Madeline Burke Buttry (granddaughter #2), born February 1, 2012

Holiday greetings to our friends and family! 2012 has been a year of important life events in our extended family – the joyous birth and baptism of our granddaughter Madeline and weddings of nieces Meg and Liz and nephew Jon and the heartbreaking death of our nephew Brandon.

On the professional front, the big news is the publication of (and lots of positive reviews for) Mimi’s novel, Gathering String. I had a busy professional year, but nothing that big. Heck, I didn’t even change jobs.

Madeline and Susie

Madeline appeared the day before the legendary groundhog, Feb. 1. We have been delighted to get four visits this year with Madeline and her sister Julia (below), who turned two in March. We visited their home in Edina, Minn., right after Madeline was born, then again in April for her baptism, then in July. And in October, we met in Colorado for Meg’s wedding (more on that shortly). Madeline is crawling, standing and starting to speak. Julia has an active imagination and loves to pretend. They will both get lots more attention from Granny and Gramps on a Christmas visit to Edina. Mike and Susie are both doing well, too, and don’t seem to mind that Granny and Gramps pretty much ignore them in favor of the cutest members of their family. Grandpaparazzi thoroughly documented each of our visits. Granny does a fair amount of shopping for her little girls. We shipped two boxes of gifts out to Edina for Christmas because we couldn’t fit them all in suitcases. Continue reading →