Our Lovely Life: Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone!

We're finishing up a great week of vacation. I'm definitely a fan of staycations now. (: The boys have been very busy playing with new treasures. They are almost always playing with each other now, unless they're at odds over a few prized possessions. I think the pretend play has really helped Morgan's language development, and there is no end to Jacoby's imagination! They've recently become interested in dinosaurs, which is rather refreshing to have a new interest not involving some sort of truck. There is, however, a huge learning curve with this new interest as I know virtually nothing about dinosaurs. I think dinos might be the theme of a certain almost-four-year-old's birthday that's just around the corner.

Justin and I have mainly been spending time with the boys while doing a few projects around the house. Justin is narrowing down the bibliography for his second exam that will probably take place some time mid to end of February.

We've also been talking about 2011 and what our hopes and goals are for the New Year. We didn't do too bad on what we set out to do in 2010 (see those here) considering all of the medical issues that popped up unexpectedly. Here's what we're hoping for in 2011:

Justin -- besides finishing two more exams, defending a dissertation proposal, and hopefully getting a good start on his dissertation this year, here are a few other things Justin's thinking about:

1. Watch no TV for the entire year (except inadvertently, when it cannot be avoided). He's got at least a four month head start on this one!
2. Limit news intake on the internet.
3. Read through the remainder of the New Testament in Greek.
4. Make meditation a more firmly established habit.
5. Read through the latest edition of Janeway's Immunobiology in order to gain a better understanding of the processes involved in Eosinophilic Esophagitis. (Thanks for the heads-up Uncle Jared!)

Jacoby -- Our major hope for Jacoby is to get started with treatment for his EoE so he starts to feel better. If all goes well with that (and we are so hopeful that it will), we will work on reading and writing, have fun skiing this winter, celebrate birthday #4!, maybe learn how to ride a bike, maybe do soccer again, and maybe start swimming lessons.

Morgan -- Celebrate birthday #2!, transition to a toddler bed, maybe do a soccer class, maybe learn how to ride the trike by himself, and just have fun being 2!

Erin -- I decided to start a writing/reflection project over on this blog: http://givethankseveryday.wordpress.com/
Besides that and the normal eat healthy-cook healthy-exercise-balance work and home life goals I normally have, here are a few others:

1. I guess I'm going TV-free this year as well, since that's what my partner in crime is doing. (:
2. Start looking into kindergarten options for Jacoby--this is not a straightforward process down here, so I'll be checking out our public, private, and homeschooling (yes, homeschooling--all of you can take a collective gasp here to get that over with) options.
Given Jacoby's extensive medical needs, homeschooling is on the table as a real option for us if we don't find something that we're comfortable with.

Other things we're looking forward to this year:

**Birthday season will soon be upon us! I can hardly believe we're going to have a 4-year old in the house!
**U2 concert--unless Bono falls off the stage somewhere and they cancel on us again, we're excited to go to this concert in May.
**A trip to Hawaii--Our fall board meeting is in Hawaii this year, so Justin and I are trying to decide if anniversary #10 warrants a mini-vacation while I'm over there.
**A trip or two to Montana and visits with family. Always one of our favorites and we love to have visitors!