Like the Terminator, we are back! You may have missed our holiday letter last year because we didn’t send one. We weren’t trying to be naughty and I hope our lack of communication didn’t get us knocked off your Christmas card list. In case it did, I am sending our greetings early this year so you will have time to fire off a card to us after receiving ours. Our lack of holiday note last year was due to a family vacation. You may have seen the 547 photos we posted on Facebook chronicling our adventure. It was an exhausting trip. I spent so much time taking and posting pictures I hardly had the chance to enjoy the beach or my family. I planned to send a card out after the New Year, but since I took the time off for vacation, I had to play catch up with work. Luckily the trip gave me lots of writing ideas. You probably read about some of them here. I thought about sending a Valentine’s letter, but one of the kids caught the flu. Then another. And another. And so on. By the time it was time for me to get sick, the entire long month of February had passed and March was marching in like a lion. This year, we’re all getting flu shots. Maybe you saw the statistics I posted about the efficacy of immunizations. I considered sending a spring greetings card, but we had toilet and laundry issues and I didn’t think anyone would want to read about them – although they did make for column fodder. I’m not sure about the logic there and probably don’t want to go into a big explanation. Let’s just say we are glad to be flushing again. Before I knew it, June rolled around and we were planning for high school graduation. (Yes, they let number three graduate!) I sent out announcements, and surely hope you received one. Still, a simple graduation announcement cannot take the place of an informative holiday card, so my apology continues. After high school comes real life. Or in our case, a wedding. Not for the graduate, but for his big sister. I would have sent out a late summer holiday greeting, but for the plethora of tasks involved with planning a wedding. (That’s a letter in and of itself.) Hopefully you were able to check out the 1000+ photos we posted on Facebook. It would have been hard to narrow them down to a few hundred; it was such a big, big day. I now consider myself an expert in cupcake preparations. After the wedding I took a few weeks to recover and eat leftover cake. Besides, school was starting and I had to buy a bunch of glue, number 2 pencils and peanuts (for the squirrels). I help the kids prepare for class and the critters prepare for winter. As the autumn leaves were blowing, I (along with the rest of the nation) found myself in the middle of a highly-contested, highly-opinionated election season. I got so tied up in being swayed and influenced by online political articles (fake and true), postings and rants that I missed my last best chance to get last year’s holiday letter in the mail. That brings me to present day and I guess I officially missed the holiday note last year because it is now this year. In 2016 we’ve been good. We had a graduation and a wedding, which you probably already figured out. We added a son-in-law to our family and are planning another trip in the near future. Don’t worry. I’ll post photos. Lots of photos. Keep an eye out for them. Jill Pertler is an award-winning syndicated columnist, published playwright, author and member of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. Don’t miss a slice; follow the Slices of Life page on Facebook.