We are privileged to look back on this year and recognize that challenges are real and often formidable; yet, our prominent memories include celebrating our son's first birthday, celebrating our second marriage anniversary and celebrating the birth of our daughter. I call that a pretty successful year! 

We are fortunate to have loving family members on both the Almanza and Villarreal sides. They remind us that a close community of support is always there, and they are rooting for us. We're not doing resolutions this year. Instead, we are each pledging to accomplish a list of things that range in scope and difficulty. We look forward to checking off our respective lists, growing more, learning more and becoming better people, for us first. We look forward to seeing both Bashy and Gigi grow more and more. They are so much fun in their own ways, and it's only going to get more fun and interesting. We also look forward to spending the new year with friends and family and letting you all know how much we appreciate having you in our lives.

Most importantly, Jessica and Nicholas and Gigi and Sebastian, and sometimes Lady when Jessie is not mad at her, look forward to growing closer as a family. If there's one thing we learned this year, we're all pretty good at facing anything thrown our way, but we're better if we're all together.

Cheers!