It's everyone's favorite time of the year! No, not Christmas, silly -- it's time for the annual Ingram Christmas Letter! I've been doing this now for at least a couple of decades, believe it or not. And yes, I know it feels like longer than that -- imagine how I feel :-) . As part of a trip down memory lane, I've been trying to pull together all the previous versions of the letter and publish them as blog posts at mathewingram.com/work. Since we've moved several times since I started sending this letter, and I've switched internet providers and computers multiple times as well, piecing some of those past versions together was harder than you might think :-) As I recall, the first one came out when Caitlin was just ten years old, Meaghan was five and Zoe was two. Caitlin is now 36 and has two children with her husband Wade, Meaghan turned 32 this year, and Zoe is 27. What's really surprising is that Becky and I haven't aged at all! It's incredible, I know. As usual, the photos that I link to here are in a Google photo album, and also can be found on the Ingram Photo Server. If that link doesn't work let me know and I will ask Meaghan to turn the server back on -- it's sitting on the coffee table at their house in Kingston. If you have any questions, you can reach me by email at [email protected] -- unless you have a criticism, in which case please email [email protected].

It's not every day you get a new member of the family, but this year we got two -- although the way we got them was very different :-). The first was the inestimable Casey Graham Hemrica, who came into the world on March 31, to be greeted by big sister Quinn and family. He missed being an April Fool's baby by only a few hours :-) But Casey is no fool! He is a wise old man of nine months or so now, and he has already learned how to pull himself up on things, and has mastered the front crawl (the land version) after spending a little time trying out the combat crawl (which features the arms only). He also has a number of thoughtful opinions on the issues of the day, including food -- which Casey thinks is fantastic in almost any form -- and the fire in the fireplace, which is also a big fan of. And who is the second person to join the family, you might ask? That would be Zoe's boyfriend Jack, who some of you might recall from last year's letter -- but he is even more a part of the family now, because he convinced Zoe to fly halfway around the world to live with him in Australia! She left on November 1, after a tear-filled goodbye at Pearson Airport, but she appears to be settling in quite well. They are living in Canberra, where Jack is practicing as a solicitor, and Zoe said his family has made her feel very welcome. Now all she has to do is learn how to drive on the wrong side of the road, and how to eat prawns properly!. How long are they going to be Down Under? Great question! Some length of time between two years and forever :-) On the plus side, Jack recently talked about what might happen when they move back to Canada instead of if they move back, so we are keeping all of our fingers crossed!

Anyway, now that we've covered the most important events of the year in advance, let me back up to the beginning. We spent Christmas at Caitlin and Wade's place in Ancaster last year, where we all wore our matching green plaid Christmas pyjamas. We taught young Jack how to make a snowman and how to toboggan, and I even let Jack borrow my massive sheepskin overcoat with the fur collar, which I in turn have borrowed from our neighbour Kris's father. That thing has to weigh about 25 pounds. Quinn also did a little tobogganing in the old yellow toboggan at the Farm, which I think is so old that we used to drag Caitlin around it when she was the same age. In February Becky and I joined her brother Dave and sister-in-law Jenn at a log cabin Airbnb they rented near the ski hill at Calabogie. Log cabin doesn't really cut it though -- this was a gigantic five-bedroom log home with a games room and a barrel sauna and a separate guest cabin where Becky and I stayed. And while Becky stayed at the cabin to look after some of the younger kids, I went downhill skiing for the first time in at least a couple of decades. And it went pretty well! Luckily there was lots of snow, so when I accidentally took a wrong turn and wound up on a black diamond run it wasn't even that bad. In March it was time to head for a warmer climate, so we headed down to Florida and spent some time relaxing in the sun and kayaking around the bay near Venice and playing pickleball. Everyone was very apologetic about you-know-who and his stupid policies and comments related to Canada, which was nice.

The plan was to get in the car and head home from Florida as soon as we got the word from Caitlin that Casey Graham was on his way, and we were afraid that we might miss the big event while we were tied up in bumper-to-bumper traffic in Georgia or driving through a blizzard in the hills of West Virginia. But we made it with time to spare! And we not only got to visit Caitlin in the hospital and help her get her new man home, but we all got to hold young Casey while he was still more or less brand new, which was amazing. There is nothing quite as peaceful as holding a sleeping baby. Not long afterwards, it was time for a quick whirlwind trip out to Calgary for a conference, where as usual we spent some time with our old friends. We also (as usual) dragged our friends out to the mountains for a visit, because I miss them. We went for a great hike through the woods near the Banff Springs Hotel and along the river. In May it was time to open the cottage, and we had a lovely dinner with our extended family and Quinn and I made sand castles on the beach, and blew bubbles out in the driveway. And at the Farm, we came across a tiny fawn, maybe a week old, all curled up near the door of the old farmhouse, all by himself (or herself, I didn't check). Apparently the mothers will leave their fawns and they remain as still as a statue until she returns from foraging. It was quite amazing -- we saw the fawn again (I'm pretty sure it was the same one) all nestled in the long grass, and it stayed so still I almost stepped on it without even knowing it was there. We also stopped in to visit Dave and Jenn who were camping near the St. Lawrence Seaway, and I decided to see if I could paddle the kayak over the Canada-U.S. border, which was only a few miles offshore. Don't tell ICE but I did exactly that, and saw a pile of houses perched on tiny rocks in the middle of the river -- and the seaway was even calmer the next day, as flat as a mirror, so I paddled about three miles out to what's known as Dark Island, where there's a faux castle built by the former owner of the Singer sewing machine empire. And then soon it was time for Becky's family get-together at Otter Lake near Kingston where we rented cabins and played on the beach and Becky took Quinn out on the standup paddleboard and Zoe got to hold Casey.

After Otter Lake the summertime began in earnest, and thanks to Caitlin's generous maternity leave policies, we had her and Quinn and Casey and even Wade for a stretch of several weeks in a row, which was fantastic. And unlike previous years -- where the "nurse curse" often meant cold and/or wet weather -- we had some pretty amazing weather. Quinn got brave at Otter Lake after seeing the older girls jumping off the paddleboard in the shallow water and so she spent a lot of the summer doing exactly that at our cottage, until she was leaping in the air and going under the water with her head fully submerged for a surprisingly long time! As is traditional with new members of the family, Casey had a bath in the kitchen sink (we gave Jack a bye on this tradition for obvious reasons) and Quinn helped Grandma make a cake, and then it was time for Quinn to turn three whole years old! Wade spent hours making a butterfly cake that he saw on Instagram and Quinn wore her birthday crown and her Elsa dress and it was fantastic. And there was lots of time for Quinn and I to sit looking out at the lake and reflect on how great life is at the cottage, and ride bikes and run up and down the dock and go for boat rides and play hide-and-seek in the popup trailer we bought this year for overflow sleeping. Quinn and I drew hopscotch patterns on the driveway with chalk, and Becky read books with Quinn on the porch, and Wade read books with Casey and Quinn hugged her new brother a lot and hugged her dad, and Meaghan read books with Quinn and her cousin Ophelia, and Becky and Caitlin held Casey in the lake and he even floated around in his very own floaty and seemed very chill and relaxed.

August brought the usual reunion of old university friends at the Farm, but this one had a twist: several of our members had turned 65 recently, including young Becky, so there was a cake and much merriment. In September, Becky and I went backwoods camping as we have done for many years now, but this time we decided to take it easy on our old bones and we only did one short portage instead of three long uphill ones :-) We had a lovely time on this tiny lake, and went for a great hike, and had a beautiful afternoon at our campsite -- which had the single largest collection of firewood I have ever seen that was obviously left by some kind person prior to us, and they even used their whittling skills to make some pioneer furniture from logs, which I used to eat dinner at. Unfortunately for us, there was a fire ban due to weeks of no rain, so all that wood went for naught. Back at the lake there was lots of time for sunsets and cruises on the pontoon boat, and jumping off and floating around in the bay. At Wade's family cottage up near Parry Sound, Quinn went tubing behind a motor boat with her cousins for the first time! Becky and I and a bunch of friends went to visit a friend who lives in Muskoka and we had some great food and a singalong by the bonfire, and our friend Kathy and I went kayaking on Lake Rosseau, and I had a brain fart and managed to forget to tie the kayaks down on the car for the return trip, so one came off as we drove down the road :-) Luckily it didn't hit anyone, it just wound up in some nice lady's front yard, and only had a couple of little dents. Remember everyone, always check that your kayak is strapped down before you drive away! LOL. Later in the fall we had a full moon so bright that you could almost read a book on the beach at midnight (I didn't though) and the photos make it look like I used some kind of bright filter but that's exactly what it looked like.

Soon it was time for the warm plaid jackets and the mornings were filled with fog as the water cooled off, but the boys and I went swimming anyway because it's a Thanksgiving tradition! We had another great extended family dinner on the screened-in porch with the plaid tablecloth, and Casey really enjoyed the mashed potatoes, which he thinks are the best thing since God invented moms. We also did our annual Thanksgiving hike through the forest near our cottage and up to a lookout with some friends who have a cottage nearby, and we only lost a couple of people along the way (my niece and her husband and their daughter), who took a different way down that turned into not being a way down at all. After we went back to our winter home in Buckhorn, we went to the Titanic Experience with Jack and Zoe because they are both big Titanic buffs, and it was very well done, with a recreation of the central staircase, and each of us got an ID card at the beginning that had the name and bio of a real passenger, and then at the end you find out whether you lived or died (I died). We also had a big going-away weekend at the Farm where friends and family showed up to say goodbye to Zoe, and we had a great time going for hikes in the forest. Halloween we spent at Caitlin and Wade's, and Quinn went as Rapunzel and Zoe was a skeleton and Jack was a cowboy -- we also showed him how to disembowel and carve a pumpkin, which is apparently not something that they do in Oz. And then it was time for Zoe's tearful goodbye, which I have already told you about, and for seeing Santa. In December, Becky and I flew out to Calgary for her company Christmas party, which was a great event held at the Spruce Meadows horse-jumping facility, and yes we went to the mountains again :-) Pretty soon it was time to get ready for Xmas. This one was in Buckhorn, where we went for toboggan rides down the driveway and hikes in the woods and we also got a foot of snow or so which meant that Caitlin and Wade and Casey and Quinn had to stay longer, which was a great Christmas present in itself.

And that's it for another year! We at Ingram Inc. hope that you and yours have had a great year with your friends and family, doing whatever it is that you enjoy doing, and that you have remained healthy and happy. If you are interested, I publish two email newsletters -- one is a daily compendium of interesting news stories called When The Going Gets Weird, and the other is a weekly column about technology called The Torment Nexus. See you in 2026!