Bring on another year!

Woah, I lost the last 2 months so let's dive in!

Ted
He is awesome lately, albeit busy. He's gearing up for his second residency at school in a few weeks (they are every 8 weeks) and has been doing a ton of work and reading and studying. We are becoming night owls since he started school, since he stays up late reading and I don't like to go to bed without him! Work is going really good. He still beats me out of bed most mornings, running at the crack of dawn with his buddies or doing men's breakfast, or just getting up and wrangling the kids! He just does it....all. The man does it all! And he'd really like you to get behind Ron Paul:)

Me
I'm really good. I don't know why exactly, but I am. Ted has been super encouraging of me and getting behind my interests, and I owe a lot of good stuff to his pushing and prodding me. Sometimes I'm content to just wonder and wish, and he always pushes me a step further. He makes me introduce myself and ask all kinds of new people out for coffee, and other things I sometimes hang back from doing. I've gotten some new work out of it, including an awesome magazine called Edible Indy I just loved working with, and started getting more involved with an organization that fights poverty and trafficking in Cambodia. I feel like my plate is suddenly full with lots of things I really love and care about, and it feels good.

Jude
There's a shift happening, and its big. He still loves trains but superheroes are making an entrance in a big way these days. I think part of its because we've been hosting our "house church" group and the kids play in the basement, and its like 10 boys all playing superhero games that's become the catalyst. We had some friends over for dinner a few nights ago and their son brought a Batmobile and Batman. Jude begged for one after he left and you know what we did? Mr. and Mrs. "Be-Happy-With-What-You-Have-And-Stop-Asking-For-Toys?" We marched that boy to Target and hooked him up. We are so happy to hear "I'm gonna SHOOT you!! And then save the WORLD! Ready, aim, FIRE!" And devious laughs. Still absolutely peppered with "choo-choo's!" but still, its a process:) He's also growing, like, really fast. We measure the kids on the bathroom doorframe and noticed he'd grown almost an inch in a month. His art skills have gone from zero to sixty this winter, too. He used to ask us to draw trains 500 times a day, and cry when he tried to draw one and would crumple in the floor and scream "I can't!" So we practiced circles and rectangles and triangles and all that good stuff that goes into a train, and he just got busy and took off. He draws GOOD trains now and furiously cuts them out and tapes them all over the house. It's pretty stink in' cute:)

Ada
I've said it before and I'll say it again, I love her age. She's 20 months now. This time in a toddler's life is just adorable. Everything is funny or interesting to her. Except her teeth, and she's been working on her eye teeth and they are killing her at times. She's extremely into books and hurls them into our laps, screaming incoherent orders and climbing up for a reading session. She and Jude get into fights sometimes and she's started being the one to provoke in some cases, which has in turn made Jude a pretty massive tattletale. She's generally really happy and laid-back and we're having lots of fun with her. She and Jude are total buddies and I've gotten some good shots of them over the holidays that I'll post.

Thanksgiving and Christmas were both great, and New Years was so fun down in Brown County with the siblings and cousins. Lots and lots of good memories were made. These are good, good years we're in, aren't they?