Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

-W.B. Yeats-

Dawn asked me a few days ago, “How’s the Christmas letter coming along?” I responded, “It’s fermenting.” Hopefully fermenting like the palate pleasing, mood lifting effervescence of one of my Uncle Tim’s finely crafted beers, and quite unlike the resulting rumblings, south of the border, that said beer sometimes provokes. But(t)…one can rarely have lightening without a bit of thunder. So it goes.

It seems that there is a tipping point somewhere in life where one ceases to desire the type of presents that can be enclosed in boxes and wrapped in paper. A point where all one desires is time. Time with family, time with friends, time…Where does it go?

They say that how we spend our time is how we spend our lives, and just as high-quality items we spend our money on last longer, quality time spent with others does the same. Longer in the moment, longer in memory. Like a one-year prescription to the jelly of the month club, “…the gift that keeps on giving on the whole year.” “That is Edward…that it is indeed.”

Dawn continues to give her prescriptions, knowledge, and skills of physical therapy to those that hobble, limp, and shuffle her way, so that they may hop, skip, and jump back to their lives and the things they enjoy spending their allotted time on.

I’m in my 10th year at Chadron State College, where each and every day of those 10-years, I have stepped on campus and whispered a grateful, “thank you” for the meaning the work I get to do brings to my life.

Sierra is still bumping around New York, making a go of it in the many fits and starts of the film industry. The recent screenwriters and actors strike gave her some time to start a photography business and focus her lens and talents on capturing a bit of her clienteles life and times. With a creative eye, like her Grandma Joann, and the gumption of her Mom, she has built an impressive portfolio of images. Snippets of time.

Jackson has completed an accident-free year of bumping around Rapid City and the Black Hills area in his brown truck, delivering a variety of necessities to the masses (personalized socks, mullet wigs, and things people are too embarrassed to purchase in person). In his free-time, which drivers for UPS are not in large supply of, he can be found “spoiling a good walk” on the golf course.

Wilson, our 2-year-old Shepsky (the apple of Dawn’s eye), is a whimsical turd who continues to test, and to thwart, any and all of my seemingly foolproof attempts at canine containment. The fool appears to be I…he being the proof. He’s a good dog (don’t tell him I said that), and a willing hiking companion with a penchant for chasing deer hither and yon, over hill and many a dale.

So…that’s a bit of how the Ellis Family has spent their time since you threw our Christmas card and letter in the burn barrel last holiday season. I hope it offered a flicker of warmth and perhaps singed an eyebrow.

If we don’t see you between this letter and the next, we wish you a very Merry Christmas, a staggeringly good New Year, and an overflowing cornucopia of time well spent.

The Ellis Family

Josh, Dawn, Sierra, Jackson, and Wilson