Lots of catching up to do.....

Well, obviously I've been a huge slacker. I'll try to recap the rest of the holiday season, and while I haven't quite gotten to downloading from my new camera, I do have some brand-new pictures from the family photo session I will post next.

After Thanksgiving, of course Local Affairs kicked into high gear. We did a lot of tenant appreciation events as usual, and I fit in hair appointments around that. We also sold the Corolla. All in all, December was quite profitable, thank goodness! We had a great Christmas with friends and family at my parents'. I helped cook again, miracle of miracles. Most of you know by now that in the midst of all of this I found out I was having a miscarriage. I don't usually share this information (this was not my first, the others were before Christopher), but this one was very drawn out and painful and complicated, and everyone knows we've been trying, so it didn't really make sense to keep it to myself. It's just about over now and we look forward to working closely with doctors in the future, but it will probably be a little while before C has siblings, which is just fine with him!

We also spent New Years with my family. Just a nice quiet night at home with yummy food. Three days later we welcomed Steven home from his mission in Recife, Brazil. It was great to see him and C is already attached. Mom promptly made sure we took family pictures, and spent some quality time while the family was together (Denise stayed a couple of extra days in order to see Steven, so everyone was here!)

So far, January has mostly been getting back to normal life and planning vacations for March, before baseball season starts and we're oh-so-busy again.

Joel is doing great in school. He's able to do most of it at work, so I haven't noticed much of a stress-level change, but we're prepared for it! His job is still great, he got an assistant after not having one for a while, and though his branch is pretty slow, he still seems to enjoy work for the most part.

Christopher astounds us everyday. The things he picks up are amazing. He got lots of things for Christmas. A big table for his train sets, a v-smile video game system with lots of games, the v-tech laptop (he LOVES having his own "puter" or "yaptop" : )), some Cars toys from Santa, and a new bike with training wheels. He's getting more and more indepedent. I haven't been very helpful with that process, as I kind of clung to him realizing I lost another baby, but he's great and we look forward to future stages. Of course, he IS 2, so there's a bit of coloring on surfaces other than paper, whining, and posessiveness, but nothing unexpected. He's gotten better about saying "mine", now he realizes we should take turns, but always know your turn is going to be quite a bit shorter than his!! : )

I think that's it for now! I hope everyone had a great holiday season and that 2008 has been good so far!