Christmas Letter 2023

Dear Friends and Family

So, when you have four kids aged 7 and under your desire to travel is greatly curtailed, as is the desire to eat in restaurants, or leave your house, or stay in your house. This was our 2023. I love my kids, but I have often made the joke that I do wish I still had some of the walls back we took down years ago. Occasionally we could use the separation from their very loud talking, yelling, fighting, laughing, and generally being rambunctious kids. The truth is they are a blast and though sometimes the days are long this year has zoomed past.

Last year I made a change in leaving the day to day in real estate to work at Velocity. In January I took the CEO role and have had a year of learning and just figuring it out. We have done some incredible stuff, including launching four new models, traveling to Dubai, NYC, California, Vegas, and relaunching our brand/website. As the country’s largest restorer of American classic cars, it is a really cool business, but it has also been really hard, and we took some lumps this year. I am really excited about the people and plans we have for next year.

I stepped away from the Navy this year after 16 years, but I still have the itch to fly. Last year we bought a starter plane with some friends, and this year as planned we sold it. However, before we had even listed the first plane Heidi and I (or maybe just I) bought a new one. It has become my personality and allows us to adventure together as a family. We’ll take it back to Texas for the first time at Christmas and look forward to cutting the 12-hour trip to a 3-hour trip. I am also looking forward to the day when my self-loading baggage is no longer in diapers and is actually self-loading.

Heidi has continued to keep us alive and on time. She makes all our lives a lot easier and is the real MVP. Occasionally she does crazy things herself, including flying commercial with all four kids to visit friends this summer. She also ensured we knew her value by breaking her arm when she was blindsided by a kid at the skating rink. That left her down and unable to drive for almost a month and required some real help from our parents and friends just to survive. I am glad to report she is back to full health and banned from skating rinks.   

Because I read too much and get wild ideas, we decided a few years ago that we wanted to do something different than traditional schooling. This year an Acton Academy opened for the first time in Pensacola, Lily and Dex were part of the first class. Think one-room schoolhouse, multi-disciplinary, self-paced learning, hands on projects, no homework, and being outside at least half the day. It has been exciting to see them thrive in a new educational environment, even if they don’t think they are learning.

Lily continues to be highly assertive, very sweet, and quite demanding. She continued with Ballet this year and went from willing participant to obsessed. She practices all the time at home and has her first student, Heidi. She is growing up fast as she went to her first overnight camp this year where her Uncle Drew is the camp director, and she wrote the first draft of this letter. Sometimes she forgets she is a big sister not the second mom, but that happens.

Dexter has become all boy. He loves sports, Legos, and video games. He could and has thrown a ball for hours at a time, still roots for whatever team is in the lead, and somehow has a natural golf swing. He also has the biggest laugh when he isn’t being grouchy or shy and has the slyest since of humor. Recently while running errands, he started hitting me with my own dad jokes, I wasn’t prepared.

Max continues to work at Max time, which is when he feels like it. He has taken the baton from Dexter for the slowest clothes changer, maybe in the world. He may have never actually eaten dinner this year. It is guaranteed if we don’t buy him his own meal he will be famished and eat everything in sight, and if we do buy him a meal, he won’t touch it. We are also very happy to report that after almost 6 hard months he is officially potty trained.

Huxton has gone from sweetest baby to part of the gang, he is no longer content watching from the sidelines. He is starting to talk and nearly always has a bump, bruise, or gash on his head. His greatest skills are following around the older kids and getting food stuck in parts of his hair I didn’t know he could reach. He started preschool this fall giving Heidi a few hours of childless freedom each week too.  

We still can’t call our shot for next year, but we are excited for the future and continuing to raise good little humans. We will be looking for locations to adventure in too, so let us know when and where we can meet you to fly in for lunch!

Sincerely,

Jeremy, Heidi, Lily, Dex, Max, and Hux