It's been a busy year here at the Boyle plantation ... This is the first full year of empty-nesting for Alan and Tonia, the first full year of graduate school for Natalie, and the first full year of college for Evan. The dogs, however, had about the same kind of year they had in 2009. Here's a quick update and more pictures (which you can click on to see larger):

Alan will mark his 15th year at MSNBC.com in 2011, spending virtually all that time as science editor. For the past eight years or so, Alan's main focus has been a blog called Cosmic Log, which went through a redesign this year. Make sure to hit the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page or follow @b0yle on Twitter to keep track of the cosmic goings-on. Alan's book about the planet debate, "The Case for Pluto," was a finalist for the AAAS/Subaru Science Books & Films Prize. In the end, it lost out to "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" ... nevertheless, it was an honor just to be nominated.

In March, Alan went on a Midwest book tour that went through Streator, Ill. (where Pluto discoverer Clyde Tombaugh was born), as well as Wisconsin and Iowa. Here's Alan giving a talk at the Eastern Iowa Observatory near Mount Vernon ... attended by his 94-year-old dad, his sister and many old friends. Other tours took him to Washington, New York, Boston, Los Angeles and Portland.

Tonia was re-elected co-president of the Hoe 'n' Hope Garden Club here in Bellevue, and is in charge of all the holiday goings-on as usual. This year we took trips back to Iowa in July for a Boyle family reunion, and back to Michigan in August for a Berry family reunion. Here you see Tonia in her movie-star mode during a cruise on Lake Michigan.

Natalie is in the thick of her honeybee research and well on her way to getting her master's degree in entomology at Washington State University. We'll never have to pay retail for honey again. In December she gave a poster presentation at the Entomological Society of America's annual meeting in San Diego. The subject? "Field Evaluation of Sub-lethal Residues in Brood Comb on Honey Bee Colony Health." Sweet! Here you see her at WSU's bee lab, with beekeeping suits in the background.

Evan has settled in at the University of Washington, and has switched his major from computer science to biology. He's learning all about PCR [polymerase chain reaction] analysis through his part-time job, which has him assisting a researcher in the UW's Gelb Lab. Here he is on the UW campus.

Our dogs, Rosie (the Cavalier King Charles spaniel) and Bijou (the Tibetan spaniel) are in good health and generally don't miss a meal.

We're proud of everyone in our family, and we're also proud to count you among our friends. Here's wishing you a merry Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Festivus, and a Happy New Year in 2011.

To see how times have changed, check out these family letters from Christmases past:

2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2001 | 2000