Mailbag: Better Late than Never!

I use Mondays to clear out my inbox. Questions of general interest, I post on the blog. It may take me awhile to answer, but better late than never!

Question: Why’s your Christmas letter late?

Dear Doug and Jennifer,

We’ve been waiting and waiting. Where’s the Flanders Family update? Are you guys ever going to write one this year?

Answer: We’ve been a little pre-occupied!

That’s a question we’ve been fielding all month long. The folks who know we normally mail our Christmas letters the day before Thanksgiving are wondering whether they’ve been dropped from our mailing list.

The answer is yes, we did write our annual update. And no, we didn’t drop anybody from our list. We’ve just been extra-slow getting them in the mail this year.

Part of the problem was that the photo — a family shot from David’s October wedding — wasn’t ready in time for us to assemble the cards while kids were all home for Thanksgiving. So they requested we wait until school let out for Christmas break before staging our annual Christmas card assembly line.

A Television Interview

But then we spent a week in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, where we were interviewed by Al Jazeera’s America Tonight for a story on big, “quiverfull” families.

That report hasn’t aired yet, but I’ll be sure to post a link when it does. Update: It’s live now. We weren’t sure what kind of hatchet job they might’ve planned for our family, but were very pleased with the final cut (even if reporter Adam May did tug at my heartstrings a little)!

Strep Throat and Star Wars

The day after that interview, I came down with a horrific case of strep throat. I felt like I was going to die and slept about 60 hours straight. We had to extend our stay in Gatlinburg until I was well enough to tolerate the drive home.

Then there were all those costumes to get ready for screening the new Star Wars movie:

But the assembly line finally happened tonight. The cards will be in the mail tomorrow and will still (hopefully) arrive before Christmas.

Blog Updates: Better Late than Never

I’m planning to post this year’s letter on the blog here on Christmas Day</strong> (update: It’s up, along with lots of family photos. You can read it here: Flanders Family 2015 Christmas Update).

Meanwhile, I’ve been busily updating our About Us pages, a task that hadn’t been done in five or six years.

Until this week, if you clicked on a photo of Samuel, for instance, you’d see a kid in braces who was just starting dual credit classes at the local junior college. In reality, he is now 22 and in his third year of medical school.

I’ve added a few videos to the about us pages, too. So now you can see an overview of David and Bonnie’s wedding. Or watch Benjamin do some pretty impressive stunts off the diving board.

I’m a little over halfway through those updates. Hopefully, I’ll finish the younger six kids’ pages in the next day or two.

Meanwhile, we’ve only a few more days until Christmas. Make them count!