Dear Family and Friends,

We just received your annual Christmas Newsletters, which never cease to delight, entertain, and amaze us. We were so pleased, in fact, that we decided to write one of our own this year.

We’re happy to hear that things are going so well for you all and that you’re "happy," "healthy," and "missing" us! We miss you, too! Especially since we haven’t heard from you in a whole year.

It must have been fabulous for you to ring in the New Year with your "Annual Black-tie Event at the Mountain Harbor Country Club." We don’t belong to a country club, but I felt like I needed to be clubbed last New Year’s Eve, just to stay awake until the ball dropped. While you were twirling around your dance floors in your black evening gowns, I was propped up with pillows in my pink nightgown. I was fighting the flu and losing the battle. But we’re glad that you got to enjoy yourselves. Really, we are.

Your Christmas portraits were lovely, as usual. How do you people manage to look so great in those photos every year? Your children are all perfectly posed, wearing either red sweaters or black velvet, and seated adoringly around you. You’re surrounded by an array of poinsettias, wreaths, and candles. It’s a setting that would make Martha Stewart just glitter with approval. In fact, your family could be that family on the cover of the J.C. Penny Christmas Catalog.

Minutes before we take our family picture, one of my sons is usually emptying out his hamper, looking for a pair of "clean jeans." His brother is donning his Mr. Potato Head tie, which he thinks will throw all of you into fits of hysteria when you see our picture. He’s says that he’s certain that you’ll appreciate his "great sense of humor."

If it’s nice weather, we usually position ourselves next to our backyard fence, thereby rendering an absolutely charming view of our neighbor’s yard. We don’t want you to see our yard. Why not? Because our property is usually littered with four seasons’ worth of garbage, dead flowers, and rusting tools. Because we meant to finish our deck and plant some more shrubs, but we just never got around to it.

Every year, we have to take an entire roll of test shots because we have to allow for the usual "out-takes." These traditionally depict one of our sons giving his brother "rabbit ears," his brother sticking out his tongue, and my husband breaking up three or four fist fights.

If it rains, I try to find one 3 X 4 foot square area in our house, which is not littered with dirty clothes, dirty dishes, empty soda cans, old newspapers, or candy wrappers. Then we squeeze ourselves under Christmas stockings (which I’ve just Scotch-taped over our heads) and try to at least create the illusion that our house is decorated. Sometimes, we just go to Sears and have our picture taken there. (Our family’s been banned from the K-Mart photo studios.)

We are thrilled to hear about all of your children’s "accomplishments" over the past year. We share in your pride that all your children are getting "Straight A’s" or, at the very least, doing "very well" in their studies. We’re so excited that your "youngest," who’ is only in Kindergarten, is already considered to be "A Little Scholar."

We can’t believe that you are "considering putting an addition on your house" so that little "Tennis Star" can finally fit all of his "marble, metal, and brass trophies in his room." And we’re so happy that your college-bound son is "anxiously awaiting word from both Princeton and Harvard." And he already knows that his major will be! Pre-law! (Of course.)

Our college-aged son is just hoping to pass all of his courses this semester. His most treasured "trophy" is an empty tequila bottle, which he told us he won in a fraternity tequila-drinking contest.

His brother’s college bound ambitions are not as clearly defined as your son’s is. Right now, he says that he’s hoping to go to "any college in Boston that will take him." His major? He’s doesn’t have a clue. He says the reason why he wants to go to Boston is because he "liked it up there" when he visited during his 8^th Grade trip. He says also that, "that’s where everyone goes if they want to go snow boarding!" At least we know ahead of time where most our tuition dollars are going to be spent: on a snow covered ski slope somewhere on the outskirts of Boston.

While your kid was scoring 1450 on their SAT’s, our son was calling up every video rental place in the county, just so that he could pass the summer reading test. His favorite motto is: "Why read the book when you can rent the movie?" He says, "The movie is always better than the book anyway"

How he came to this conclusion is beyond us, because we haven’t actually witnessed him reading a book since he was in the fourth grade.

We lived vicariously thorough your narratives of your yearly vacations, which involved your first "trans-Atlantic trip," your "tour of Europe, " and your "trip to the Kennedy Space Center," where you were actually lucky enough to "see a satellite launch!" We’re glad to hear that the English food is "terrific," that "Grandma Biddy" was able to go with you, and that you had "the time of your lives."

We were just grateful to escape from our lives, when we rented a condo in Wildwood, New Jersey, this past summer. One of our sons (the one who will actually be seen in public with us these days) decided to accompany us. Unfortunately, he came down with a 120-hour stomach virus exactly 6 hours after our arrival. He sat in the condo for five days, beeping us or calling us on our cell phone every time he threw up, had a stomach cramp, or wanted us to rent another movie for him. That means we heard from him roughly every 20 minutes. Don’t get me wrong. We’re grateful that modern technology gave him the opportunity to "reach out and touch us" while we were 200 feet in the air on The Ferris Wheel, dangling over the beach from The Sky Ride, or whooshing down The Log Flume at 30 miles an hour. We were happy that he was "ready for more Jell-o." But next year, we have a proposition for you: you take him and we’ll take Grandma Biddy!

We’re honestly overjoyed that this year was the year you got to move into your "dream home, and buy a new Lexus." We wish we could have been there rooting for your son’s soccer team when "his goal took them to the State Championships." We’re elated that your husband "was elected President of his company." We’re thrilled. We really are. We’re pleased as Christmas punch. Actually, we don’t know how we would have made it through the holidays, if we hadn’t received your two-page, tri-color, professionally printed, thesis-length, veritable publication of a newsletter. We really don’t. So, thank you from the bottom of our hearts for including us on your Christmas card list once again.

No new house for us this year. We’re still living in our "starter house." But honestly, I wouldn’t trade our little three-bedroom, dining room-less, garage-less ranch house on its 50 x 100 ft. lot for your mansion, which you say "sets majestically on 3.5 acres, overlooking a golf course." Why?

Because this is the house where I watched my precious sons grow. Because the memories of their tiny, little bodies, nestled all snug in their beds, are still resting in the cobwebbed corners of their bedrooms.

Because I can still hear the echoes of their little angelic voices singing, "Wake up Mommy and Daddy! It’s Christmas!" as they run down the hall on Christmas morning, past the walls where their hockey sticks and baseball clubs left black scrapes (which are still there, by the way) and over the rugs which are worn from the thousands of times their little mud-caked feet scurried across them.

Because I can still smell their slightly sweaty hair, damp with sleep, as they hugged me after checking the kitchen table to see if Santa really ate the cookies they left for him. Yes, I love this house.

No new cars for us either, this year. We’re still driving around in two cars that have over 250,000 collective miles on them. Why? Because we can’t afford it right now. We had to give up a lot of "amenities," over the years, because I elected to stay home with my boys. But for eighteen years, I got to watch first-hand the development of these happy, gifted, but "straight C" boys, who are un-pressured, uninhibited, and totally in love with life. What do I want them to "be" when they grow up? Happy. That’s it. Just happy.

These boys of ours may not be charting a course on the Corporate Career Path, but they have made us prouder than your average summa cum laude. Why? Because they possess two of the qualities that, in my opinion, are worth more than all the awards, ribbons, and plaques you can fit on a hundred fireplace mantles: honesty and kindness. Those qualities may not get them into the Fortune 500, but they sure will get them into Heaven.

Nope. We won’t have money for a new car, a new house, or a trip to Europe, until our sons are both out of college. But you know what? I have something much more precious than any of the things money can buy: memories.

I’ve got memories of the time I got to spend with them. Time that can’t be bought, borrowed, mortgaged, leased, traded, or housed in a mutual fund. It’s time that I would have never been able to relive, rehearse, remake, or rewind if I had been hot on the Corporate Trail. Actually, the decision to stay home with my kids is one of the single decisions I’ve made in my life that I absolutely, positively don’t regret. And I would have done things the same exact way, even if it meant that my husband and I would have had to struggle and sacrifice again, the way we did. It was utterly, undeniably worth it. Nope. I wouldn’t trade a single thing in my life for anything in anybody else’s life. But we’re happy that you’re so happy. We really are.

We’re just happy that no one died, no one is in the hospital, and no one is in jail. We figure that things in our lives will be pretty much the same from year to year. We hope you enjoyed this newsletter, ‘cause it’s the last one we’re ever sending!

Happy Holidays!

The Barbieris