News on the Home Front

Hello everyone,

It has been a very interesting last month. As many of you know we have moved. We only moved about 6 blocks, but it is so much bigger and I have a real kitchen (with tiling instead of carpeting). Jude is now getting use to the new place. He was having a lot of anxiety when we first moved but it seemed that as soon as we got the crib over there it realize a lot of tension for him, and he happily rolled around in it for about an hour after it had gotten put back together.

One nice thing about the move was the timing and the help we got. On Wednesday my friend Craig came over and helped pack and move. He even roped one of my old neighbors Zack into helping for a load, which was nice. Then Thursday morning was Thanksgiving so we got up and went to my Mom's house. We spent the night there for Thanksgiving and played games with the siblings. Then we came back home and went straight to the new place. I think that sort of helped Jude with everything, because he didn't just have to go from our old apartment to the new apartment thinking we would go back to the old apartment again. Also, when we came back from Thanksgiving we kidnapped my brothers and my mother, and moved Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. They were such a huge help, and Craig came by again, which was also a huge help. So, Sunday evening Jude and I hung out and Aunty Heather came over for a few, and we watched the snow fall and cleaned.

We now have about a foot of snow here, and we really can't wait to get pictures of Jude in the snow. Unfortunately, the hazard to living in the north is that it gets dark at about 3:30, and so Roger and I don't really have time during the daylight hours to take pictures of him. Maybe this weekend we will go crazy and take tons of pictures of Jude in the snow, and around the apartment so people can see every.

I took lots of pictures of our old apartment, and I am hoping to start a scrapbook "in my spare time" of all the places we have lived. I think I am going to try to do an online one so we can share the happy trails with friends and family.

Other excitement in our lives have been that Aunt Cortney came and visited with her mom, and Jude was very excited to show off for them. He got a bouncer that you hang in the door, and so now it seems the greatest joy in his life is to sit and bounce to music for hours. He is brushing up on his skills so that when Aunt Cortney and Uncle Ryan come for Christmas he can bounce out his skills and show them how it is done.

Roger is still teaching Latin, and is loving it. He gets quite a large break coming up here soon because the school has winterim courses (courses that run for about 3 to 4 weeks that they can take before the new full semester starts again) for their high schoolers. Roger is going to take advantage of it and take a winterim courses (at the college) of his own to finish out his schooling. Roger is also finishing up this semester, and next week will be finals for him. That leaves just one more semester of schooling here before we are off to Fort Wayne. We have just under 8 months before the move now.

As for me, I am still working at the brokerage, and I picked up a few hours at Target for seasonal. It is time away from Jude, which is sad, but it is helping out which is nice. At this point it is only for seasonal, so it is actually a nice mix in my schedule. The rest of my time is hanging out with Jude and unpacking and repacking things for when we have "the big move"!

That is pretty much the update with all of us. We hope that you are all having a wonderful opening to the Christmas season. As soon as we get the internet up and running at home I will see what I can do about posting pictures of all of us.

God bless!