Greetings and happy holidays to all of our family and friends. Welcome to year 2 of our annual holiday newsletter. It’s been quite a year for us Bernharts, and we’re looking forward to it finishing up so we can get started on next year.

To keep you all up to speed on the happenings in our lives, below you’ll find a quick list of significant events in our past year. After that you’ll find a slideshow of photos of us taken throughout the holidays.

A special thanks to Mike Flores who took our family photo this year. With Brody now running around, it’s not as easy to keep him in one place while I set up the camera, like it was done last year. Having Mike take our photo helped keep us stay sane that day.

• Neil was laid off in March.
• Neil started his new job in June.
• Melanie was laid off at the end of October.
• Melanie started her new job on November 1st: full time mommy at home.
• Lauren finished 7th grade with all As and Bs, and has started 8th grade. Her favorite subjects include Drama and Science.
• Lauren started training for her return to soccer next year.
• Neil took Lauren to her first concert (Jason Mraz at the Hollywood Bowl).
• Brody started crawling.
• Brody started walking.
• Brody took swimming lessons and loved it.
• Brody learning baby sign language, which really helps us communicate with him.
• Brody is beginning to say many words. His first word was ball, and his second word was beer.
• Our annual summer Carlsbad trip turned out to be quite the camping fiasco.
• We updated our photo booth collage for 2009.
• Brody turned 1, and is currently 18 months old now (and weighs more than an average 2 year old).
• Lauren became an official teenager in April.
• Melanie and Neil each turned 29, again. :)

Below is a slide show of holiday photos. I’ll be updating this with more photos through the holidays, so please be sure to come back.