dear family and friends,

first: happy holidays to everyone!!!

wow! it seems like only a few years ago i was stuck in a dead-end relationship with a self-confessed asshole (one in a series!), trudging aimlessly through a totally stupid, pointless (neverending) MA program, and now i'm a stay-at-home mom married to a gorgeous, patient, adoring billionaire with YET ANOTHER baby on the way! this year we taught the twins french during the two months we spent in monaco on the yacht, and those "lean" times when i racked up credit card debt and chain-smoked my evenings away reading escapist fiction while contemplating the least-painful-to-my-family way to commit suicide seem like such a distant memory!

i know, a lot of you thought: sylvia will never get her life together and be an adult, doing grown-up things like paying a mortgage, having a savings account with money IN IT, and taking vacations that don't involve driving 12+ hours and a tent. but boy how time can change things, huh? i know some of you specifically asked my parents and close friends in hushed whispers, "is sylvia emotionally/psychologically retarded? you can tell us. nevermind that our adult children/friends are married with kids and have professional jobs that give bonuses! we just want to help. does sylvia hate men, is that it? does she WANT to be single and childless forever?? does she know SHE'S 30-YEARS-OLD?"

hahaha! i can laugh at all of that now! because i'm pregnant again and life is so perfect! a man i truly loved and adored felt THE SAME WAY BACK and went so far as to propose marriage -- something i used to think only happened TO EVERY SINGLE OTHER GIRLFRIEND OF MINE and not me. of course, because we were so in love and wanted kids so much, it was only a few months before the twins arrived and so for a whole year i was too busy to even send a nice christmas letter -- my apologies! (kids ARE a handful, huh parents??) so i'm making up for it now; better late than never!

it's crazy to think that only a few years ago i was living on less than $30,000 a year with ridiculous debt and two dogs and two cats, in a backwoods-redneck town (in an illiterate, bible-thumping southern state), eating cashews for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and spending every single friday night going to the movies with an ex-boyfriend who i was still in love with, but LOL, right?? it's so funny to think i used to rent a run-down A-frame duplex without a single piece of "new" furniture and a rotting wooden bathroom floor, just a half-mile away from a sewage-treatment facility that made my whole street smell like human feces three nights a week, haha!

to think i once spent a friday afternoon browsing through various sperm banks online, then crying for six hours straight before i begged an ex-BF to try again with me! :) oh, those were the times, weren't they, lol??

ok, well, i better get going now, the cook's not going to supervise herself making a five-course meal in the kitchen, and i think the maid is vacuuming a little too loudly in the east wing! we'll see some of you over the holidays, but i wish to extend an invitation to everyone to come visit us at any of our houses next year! the hamptons are prettiest in the summer, but lately they're so crowded we're pretty much living in the mediterranean on the boat -- winters we hop around a bit (we do love snow in moderation!), but are mostly at our south african vineyard. (i know, who would think i have time between all the kids and the husband to teach english classes and hold HIV+ babies in developing nations?? but somehow i MAKE the time.)

yours with absolute success and happiness dripping from every pore in my body,
:) sylvia
xoxoxoxoxoxxoxoxoxoxoxo!