Our biggest news of 1992 is that there are now four of us! Thomas Dewi Johnes (a.k.a . Tom or Tommy) was born on 10 November and weighed 7 lbs 12 oz. I'm not sure how long he stayed at that weight - it already seems like ages since he was anywhere near so light! Both he and Jill are doing well, Jill having taken the birth very much in her stride.

Becky, meanwhile, has thrown off all pretence of being a baby and is now a fully fledged little girl. By Christmas she will have just turned 18 months, and is now on the verge of talking. Occasional words and even sentences come out. Jill is mi ffed that Becky was chanting 'Shearer, Shearer' even before she could say 'Mummy'!

When I was writing our Christmas letter last year, we were just about to move house. The move went off more or less as planned, and we've devoted quite a lot of energy and resources to decorating and various oth er changes. The biggest job has been going into the eaves upstairs to create a new shower room. At the moment there's still a lot of decorating to be done, but we're getting there. We've settled well into the life of the village - the childminder lives around the corner from us and, through her, Becky seems to have got to know virtually everyone in the village who we haven't yet met ourselves! Although the view from the back of our house is uninterrupted countrysi de, we have found the village to be very well served by things like the post office, banks, shops, library, health centre etc.

We visited Paris this spring - courtesy of Air Miles. We were there for a week and very much enjoyed ourselves, visiting museums like the Orsay, Marmottan (excellent), and Orangerie. We also took a couple of day trips on the train out to Chartres and to Rouen. Since Becky has now been to Paris but Tom hasn't, we have every excuse, in the pursuit of equity, to go again before too long! During the summer we had a week in Pembrokeshire and a few days in Ellesmere (Shropshire) - the latter break would have been longer but for me promising to present a research paper at the Operational Research Society Conference without fi rst checking my holiday dates!

Our year at work has been interesting, as always. Jill, of course, is now working only part-time, but that doesn't seem to have diminished her productivity. She's managed to secure promises of publication for articles from a couple of really high powered journals over the last twelve months. I got promoted to senior lecturer this year; notable events for me have been the publication of my second book (written jointly with Tom Hyclak from Lehigh) an d becoming the founding editor of a new journal in the field of the economics of education.

I have enjoyed watching football this year - I was at Wembley to see Blackburn get promoted to the Premier League, and have continued (as ever) to support them each week. Carrying Tom has so far prevented Jill from seeing th em play in the top flight, but hopefully she won't have to miss out much longer.

For my sins, I was elected chair of the Lancaster and Morecambe Welsh Society earlier this year. This involves, amongst other things, promoting a concert in the Grand Theatre. This year's concert featured the Penrhyn Male Voice Choir, and we were both delighted and relieved to find that the event was a virtual sell-out with 450 people there. It made for a great evening. Next year we're invit ing the Caernarfon choir.

One day in April I left my office for a couple of minutes and returned to find that a burglar had nipped in through the window to relieve me of my wallet and filofax. The loss of the latter gave me a great excuse for ineffic iency for the rest of the year, but it has had the unfortunate effect of depriving me of a number of very important addresses. So if you find that this Christma s card has been delivered to a badly remembered address, you now have the explanation - please let us know your true location.

Once again, let us wish you a happy Christmas and all good fortune in 1993.

Geraint, Jill, Becky and Tom.