Kearton-Roff Christmas

We've just come back from a soup at our favourite Vietnamese soup palace and everyone else is watching a movie while I write this on Christmas eve. Missing in action are Adam and Amanda who are spending a week with Cathie in Newcastle. We'll all meet again tomorrow for Christmas lunch with special guests including Julia's mother, Norma, and Julia's sister, Venita, and her three boys. We have a new deck and the pool is good enough to swim in without getting communicable diseases. Should be ace.

Highlights of the year include Damian's birthday where all the brothers were assembled again as a sign of respect for our youngest member. It was a terrific weekend. We drove up from Newcastle with Stuart and Marianne and drove back with Ash and Cathie - quality time which included an old-fashioned, creek-side picnic on the return journey.

Jules and I broke new ground personally in 2013 by actually going to a financial planner. As it turns out, I'm richer beyond my wildest dreams as long as I die in about 2016. The planner actually told me when I was going to meet my maker: I have 21 years left and Julia has 26 which confirms what I've always thought - she only married me for my money.

IF we move to the bush and buy a house worth less than $450,000, we might make it until the time runs out. Sounds like a plan.

We'll be in Box Hill for another three years before any of this happens and as long as Bauer Media doesn't find out what I'm really like, I should be employed until then. Julia seems content to continue with her instructional design job and will be put on full-time again in February of 2014. Clearly she's valued in the position.

You'll read about Annika below - all going well there. Nick is quitting his highly paid job with the ANZ bank next year to go back to uni (again) but this time to do an arts degree. We all went to his band's gig last night (Cool Sounds) and he and Dom are sharing an inner-city house which is in the middle of the middle of the best part of Melbourne. If you're visiting, stay there rather than here, but you might have to sleep upright.

Dom will finish his communications degree half-way through 2014 but probably won't work in his major, public relations. My guess is communications will be in his future, though.

Amanda is killing her PhD, playing lots of music with the Ukes and Harmony, and still has Dan Kelly on the side. I'd like to disapprove but I caught up with him recently at a Harmony gig and I can't help but like him. Emotional maturity can't be that far away...

Adam continues to brain them in the NSW government in the environment area and now has a team reporting to him - maybe eight or so. In the end we'll probably all be relying on his income.

Good luck, everyone, in 2014. It's a special treat to be in a family like this and it's terrific to be able to stay in touch through new media. I know all the younger ones are in constant contact through facebook and the like but don't forget the Roff Report.

Lots of love from Grant and the Keartons in Melbourne.