of the new millennium (or the last year of the previous millennium for those of you who cling to the correct manner of counting years) found the Tolmans not entirely impregnable.  As the year began, Rachel and Ben became parents for the second time in February with the arrival of Spencer Chadwick Terry, whose head resembled a grapefruit in size and shape.  Rebecca is now three years old and likes to finagle her way into having Grandma buy velveteen dresses.
        As Father Time brings his gavel down on the year, Allison and Adam have learned that Ali is likewise not impregnable (2).  Their efforts should bear similar fruit sometime in May.  But we have no earthly idea where they will reside at the time of parturition (not a selected vocabulary work, but not bad, eh?).  They presently reside in Pflugerville, Texas.  Clara is a tenderhearted, energetic one-year-old.  Her second birthday will be observed around the time of the birth of her new sister.  We’re hoping she’ll stay off the locoweed that could cause a mutation during her Terrible Twos. 
    Emily took a step into the adult world and had a summer job at Walmart where she saved enough money to buy lots of wampum and left it in a deadly pile on her bedroom floor.  She will seldom volunteer to clean her room.
    Jonathan is now a self-proclaimed whaler at BYU.  Prominent on his docket is his goal to harpoon a female companion prior to graduation.  He has recently changed his major back to Communications after a semester of chemistry.  He may find a better use for sodium thiosulfate.  It didn’t have the desired effect during his last date.
   Deanna has been a study of kinematics.  In addition to running the household and working at the ICU at Swedish Hospital, she’ll complete her Masters Degree in August and become a Nurse Practitioner.  She is impregnable (3).
  During bad winter weather, Wendell likes to dishevel de snow.  He believes there’s no place like om. 


          Our wish for you:

                May sodium thiosulfate bless your clinging earthly om.
                May tenderhearted grapefruit volunteer to see you home.
                May kinematic locoweed adorn the whaler’s docket.
                May you never find a deadly chink of wampum in your pocket. 
                May your skin stay soft as velveteen and may your life be full.
                And though you look disheveled, may you stay impregnable.
        
 Love,
                     The Kinematic Velveteen Tolmans