HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I can say that since I haven't posted since last July, right?  I can't believe how fast time gets away from you, but feel blessed that I've been busy enough to neglect this journal (as strange as that may sound).


Life has been a whirlwind since we returned home from our Christmas trip to Illinois.  I've stayed busy with Homemade Gourmet (which I coincidentally started doing just last journal post :-p).  I haven't tried too hard to schedule parties since I've also stayed quite busy with other things, but I've had events pretty regularly every couple weeks or so.  I decided to dedicate my profits from that to our friends in ministry that we regularly support.  It's taken a quite a while to even accrue a profit to speak of, but hopefully my friends will soon reap the benefits.


I also started teaching my friend Elizabeth's daughter Aubrey preschool at my house the week after we got back.  While that was short lived (she wasn't quite ready for that, yet), I do still watch her younger brother Colin (and occasionally one or both of his sisters) at least twice a week.  They are fun kids and keep me pretty busy, but I'm going to miss their family when they move next month! 


On top of those two things, I recently (as in today) started teaching art classes at Edwards Air Force Base.  While I was initially VERY apprehensive about starting something new in my life and about how they would be received (by both parents and children alike), today's class gave me a lot of hope and joy about teaching.  This session I have just one class of 3 and 4 year olds.  The five of them signed on to learn about color and todays lesson we dove right in with a lesson about primary and secondary colors.  We mixed colors and made color wheels and rainbows.  The kids were SO great.  They were super attentive and responsive and seemed like they had a great time.  Aubrey is in my class there, too, and I was really proud of how well she did.  Next week, we'll learn about shades and tints.  I'm excited to continue forward and to watch the program grow.  In fact, it went so well that I'm toying with the idea of starting a class in collaboration with the Palmdale Mom's Club so non-Edwards people can be involved, as well.


In other news, Adam and I went to Death Valley camping a couple weekends ago.  I'm very glad that we went early in the year.  It was already really warm.  Not unbearably so, yet, but we did each drink at least a gallon of water per day we were there.  There were a lot of really neat things to see, though, that we don't have in this neck of the desert.  It was nice, too, just to get away for a weekend together.  We hadn't been on a trip for a while, so the quality time with no commitments was very enjoyable.  Here's the link to some of the pictures we took that I've posted on Facebook:


ttp://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2070384&id=48701321&l=f0da58d746


Adam and I are taking another swing (pun intended) at softball, again.  Our church signed up for the Spring league in Lancaster and our first game is tonight.  If you ever wanted an illustration of the difference in weather between the midwest and here, starting your spring softball league in Mid-March should do the trick.  And if that wasn't enough, the last game of summer league was on my birthday (IN NOVEMBER!!!).  I wasn't too fond of my experience last go around, however, we found out after the season was over that we were misplaced in the top bracket of the league because one of our qualifying games had been smoked out by a wildfire.  This season, the city promised to put us in the lower bracket, so hopefully we won't get stomped and it'll be more fun for me :).


So, I think that covers a good chunk of the notable happenings going on.  In any free time we come across, we've been enjoying spending time with our neighbors and trying to reconnect with some friends.  We had what seems like TONS of birthday parties to attend, I've played bunco a few times, Adam's working on finishing building a workbench, and I have tried to keep up on the house.  We play a lot of Rockband, try to keep up with some TV shows, but mostly find enough time once all that is scheduled in to come home and crash.  


All that being said, I'll do my best to do better on keeping you up to date on our lives.  If you're ever curious and this doesn't suffice, I'm always just a phone call away (which is much easier for me to keep up with since I can multi-task while I chat!)  I'd love to catch up with you when you and I have coinciding free time :).  Until then, peace out!