Family Update!

I stole this idea off Alicia's blog. It seems like once you have kids, your entire life (and, thus, blog) become all about them. So here's a quick update on the rest of us:

Jon is finishing up his last year as an AMC Fellow (basically an internship program with the Army). He'll start his final rotation at AMSAA in January and will finish the program in July. At that point he'll be offered a job at one of the places he's interned--which means we'll be here as long as we want to be. He seems to be enjoying what he's doing: something about remote detection of chemical/biological weapons (did I get that right, Jonny?). But he's excited to head back to AMSAA--they have some exciting projects he's hoping to get in on. He did chemical demilitarization last time he was there, but wasn't too thrilled about the specific project he was on. Better luck next time, we hope!

Jon is our ward financial clerk, and I honestly can't think of a better calling for him. He gets to keep things organized, resolve complicated financial issues, and doesn't have to interact with people. Our bishopric LOVES him. I don't think they'll ever release him. It does keep him after church a couple of hours to do tithing, but I don't mind.

In his spare time he's been working on conquering Doom. He found a wiki with all the secrets and has been having a blast. He finally beat it last weekend--I don't know what he's going to do with himself now!

My turn: I feel like I have one full time job (wife/mother) and two part time: Young Women and piano teacher. I love it, but some weeks I don't know how I'm going to make it through without neglecting my poor husband and son.

I have 14 piano students right now (6 are part time--every other week). I had no idea how I was going to pull it off, but it's been good so far. I've had to keep myself on track--dinners have to be made BEFORE the students come, sometimes a day in advance if I really won't have time. I find it very interesting that the busier I am, the more I get done. If I have nothing to do I tend to sit around and blog. Or read. I have a giant pile of books in my room that is NOT getting read now that piano has started up, darn it.

Young Women is always crazy, but fun. I have 13 (soon to be 14) Beehives (ages 12 & 13), 12 of whom come on a regular basis. Our last activity was cake decorating. It was absolutely INSANE, but the girls had a blast. And their cakes actually turned out pretty well! I really, really love working with this group of girls. They're awesome.

Any spare time I have (none) is dedicated to all my little projects: wedding scrapbook, Seth's baby book, 72 hour kits, blogging, decorating my house, and cleaning. Cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. And let me just say that I am in LOVE with our new Roomba. Even if it did knock over our lamp and leave a big mark on the floor. We just turn the thing on at night and wake up to a clean floor in the morning. LOVE IT.

Seth is getting a lot of opportunities to interact with other kids. We have two playgroups we attend every week: one at the church and one that rotates between homes. He also LOVES playing with the siblings (or mothers) of my piano students. His current favorite activity is retrieving our shoes from the shoe basket by the door and handing them to the moms, one by one. I'm sure they're thrilled to be holding our dirty shoes...

We think he's having his first language explosion: he's added "ball" (ba) and "shoe" (souh) to his vocabulary in the past couple of days. And he understands lots of other words that he can't pronounce yet: book, Mom, close, throw, etc.

I'm trying to get him hooked on watching movies while we drive so that he'll be content to sit and watch a movie when we fly. We're doing well so far. He likes Baby Signing Time, pays NO attention to Baby Einstein, and LOVES Disney's Hercules. I didn't think I could ever get sick of that one. I was wrong. Thankfully my mom just sent him The Lion King. So far he only likes movies with lots of singing and animals. He laughs every time Baby Pegasus shows up.

And that's pretty much it, at the moment. We really love it here, and life is going great. We really have been so blessed. (Sorry--no pictures. More to come, soon).