The State of Our Unions

Dear Blog Friends,

Happy New Year! We are always touched and overwhelmed by the copious quantities of holiday greetings which make their way over to our mailbox every December.Year after year, we are impressed by the pleasant faces, artful tableaus, and matching sweaters which fill envelope after envelope. We tried color coordinating this year, but must have missed the memo restricting the wardrobe to khaki slacks and pastel polos:

 

We love reading the thoughtful and informative updates, and recognize that it isn't always easy to craft a coherent Christmas message -- this year, Momo decided to write ours in pseudo-rhyming code:

For those of you interested in some nittier, grittier (TMI)nformation, read on for Five's annual, overindulgent, agonizing anniversary epistle.

Kimber (née One), her husband David, and three children continue their nomadic wanderings between Washington DC and Denver due to a prolonged consulting gig. Kimber enjoys having friends in both locations, but the constant freneticism can drive her a tad crazy. Hettie (4), Phin (2), Willa (8 months), and dogs Dolley and Bert have about 50% collective potty training rate. When in DC, the 5% left of the 95% finished renovation drives Kimber mad, and while in Denver, it's a bit surreal to be cramming her 5 member family into a beautiful, if cozy, 2-bedroom apartment above Momo and Zen. She feels awfully blessed that David has such a wonderful job, though she sometimes wishes it would translate into a bit more physical stability. She really wants her sisters to start having babies. . . at least, the married ones.

Charity (née Two) and her husband Yoni celebrated their first year of marriage that they largely spent getting through a second double-lung transplant (we know, crazy), recovering and traveling around the country. Charity is fulfilling the multi-generation Tillemann-Dick ambition of making noise for a living - travelling from coast to coast singing arias, eating local foods and speaking. She likes to paint, and others like her to paint, too, because she does it rawther delightfully. She has also been honing her photography skills with a new instagram account, and they're much improved. She's an occasional contributor to the HuffPo and other places, but she really likes to write here with her sisters. She likes to do other things with them too, and she frequently does with Liberty, who lives right down the street. Read on for details on that.

Liberty (née Three) got married! Her and her delightful new husband, Premal (who we all adore) make adorable newlyweds. For the time being, they’re camped out in D.C., where Liberty is working as an energy consultant and Premal is doctoring. They will be migrating to the Mile High City this summer - and, after being in D.C. for 10 (!) years, Liberty is a bit anxious about the move. Be her friend, ok? She’ll have a cool job no doubt, but she’s all like ‘Maybe I’ll wait for a few years to make a really attractive half-Gujarati baby child’ and the rest of us are all like 'totally lame'.

Mercina (née Four) is settling into Yale quite nicely. She keeps herself busy studying bioethics and political science, but when you add her leadership roles in TedxYale and our church’s student group, as well as her compulsive need to make everything lovely, her schedule borders on insanity. It’s a wonder she has any time left over to write blogposts or keep in touch with long-distance beau, Tom. . . . the . . . . the astronaut. He’s an astronaut, guys. He’s in space (actually, not really). Mercina remains very stylish, but refuses to go into fashion because she thinks she’s above it. Pfffffftttt.

Glorianna (née the number that's left) remains too cool for school. She dropped out of Yale. Just kidding, but she IS a philosophy major--which is basically as bad as dropping out, amiright? By day, she kicks butt at artsy stuff typically involving inappropriate use of scissors and/or copious amounts of metallic spray paint/glitter - in her dorm room without opening the windows. Her evenings are spent catching up on neglected school work in candy-fueled-all-night philosophizing-binges, wherein she accomplishes a full semester’s worth of studying in 12-short hours.

That's as much over sharing as we'll indulge in right now, but what about you? What are some of your favorite developments from 2012?