Dear Family and Friends,
Merry Christmas! I am very excited to write the first annual Velazquez Christmas letter. Jose and I love the Christmas season. We started listening to Christmas music in November, and our tree and decorations were up the day after Thanksgiving! From Christmas present shopping to baking cookies, we love it all. It would be so easy to get caught up in the “busyness” of Christmas and forget the true meaning, that Jesus was born to be our savior. It is because of that night 2000 years ago that we have a reason to celebrate!
Our first year of marriage was all we could have asked for—and more! We rang in the New Year in style with our friends in San Diego!
January turned into a month long birthday celebration for Jose. If I remember correctly we had a total of five birthday dinners for him! Because he loves sports we also went to a San Diego Chargers game,
a Clippers game, 
and were blessed with free box seat tickets for the Lakers vs. Cavaliers game! 
Every month it is guaranteed that Jose and I will get to travel. Part of our job with Child Welfare Services is to visit children who are placed in group homes around California. The county pays for the gas, food and lodging, and we make the most of it! It has been so nice being able to get away (even though part of the time we are working!). Most of the time we go to Southern California, but we’ve also been to Sacramento and San Francisco.
In June we took a couple of vacations to the lake with my parents and Jose’s mom. Our biennial trip to Bullard’s Bar Lake was a memory that we will never forget! Because of the Northern California fires we could barely see across the lake, we heard bears behind out tent, the boat broke down leaving us stranded in the middle of the lake until 10 pm, and a mysterious rash on Silvia’s hand forced us to make a trip to the ER! Nonetheless, it was a blast!
To celebrate our first anniversary we went back to our Honeymoon destination, the Dominican Republic. We had a blast revisiting Punta Cana. We took a great ATV excursion and saw more of the countryside. Jose even swam in a natural spring cave!
Other big achievements for us have been the completion of my Masters in Clinical Psychology degree, and the decision to begin house hunting. For the past 8 months we have been searching for the perfect house to purchase. We are so grateful to Jose’s sister Emma, because we think any other realtor would have fired us after looking at the 100th house! We are definitely learning a lesson in patience, but are hopeful that soon we will find “the one.” Hopefully next year’s Christmas letter will be mailed from a new address!
We have been so blessed to have had such an exciting first year of marriage. We are curious and expectant to see what the Lord has in store for us in 2009!
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