December Update

This month has been a blur of awesome.

Joie De Vie
James and Alma are wonderful.  They are funny, sweet, thoughtful, persistent and really enjoy everything that life has to offer.  They laugh hard, love deeply and are always seeking new things to learn and experience.  These are such vague descriptions but their joie de vie is difficult to capture in words.  Joshua and I are also having a lot of fun enjoying our own hobbies and enjoying the fun ages of the children.

Parties
It has been a month of parties.  We kicked the month off with a 2-4-6 party in Lancaster celebrating Timothy's 2nd, James's 4th and Alma's 6th with the Yoder and Klitsch families.  Then, in order to avoid December birthday jealousy, the next weekend we hosted a joint party for Alma, James and Nana at our house in Malvern with Thompsons and Lachmans.  The kids loved the joint party as they got to decorate together (Frozen and Thomas merchandising ruled the house) and neither felt left out ... or, very importantly to them, neither felt they were excluding the other.

We celebrated Andrew's last basketball game at Brian's house, which always feels like a party with how much wonderful food they serve us.  Christmas Eve we were able to join Christine's annual feast which includes decorating a gingerbread house and the best turkey I've ever tasted (Doug is amazing!).  Christmas Day we went back to my brother's to spend time with my family and in their kitchen eating more amazing food.

All of these parties also included all the parties in between to celebrate real birthdays (Dec 7th for Alma), pretend birthdays (Dec 24th for James to open birthday gifts) and school holiday parties (luncheons at James's school, evening concert performance at Alma's school).

Joshua and I snuck away for a day to go out for Thai food, watch the new Star Wars movie and leisurely shop for some last minute gifts.  Thanks Nana and Grandpa for watching the children all day and then serving us all dinner!

Work
In an interesting turn of events, I left my position at Harcum College and will begin working at Immaculata University in the new year.  I am very excited about this new opportunity. My new boss seems wonderful and the campus is quiet, beautiful and less than 3 miles away (we can see the dome from the end of our street).  My title will be Director of Corporations, Foundations and Government Relations.  Should be interesting!

Joshua's work continues to go well. Everyone at the school loves him, he spends his days thinking creatively with a wonderful co-teacher and sees Alma throughout the day.  What could be better?  While life still includes stress and he is never one to back away from over working, he is so much happier these days than any day we spent in Bethlehem when he was running a struggling non-profit.  I believe that he misses the work of organizing and the positive impact it had but does not miss the worry that he suffered through in the name of that progress.  I keep telling people that it is nice to have our Joshua back.

Everything else
Simon and Shanti are still plugging along.  Eating, sleeping and entertaining us with their antics.

Our rental is still working out well.  It's tight quarters for parties but otherwise perfectly snug for our little family. We are hoping to host some West Coast family in the coming year, which will be so wonderful.

2015 as a year was pretty darn rough.  I can easily say that the beginning of 2015 was one of the roughest patches of my life.  We do not need to get into the reasons -- March 2015 is missing from the blog for that reason.  Gratefully, the end of 2015 has been great and we are looking forward to a positive 2016.