2005

Happy Holidays everyone! Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and a Happy New Year to all! As we do each year, it’s time to send our family and friends the annual “holiday letter,” both dreaded and anticipated in the Norton household, we opt to take turns. This year, it is my turn (Christine), so expect more sap, less sarcasm and an orderly flow!

2005 started off with adjusting to two little monkeys, instead of one. “Dubs,” as we have grown to call him (nothing like giving your infant a fraternity beer drinking name!) entered our lives just before Christmas, and made his presence known through late night feedings for most of the winter.

During this time, Billy decided to head off to Mexico with his school (don’t worry-he came back). Working for an ELOB (Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound) school, he took several different trips this year: the Rio Grande, Great Sand Dunes National Park, backpacking in Utah. While I missed him when he was gone, he’d always return with a smile on his face, rocks in his pockets, stories of new birds he saw, and tales of his eccentric students. As you can tell, he continues to love the niche he has found in this progressive, experiential learning community, and I am constantly amazed at the hours of planning, grading, and personal contact with students that he puts in.

Billy spent more time in the wilderness this year instructing a parent-child course for Outward Bound up in Northern Minnesota. This was his 5th year working for OB, as a wilderness instructor, and he was honored for this commitment. While he wasn’t grading papers or lesson planning this year, Billy was taking our kids to the reservoir to feed the birds, walk through the reeds and soak in the sun. I got him out on the slopes a few times, but I still think he prefers his games of ultimate Frisbee or a long, solo run. One thing’s for sure, he has taken to Colorado and the West in general, full of its trails and peaks and outdoor adventures.

I feel the same way, though there’s never enough time to explore it all. I was happy to get out and do a backpacking trip this summer with some of the kids I work with. It was the first time Billy and I got to work together with kids that aren’t are own. We had a great time, and at the end of the trip, we were even happier to go home to our own kids!

My year has been filled with a lot of professional challenges and opportunities, as well as the personal joys and despair of parenting! Billy teases me because I literally have four part-time jobs now. I am still a case manager/counselor for the Byrne Foundation (www.byrnefoundation.org), which gives me direct contact with challenging teenagers WHICH I LOVE! I taught Social Work again at DU, and I also teach for Naropa University in Boulder and am a graduate advisor for Prescott College in Arizona. I advise several students in the adventure-based psychotherapy program, and they fly me down four times a year for weekend colloquiums. I traveled there in February, August and November and have fallen in love with the place and my students! In the midst of my forays into academia, I have presented at several conferences and trainings on the topic of wilderness therapy and adolescent development and continue to work on my dissertation.

Billy, my mom and the kids keep me sane (though they also drive me insane too!), and hikes, skiing, tubing down Boulder Creek, HOT yoga, book club, ESPRESSO, and good friends and family all help a lot too! I think I do all the work I do because I truly love it ALL. I am being prayerful about God’s plan and purpose in it all, and try and stay mindful. A la Thich Nhat Hanh.

Let me tell you, our children have that mindfulness thing down to an art. Mahalia (who is 3 now!) can be IN THE MOMENT more than anyone I know. The joys and sorrows of such small things cause the greatest reaction in her. To say that she is a little “me” is not fair to her, because Kahlil Gibran was right. She came through me, but she is not from me, and every day I have to remind myself that she belongs to God. This helps me let go…ok, try to let go. For those of you who have met Mahalia, you know that she is effervescent, verbal, stubborn, in the limelight, funny, kind and incredibly sensitive. She loves to dance, watch cartoons, and make snow angels. She talks to plants and digs for grubs in the old stump out back in one moment, and puts on make-up in front of the bathroom mirror the next. She is learning to read and count and is FINALLY potty trained. (That was not fun…can you say anal retentive?!) Anyhoo, I digress. This kid is FUN, and it's such a kick to watch her grow and wonder (yes, that’s the perfect word!) what she’ll grow up to be/do. I already know WHO she’ll be, because she’s 100% herself already, if that makes sense.

Dubs, who is 1, is a funny little soul as well. He has lots of mismatched teeth, and looks like a fat, happy jackolantern. He’s VERY expressive, and has four words thus far. Mama was his first word, followed by ball, up and dada. Some guys could get through life on those words alone, but I think he’ll add a few in the years to come. Dubs likes to crawl and laugh and play with his sister. She gives him raspberries on his tummy and he pulls her hair and tries to bite her (he actually does this to all of us and is really akin to having a puppy at this point). The sibling love/hate relationship begins early on! Watching them interact is such a joyful experience and a constant miracle. Sometimes we’re even smart enough not to take it all for granted.

Gadie, my mom, still lives with us, and is the best nanny and friend to our children you could ask for! They learn so much from her, and we don’t know what we’d do without her. She is a kitchen designer at Home Depot, and has also become a mentor for a youth in the program I work for…I actually signed up all of us, so we all mentor kids in the Denver community which has been a really cool experience. There’s so much going on in the world today that it feels empowering to do something local. Sigh.

As we send this letter out to you all, we hope you will receive with it our love and many blessings. We would love to have visitors and have the space for it! Call, email, and get in touch!

And consider the words of Walt Whitman this holy-day season:

“Every hour of light and dark is a miracle. Every cubic inch
of space is a miracle. Every square yard of the surface of the
earth is spread with the same, every foot of the interior swarms
with the same.”

Miracles are all around you. Look.

XXOO

Billy, Christine, Mahalia and Will Norton