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Greetings once again from the Myette household here in snowy Medford, Massachusetts. As Christmas approaches I thought I would write to you with some more details of how our lives are going and some upcoming milestones for us. Fair warning, you will (hopefully) be getting a Christmas card/letter from us so forgive me if this is repetitive, but given that I am my mother’s son I didn’t want to count on us getting the letter out on time.

We are adjusting nicely to being a 5 person family. We had the wonderful help of Erika’s mom and Michele for the first few weeks, but both of them flew out today so we’re getting used to juggling three kids with four hands. We were sad to see Michele leave, but are grateful for the time that she lived with us. We loved having her here and the boys love her more than words can express. We’re thrilled she’s starting school and think she’ll make a great social worker.

We’re enjoying some down time as I’ve pretty much wrapped up school for the semester and what little I have left I’m able to do from home. With no travel planned for winter break it’s nice to have some time to be together as a family for the next few weeks until school starts up again on January 2nd. We’re in the time of birthdays with Maggie just passing two weeks old and Jacob just passing 2 years old last Thursday. Next up is Jesus (2007 years old) followed by my thirtieth birthday then Michael’s 5th in January. 2 weeks between birthdays keeps us on our toes, luckily Erika’s is in August.

I’m going to be lucky enough to have my mom up here for my birthday because we will also be celebrating Maggie’s baptism. December 30th we will be baptizing Maggie at St. Paul in Harvard Square the church where Erika sings in the choir on Sundays. We will be lucky enough to have Erika’s parents Jean and Jim as well as our sisters Katie and Michele and my mom. It was just coincidence but it’s great that Maggie’s baptism will be on the Feast of the Holy Family. Our friends Betsy and Tom will be godparents to Maggie, though Tom is currently working in India so he will have a stand-in.

Maggie will be baptized alongside Joseph the son of our friends Tricia and Brian. Erika and Tricia were due about the same time so we planned a joint baptism. Tricia is the sister of Betsy Bowman who, along with being Godmother to Maggie, is a friend of ours from college. Tricia and Betsy are two of the nine Bowman children and their parents live 10 minutes from us. The Bowmans have welcomed us in as one of the family and we go there for Sunday night dinner every week. Jacob and Michael fit right in with the 8 Bowman grandkids who range in age from 9 to 2 weeks. Every Sunday is an adventure with 18-20 people in attendance.

The boys are fabulous and are rapidly adjusting to being big brothers for the first or second time. I keep saying that Maggie’s biggest risk right now is that her brothers eat her they just love her so much. Jacob is adapting nicely to not being the baby in the family and his language has exploded accordingly to bring him into full toddler mode. Full blown sentences are emerging from his mouth at a pace never seen before. Michael continues to love St. Raphael’s where he goes to preschool full day 5 days a week. He’s loving the reading and writing he’s learning just as much as the yoga he learns in gym class and the songs he learns in music. He loves going to school every day so we couldn’t have asked for more.

This spring will be a busy one for us mostly because grad school life heats up as I head into the home stretch. I’m about two-thirds of the way done with my masters and will finish up in the end of June. I have spring semester and two summer school classes left. Spring classes end in May when I will actually graduate though I won’t get my diploma until after finishing summer classes in June. Fletcher has been such a great place for me and for us as a family. My classes, classmates and professors are all amazing and truly world class.

This spring I’ll be taking four classes, working on my thesis, traveling to Florida and Honduras, job hunting, heading to South Bend for Easter, back to South Bend for a conference at Notre Dame on Catholic peacebuilding and trying to keep my wife sane all at the same time.

My thesis is coming along nicely. It’s basically a huge research paper (60-100 pages) that I’m writing about how non-profit organizations communicate their mission to their employees. Essentially for a for-profit company it’s an easy message: make money. But without profit as a clear indicator of success what criteria do people use to make decisions. The thesis is offering me an excuse to go back to Honduras in February to do some research and Erika and the kids are coming along as well. We’re going to be flying through Florida and staying for a few days to visit with all the family that is in Florida. We should be in Florida February 7-10 and we will have a little party to meet Maggie and see everyone on Saturday February 9th so mark your calendars.

Aside from my thesis the other big task for the spring is to get a job. It’s still pretty early but I’ve been doing some preliminary work on getting job contacts. I had a first interview last week with Catholic Relief Services which is where I interned with this summer and who is my first choice. I still have two more rounds of interviews (I was one of 150 interviewed for 30 slots), but if I get the job we would be posted overseas this July at one of their 99 country offices where I would start as a program manager for international development and relief programming. It’s a pretty big step for us to move back overseas and will surely have it’s challenges, but right now we really feel like that this is what we’re supposed to be doing.

So with that busy spring ahead you can imagine why we’re trying to take it as easy as we can at the moment. Lots of movies and time spent with the kids. We took some time yesterday to decorate the Christmas tree yesterday and had a few mishaps putting Aunt Bevely’s angel on top. http://www.myette.org/youtube/youtube2.html

I also added a new gallery of photos to the website www.myette.org

Ok, I’ve procrastinated writing my paper long enough. I hope you’ve enjoyed this bit of news from Boston. We look forward to seeing most of you in February! Have a wonderful Christmas!

Love,

Michael-John, Erika, Michael, Jacob and Maggie