Christmas time

This year, I feel happy that we had a full Christmas experience.

Activities include:
-Going clothes shopping on Black Friday
-Christmas party at church where we forced Crystal to momentarily sit on Santa's lap.
-Trip to the U.S. Botanic Garden downtown where we saw little trains.
-Visit to the Festival of Lights at the temple visitor's center where we watched a saxophone quartet.
-Christmas eve at Grandma Kelley's where we witnessed Rudolph sneaking around the backyard.
-I got a new bike for Christmas! and
-Hosting Christmas day dinner at our home with 19 Kelleys. This was the most exciting for me and it turned out great.

Crystal 18-36 months

Other news:
-We're still moving forward to buying half of our home.
-We're still potty training Crystal.
-I may be teaching a different primary class at church next year: I guess I'll find out when the decision final.
-Steve got a B in his Materials Science class this semester and will be registering for another class for next semester.
-The 6th grader that I've been tutoring got a 100% on a math quiz. Yay!

Loving and Missing the Outdoors

I haven't really been excited enough about anything these last few months. I guess that happens when starts to get cold. My favorite activity lately had been riding my bike (with Crystal in the trailer) to neighborhood playgroups 2-3 times a week and taking extra loops around the lake. I had to stop about a month ago because our garage door fell apart and it became too difficult to open and close in order to get the bike and trailer out. Well, the garage door should be getting replaced tomorrow! Hurray!

Click for some recent photos of our fall camping trip to Shenandoah and Crystal's Halloween costume.

Crystal 18-36 months

Other news:

At church, Crystal loves being in nursery while I teach the Sunbeams class.

Crystal 20 months old now and is part-time potty-training. I would let her be naked all of the time at home, except that she gets bad eczema (dry rashy skin) on her bottom in the winter and she needs clothes on to keep her skin protected from the dry air. So, right now I'm just letting her be naked every hour or so until she goes potty and then her clothes go back on. I'm afraid that that would be punishing her for going potty, so I still don't really have a coherent plan yet. I think that I should get some cloth diapers/training pants or something.

Crystal is also able to say pretty much every word now and several small sentences. She's very good at being polite by saying please, thank you, excuse me, and sorry all on her own. She counts to 12 and she sings some ABCs. She can even say prayers! But, she is still pretty quiet and shy in front of other people, just like her mommy and daddy are. She's also getting better at jumping. She has 16 full teeth.

She goes to sleep 8-9 pm, regularly wakes up for help-milk at 2am and 4am, and gets up at 6-7 am. I sleep on a separate bed in the same room. I think that I'll keep breastfeeding her until after she's at least two. It seems that I still haven't been able to get pregnant while breastfeeding which is fine because we're in no rush.

We're still living with just one car and it works just fine. I loving paying $800 less car insurance per year and not worrying about oil changes too.

We're trying to find a mortgage so that we can buy half of our house (the half that my Mother-in-law doesn't own). The house appraised at $245K, pretty low for it's size and neighborhood, because of its need of major remodeling.

I've also started math tutoring at home and I love it! It has all of the good things about teaching without the bad things like grading, classroom discipline, and bureaucrats. I charge $25/hour and I've only been advertising on craigslist. I need some more students, so please refer me to anyone you know that's looking for a math tutor. As I have a B.S. in Mathematics, I can help with pretty much any high school or college math course.

Earthquake

On August 23rd, a few minutes before 2 pm, I start to feel the house shaking. I'm thinking: Earthquake? No, Maryland doesn't have earthquakes. Can the house be collapsing on its own? No, the house is pretty sturdy. I look out the window and try to see whether the other houses are shaking too. I can't tell. I wander around for a second wondering what I should do, walk over to Crystals room and watch her sleep for the duration of the quake which ended up lasting a few minutes. Afterwards, I get online to check if there was an earthquake forecast for today to learn that earthquakes are generally not forecast. I turn on the TV and see the news confirming the earthquake. After about a half hour, I get a call from Steve and a call from his mother to check on things. We didn't get any damage and nothing even fell down, but there were many other buildings that did sustain damage, including public buildings like the Washington Monument, many schools (some having to close for several days), and the temple's spire got damaged too.

I think it was two winters ago, during Snowmageddon/Snowpocalypse, when we lost power at our apartment in Greenbelt for 24 hours or so, a tree crashed into the window of the apartment next to ours, and we spent the night with our family members, who did have power, in College Park. One of their neighbors was sadly killed in her car by a falling tree.


This summer, Hurricane Irene appeared to take the power away from even more people and for even longer for some. Church was cancelled even before the storm started. Steve wouldn't allow us to open the fridge even for a moment. We cooked items from our food storage on a propane camping stove on our porch. But without the fresh/frozen vegetables, I still felt like I was so starving, so we wound up eating at a Golden Corral. That made me very happy.

See the leaf debris?

And the new pond at our Assateague camp site.

Beach House 2011

Oh how do I love the beach! The shifty soft sand, the blowing wind, the toasty hot sun, the roaring waves. Relaxing in my beach chair or swimming in the cool wet ocean: Crystal and I only came back inside for meals and naps. Every day, we were the first ones on the beach, and almost the last ones to return inside. Now that we've returned home, I feel satisfied at a vacation well-spent!



Thank you, dear Mother-in-law, for paying thousands of dollars each and every year for all of us to enjoy the magnificent wonder of the ocean and the warmth of our big family's love. I love you very much and I'll soon start counting down again to next year's beach trip. Yippee!

Also, thank you to the Watsons and the Strongs who bought plane tickets to fly across the country for this. Crystal and I loved chatting and playing with all of you and are sad to say goodbye! We love you!