#vancityryan

Merry Christmas, Everyone!

I’m especially grateful for each and every one of you this year - old friends and new - and I hope you have a happy, healthy and celebratory holiday with your families this year. Thank you for welcoming me back with open arms, and including me in your families of choice. Stay cozied up and warm with this hot chocolate kit, and use it to help wash down some homemade cozonac bread - a Romanian specialty - and the blame for my expanding Christmas waistline. 

Though a lot of things have changed over the years, and I may have been MIA for a few of them - some things stay the same. I wasn’t raised with much, and feel that we all have so much... I hope you all enjoy my preferred version of Christmas giving - something homemade and from the heart, and something to put good out into the world for those who aren’t as breathtakingly lucky as the rest of us. 

Lots of love,

Sebastian

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For my new mate, @charliehmn, helping five male refugees not only receive job and skills prep to join the workforce in their new homes, but vital supplies to get them through the first few weeks so they can provide for their families

For my moonbeam kid sister, @shaiwoodleybv​ and the woman who can - and maybe should - kick my ass on the reg, @scarlettjohansssn​, the gift of each of you sending ten girls to school for an entire year in areas like Afghanistan, the Congo and Lebanon

For the couples that not only redefine what successful, supportive marriages look like - @bjamesjr​ and @apopple​, @xolively​ and @vancityryan​, and @residentgoober​ and @stefigerm​ - but you all make very cute kids to boot, a vitally important baby incubator donated in each of your names to under-resourced hospitals in Africa and Asia. Each incubator on average will save hundreds of premature babies’ lives in these areas for loving parents like you all.

For the unofficial Mayor of Bayview, and the guy who always has a plan, or at least fakes it like nobody’s business @butlergerry​, a water distribution and sanitation station for rural tribes who cannot source it themselves - needless to say, a vital part of the rebuilding and vitality efforts and something we take for granted. As someone who does a lot for those around them on their own, I wanted to shine that light a little brighter where I could. 

For the strongest and most inspiriting woman around, @deltslea​, there isn’t a way to bottle up your special magic, but providing small business training for five women in places like Liberia, where market-savvy women are often natural entrepreneurs who generate income for their families and lift the fortunes of entire communities. Sort of like the way you lift up the rest of us, doll.

For the fiercest and defacto-everyone’s mom, @dormernatali​, as someone who has brought their own family together to create something beautiful, my favorite gift this year of reuniting five refugee families who have been separated during a crisis, migration or other natural disaster across Africa and the Middle East. Because of you, five families are going to find each other in this crazy world to begin healing and thriving. 

For my brother, @roerigz​. A lot has changed, for us as men on our own, and between the two of us as friends. Family again someday, hopefully. Though I have some regrets, coming back home and, admittedly not easy, but having the chance to work on things together - metaphorically, but also kind of literally soon enough - will never be one of them. I wanted to get you a few goofy things, because, you know, Christmas - like this shirt - but the wood brand is something I thought you might like to design for yourself to sign your work. It’s beautiful, and deserves to bear the Roerig name, or Windsong’s, if you wanted. Your affinity for fat, happy, healthy babies is something I’ve learned to start appreciating over the years too, but one that I started learning from yours. In light of that, your real gift of four mobile clinics - Gracie’s Clinic, Jason’s Clinic, Harper’s Clinic and Ryan’s Clinic - which will serve across southeastern Asia and Africa, to have there be more fat, happy babies in the world because of you all.