January Update

I can't believe that January is almost over - it's flown right by, and all without any blog updates!

Our year started off great, with some friends of mine from college coming to visit on New Year's Day. One friend, Jo, stayed with us for almost a week, while the others drove to DC, and then back through to get Jo and head back to Chicago. I loved having Jo here - she was just about the perfect house guest. And it was nice to have an adult around while Yuta was working. It almost makes me wish we had a bigger house so we could rent a room or something.

Taisim also started going to a gymnastics class once a week. Taipan isn't interested, but if the timing works out he goes along and plays with other kids that aren't in the class, but go along because of siblings, and then a good number of folks meet up at McDonalds afterwards to play. No one was interested in going this week, so it may fade out ... we'll have to see. Luckily it's paid by the month, so there's not a huge up-front financial investment.

Other than gymnastics we've been sticking pretty close to home. Fortunately we've got some great friends that we love to have visit, and who don't seem to mind coming to our house, so we get to stay out of the cold, and be social too!

Speaking of cold ... um, it's been cold. And snowy. We've been out to play in the snow a little bit. I hope we get to go out a bit tomorrow, as it's snowing right now and we're supposed to get up to 10 inches of snow. We now have snow pants for Taipan and Taisim, and it made such a big difference for Taipan to have them on. Taisim declined to wear them, but I'm hoping she'll give them a try the next time we go out.

In the next day or so I'm going to post a bunch of pictures, and caption them as time allows. My Mac was out of commission a bit this past month, so it's been harder to upload pictures.

And we're going to UWWG on Sunday - the event lasts through next Friday, but we're only planning on staying thru Wednesday, partly due to work schedule, and partly out of respect to Taipan's preference for home over hotels. He's on-board with going, but I think anything more than three nights might be pushing his tolerance.

Finally, Happy Year of the Ox! Unforunately we missed out on New Year's Eve dinner at my in-laws' this past Sunday - both kids woke up surprisingly early that morning and were taking marathon naps through the late afternoon and evening hours. Taisim was the first awake at 7:30, and that alone would have been too late to go, but Taipan hadn't even woken up at that point.

Now I'm off to watch some Mickey Mouse Clubhouse - hot dog, hot dog, hot diggety dog!