Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Christmas letter and pictures


Spoiler! Some of you will actually get a physical copy of this. I wanted to post it before I left though, so here it is, probably before you'll see our actual card.

Merry Christmas! 2012 has been a very, very busy year for us!   

Edward (10 mo.)  was 4 days over due and was born on Valentine’s Day. He has been my best sleeper and probably the calmest baby I’ve had. He learned to roll over, sit up, stand up, and talk (mama, dada, hi, bye, yeah, more) earlier than the other 2. I guess when you’re the third you just have to keep up. He currently is working on standing alone and has taken a step, but decided he was not ready for that just yet and hasn’t tried it again. He is very good at climbing our stairs and just today figured out how to go down the stairs in a safe way. He gets very excited to say hi and bye to “dada” and loves being around people.  He has 6 teeth and his favorite game is peek-a-boo.

Walter (3 years) is convinced that he is older than Dean and does not believe that he is only 3 years old. He is finally (FINALLY!) in underwear, though we are still working on taking breaks from fun activities to avoid accidents.  He is all boy, that kid. He loves to wrestle, tackle Edward, tackle Dean, tease Dean endlessly, play with cars and trucks and superheroes, and he thinks potty humor is the funniest kind of humor (just came programmed that way!). He really is our little funny guy. He loves trying to make people laugh and doesn’t quite get that some things are only funny once…He’s been attending a co-op preschool that I rotate teaching with 2 other moms. He loves it and often asks when school is. He holds his pencil (even as a lefty!) correctly and is quite good at tracing. He is very good at riding his balance bike, and feels like he’s in constant competition with Dean. His current favorite show is Curious George.

Dean (5 years) has really started growing up.  In the last few months, he has learned how to play with Walter and has loosened up a lot.  They mostly build “rockets’ out of legos and fly them all over the house and yard. Their second favorite game is “Edward is a monster”.  That one usually ends in me telling them not to shut the door on him or cover him in blankets or drag him around. But Edward endures it well.  He learned how to pump on the swings, ride a pedal bike without training wheels, he can read, do addition and subtraction and can even do simple multiplication and division. And he hasn’t even started kindergarten yet! He is extremely bright and often thinks he is an adult. The biggest things we have to work on with him are respecting adults and not bossing other kids around. He’s in preschool 3 hours a day, 4 days a week. He loves art, science, math, and is amazingly good at navigating computers. He loves watching Matt play computer games and often “plays” those games in real life when he is at school (and much to my chagrin, in church and public as well!). His current favorite show is Cyberchase.

I (Celia) was able to have an unmedicated VBA2C in Feb., which was amazing. Since then my time has been filled with adjusting to 3 kids, getting our house ready to sell, selling our house, buying and moving to a new house/town, driving Dean into McKinney every day for school, teaching Walter’s preschool co-op, and teaching piano.  I LOVE my new neighborhood. Love, love, love it. It’s an amazing location and I love the people here. I finally feel like I have a place and community where we could raise our kids for the duration of their childhood. Since moving to Melissa, I immediately acquired 6 students, and I have since added 10 more students to my studio!  My life feels very busy and full. I love teaching piano. I have actually started taking piano lessons again and am trying to focus on technique, theory, and pedagogy that I didn’t get when I was younger. The only  “hobby” I’ve kept up since having Edward is running. I’ve been working on speed. I ran a 10K in May and got second in my category, but I ended up in the hospital. I hadn’t hydrated well enough to compensate for nursing a 3 month old.  I ran a 5K in November and got a personal record of 23:28 and took first in my category. Next on my race list is a 10K minus the hospital visit at that same pace, and then a half marathon at that pace. I still love running in my Vibram 5-finger shoes. We also had a chance to drive to UT (20+ hours each way) for a family reunion with my entire family  (7 kids, 21 grandkids). It was a blast! I also got to see my family at both my Grandpa and Grandma Hunt’s funerals. Reunions like those are bittersweet. My parents came here for Thanksgiving, which was also very fun.

Matt is still a software engineer at Raytheon and has upped his commute from 3 min. to 15 min. since moving. He worked really hard to get our house sellable and it really paid off! We sold it for 7K more than the realtor wanted to list it for, and we had multiple offers within 2 days of being on the market. Most of the beauty was a result of Matt’s hard and immaculate work. Since moving here, he’s already built himself an awesome workbench in our garage and has fixed other random things. He’s quite an amazing guy.

We hope all is well with you!  Life is full, and God is good. We’re grateful we have all of you in our lives. 

These pics are all the right way on my computer, but I don't have time to fix them for blogger. Sorry 'bout that.