{"id":422,"date":"2007-11-28T03:42:00","date_gmt":"2007-11-28T03:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stallioncornell.wordpress.com\/2007\/11\/28\/our-christmas-letter"},"modified":"2007-11-28T03:42:00","modified_gmt":"2007-11-28T03:42:00","slug":"our-christmas-letter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/our-christmas-letter\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Christmas Letter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stallioncornell.com\/uploaded_images\/cornell-775447.gif\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.stallioncornell.com\/uploaded_images\/cornell-775443.gif\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Finished Christmas cards today. We&#8217;re sending out a picture along with a form letter that gives everyone the update as to what&#8217;s going on. Many readers of this blog will be receiving said letter within the next couple of days. But for those of you who won&#8217;t, because I don&#8217;t know your name or address, here&#8217;s an expurgated version suitable for public consumption. (The names have been changed to protect the flatulent.)<\/p>\n<p>_________________<\/p>\n<p>December 2007<\/p>\n<p>Dear Friends,<\/p>\n<p>We invite you to review the photo that came with this letter. Behind the wheel of the train you\u2019ll find Mrs. Cornell, without whom this family would get absolutely nowhere. She somehow juggles the responsibilities of full-time motherhood with per diem work as a physical therapist, service as a Sunday School teacher, and all the responsibilities of coordinating the elementary school book fair. She sleeps occasionally, but not often.<\/p>\n<p>Directly above her on the roof of the train is Cornelius, a six-year-old Reflections Award-winning author for his magnum opus <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stallioncornell.com\/2007\/10\/worm-man-ii-fox-man-returns.html\"><span style=\"font-style:italic;\">Worm Man II: Fox Man Returns<\/span><\/a>, in which superhero Worm Man befriends longtime nemesis Fox Man and both jump on a trampoline together. Cornelius enjoys soccer, basketball, and losing teeth.<\/p>\n<p>Just to the left is Cornelius&#8217; elder-brother-by-two-minutes Corbin, who, while still in first grade, has already begun preparations to play quarterback for Brigham Young University beginning in 2022.  He\u2019s convinced that his red blankie will survive the intervening decades, but the prognosis is not good. Corbin likes his waffles hot and his hair spiky.<\/p>\n<p>Next to Corbin on the ground, you\u2019ll find Stallion, who now has a job renting vacation condos on the island of Kauai. He lost the goatee, though, because it was starting to itch.<\/p>\n<p>Stallion is holding his two-year-old son Stalliondo, who no longer sleeps in a crib and has taken to crawling into bed with Mom and Dad so he can kick them in the head. His vocabulary continues to grow, as do his feet.<\/p>\n<p>At the front of the train is eldest daughter Cleta, the world\u2019s only ten-year-old teenager. She is an accomplished pianist, a voracious reader, and a surprisingly experienced babysitter with diaper-changing skills of girls twice her age. She also knows everything there is to know about American history and\/or Calvin and Hobbes.<\/p>\n<p>Next to Cleta is eight-year-old Chloe, a fine pianist in her own right, as well as an artist, writer, photographer, soccer player, and American Girl Doll enthusiast. Last spring, she appeared in a ballet production of <span style=\"font-style:italic;\">A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream<\/span>, wherein she danced divinely and tried \u2013 and failed \u2013 to resist the temptation to wave at her parents.<\/p>\n<p>Hope all is well with you \u2013 we wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!<\/p>\n<div> <\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div> <\/div>\n<div> <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<ahref=\"http:\/\/www.stallioncornell.com\/uploaded_images\/cornell-775447.gif\"><img src=\"http:\/\/www.stallioncornell.com\/uploaded_images\/cornell-775443.gif\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" \/>  Finished Christmas cards today. We're sending out a picture along with a form letter that gives everyone the update as to what's going on. Many readers of this blog will be receiving said letter within the next couple of days. But for those of you who won't, because I don't know your name or address,  ... <a title=\"Our Christmas Letter\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/our-christmas-letter\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Our Christmas Letter\">Read more<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}