January 2013

Pretty exciting title, eh?! I guess I couldn't come with anything more exciting for the dreary month of January. It started off very cold around here. Felt like we brought some of that SD type weather back with temps dipping below zero. After a week of lounging around,baking,

playing games

and recovering from Christmas,

Jay had to get back to work and Penny back to her weekly home school enrichment group that meets every Friday morning. She'll be practicing an extra half hour each week from now until April, when they'll be putting on the grand musical production of Esther. She'd been saying before we moved to Denver how much she wanted to get involved in drama. Well, while she has no speaking parts in this production, she'll get to dance and sing and learn that not everything involved in drama is always so thrilling. I think she's already learning how much work it is and how there are long periods where she has to be patient while others work on their parts. A good lesson to learn.

We also enjoyed going to the National Stock Show in Denver. But, it was FREEZING! So, we tried to stay in the indoors sections as much as possible.

With the new year comes setting goals. We have the goal of getting to know more people. So, Jay and I joined a small group bible study that meets during the sunday school hour at our new church. We've enjoyed that so far, but Jay had to miss the last couple of weeks, because he was sick. Penny and I are now trying to recover from the same virus that Jay passed on to us. I have, personally, set the goal of trying to repaint several rooms in our new house.

I've been working on a couple of walls and a piece of furniture in the living room, so far. Also, one day when Penny was sleeping off her illness and I had a little more energy I finally took it upon myself to really clean, organize, and decorate our office/homeschool room.

I have to laugh at how the cat knocked the lamp shade over right when I was taking photos of my room after just cleaning it. Nothing stays perfect for too long around here! It felt so good to finally empty the last of the moving boxes in there and sort through the mountains of letters that had accumulated. We also enjoyed meeting some friends to watch the disappointing loss of the Broncos to the Ravens. And we got depressing news that we owe a large amount to the IRS for the first time, this year. Jay worked at getting used to his new school. With his new teaching job, he is required to stay at one elementary school in the Fall and switch to another one in the middle of January. It's been a bit of a tough transition, since he got sick right about that time. But, we're so thankful that he still only has about a 10 minute commute with no highway driving. A fun thing that he did at the end of his time at the first school, was to have Penny come in and perform for the kids, by playing her Thai hammered dulcimer (a khim).

A couple of highlights for January was celebrating Jay's birthday

and also the fact that we've now been in America, as a family of three, for four years, as of January 10th.

To celebrate, I made some Thai curry and sticky rice. But, I think that I enjoyed it more than Penny did. Mom can't cook the authentic food that she is used to, even if seems like Thai food to me. Hope that you are all doing well and wishing you a very blessed Happy New Year!