Sunday, February 21, 2010

Christmas letter, 2009

editor's note: sending out a Christmas card in the first few weeks in january is, while perhaps a bit late, not entirely unheard. and that was our plan with this post. but then came the sundance film festival, a bout with (suspected) salmonella, then work on a disney channel movie, all without a day's break. and our writer spent last monday snowboarding. as a result, the yearly Christmas letter is only now being published. sending printed pages through the postal service is customary, but as most of our kinship and demographic is connected via interweb communications, we have opted to post the Christmas letter here, instead. further, we have chosen to eschew the traditional prosaic format, favoring instead snippets of moments of note from the year two thousand and nine, anno domini.


and a happy new year to you, too.


jeff gustafson

editor-in-chief

sheep go to heaven


in 2009 i learned...


our worth is not determined by cans of food


it doesn't matter who sustains you in church, the calling is the same


goats make excellent Christmas presents


*nsync marionettes make the best white elephant gifts


the world's largest recorded game of capture the flag is 1200 people. i may have been in a bigger one


30 is not too old to have a disney character on your birthday cake or bed sheets


it takes more than dogged deterination and whole ton of quarters to win the biggest prize at the amusement park,

i'm just not sure what that is


a movie about clouds can make you laugh, cry, and laugh again in five minutes


maine my new second favorite state


the biggest ball of twine in minnesota sits under a makeshift pagoda


don't break down your fee for a wedding video into an hourly rate; it's so small it's not even worth it


back up your hard drive often


some movies are too boring even for me


helvetica is a very common font


there are bears in yellowstone


rafting down a river with floating pieces of ice will leave you frozen from the waist down


the best movies are rated pg


i blessed a baby with a movie star


most of joseph smith's ancestors aren't lds but they look like him


teaching fifth graders can be terrifying, but if you bring treats and good music, they'll think you're pretty cool


if you're going to take pictures in the middle of a corn starch fight, use a disposable camera


it's fun to be a groupie


nephews are awesome


it's easier to go up a mountain than to come down it


we should be like darth vader


in life, it's the boring stuff you remember most


it's never too late

5 comments:

Jaime said...

love it! what an awesomely unique christmas letter. :) it's fun knowing that i get what yo're talking about with some of it and intrigues me to ask about the ones i dont. way to have an awesome year!

Rebecca said...

merry christmas jeff! oh and why should we be like darth vader?

Jack said...

excellent learnings, manfriend. i think it's pretty great that your awesomeness factor goes to eleven.

kwistin said...

love love love this.

i think you did an excellent job, regardless of the delay. it was well worth the wait.

i'm proud to say that i deciphered most of those and had pretty good guesses at others.

however, it sounds like i missed a few stories...we should definitely catch up.

after all, it's the boring stuff we remember most.

The Former 786 said...

We're going to have to have a conversation one day where you explain/expound on some of these to me.

In the meantime I'll just say that I liked this list a lot.