Meghan Markle and Prince Harry are spreading joy this holiday season with their children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet.

On December 16th The Duke and Duchess of Sussex unveiled their 2024 Christmas card with a new picture of their children Archie, 5, and Lilibet, 3. The photo – one of six in the greeting with several photos – shows the excited children from behind running towards their parents.

Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet look more grown-up than ever in the picture, which also features the family’s three dogs. The card shows Meghan smiling at Archie and Harry crouching down to greet Lili, confirming his recent comments about her long hair – red, just like her older brother’s.

“On behalf of the office of Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Archewell Productions and the Archewell Foundation,” the card read on a deep green background. The montage showed five more shots of Prince Harry (40) and Meghan (43) during their trips to Nigeria and Colombia this year. “We wish you a happy holiday and a happy new year.”

It’s a rare look at the children, who were last seen when they were briefly featured in the couple’s docuseries Harry and Meghanwhich debuted on Netflix in December 2022.

PEOPLE understands that while this card is intended for professional use, the family has sent a separate, private card to their close friends and family that will not be shared publicly.

Over the summer, a friend told PEOPLE that Harry was desperate to keep his children’s lives private to protect them.

“Harry is reluctant to show his children publicly, not out of a desire to hide them, but to protect their privacy and safety from potential threats. “He wants them to live as normal a life as possible without fear of being kidnapped or harmed,” the friend said.

“As a father and husband, Harry is determined to ensure that history does not repeat itself,” the friend added, referring to the fate of Harry’s mother, Princess Diana.

This year, the couple continued the tradition by including the Archewell Foundation in their holiday greetings. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex founded the charity in 2020 as a vehicle for their philanthropic work and have involved Archewell in the release of their Christmas card for the past three years.

Prince Harry and Meghan’s Archewell Foundation operates under the motto “Show Up, Do Good” and their work with the organization has taken them around the world and across the US this year. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex traveled to Nigeria in May and Colombia in August to advance Archewell’s key charitable initiatives, and the organization expanded its impact in the U.S. through increased programming at home.

This year marked the second year for Archewell of the Welcome Project, which helps recently relocated women build community, and the launch of the Parents Network, a support for families struggling with the effects of online harm. Prince Harry and Meghan’s support of these initiatives took them on trips, from Meghan attending Welcome Project dinners in California to Harry promoting the Parents Network to the Clinton Global Initiative in New York City to use for change.

“It is extremely important for us to connect directly with people, support our causes and listen to create solutions, support and positive change,” Prince Harry previously told PEOPLE during the trip to Nigeria about the power of direct connection .

“There’s only so much you can do from home and over Zoom, so we’re looking forward to traveling more because work matters. Whether it’s the Archewell Foundation, Invictus or any of our other causes, there will always be reasons to meet the people there at the heart of our work,” he said.

While the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have not featured their children in the photos they chose for the Christmas cards they shared in recent years, the couple have done so in the past. Prince Archie accompanied his parents to the first Christmas card they issued as a family of three in 2019 and appeared in the illustration of a photo taken by Meghan’s mother Doria Ragland that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex sent in 2020 in the backyard of their California home during her first American Christmas since moving from the UK to Meghan’s home state of California.

In 2021, Prince Harry and Meghan used their Christmas card to share the first photo of their daughter, Princess Lilibet, who was born in June of that year. The snapshot of the family of four also confirmed that Prince Archie has inherited his father’s red hair!

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“This year, 2021, we welcomed our daughter Lilibet into the world. “Archie made us a ‘mom’ and a ‘dad’ and Lili made us a family,” the message reads in part beneath the photo by Alexi Lubomirski (who took the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s official engagement portraits in 2017 made).

In 2022, Prince Harry and Meghan’s Christmas card featured a black and white photo of them holding hands at the Robert F. Kennedy Ripple of Hope Award Gala in New York City, where they were honored a few weeks earlier. There they received the prestigious Robert F. Kennedy Ripple of Hope Award from the Archewell Foundation for their work in the areas of racial justice, mental health and social impact.

Last year, the couple chose a glamorous photo of them clapping at the closing ceremony of the 2023 Invictus Games in Düsseldorf as their greeting to the season.

The virtual greeting, sent via email on behalf of Archewell, said: “We wish you a wonderful holiday season. Thank you for your support in 2023!”