We have finally started the new year!  We were in denial about vacation ending all the way up until this past week, it seems.  Anyway, here is a little bit of what went on during our second month of vacation!

We started our year off right by partying with some friends and eating lots of “freezer foods” (chicken nuggets, pizza bagel-bites, fries, ice-cream bars, etc) It was delicious and delightfully fun! But, of course, you can’t have New Years Day without eating black-eyed peas and rice!  I found out too late that we were also supposed to have had collards  with them. Mother said that the three items represent health, wealth, and happiness in the new year. We decided that the collards probably represent wealth, but we’re used to being without that. ha ha!

About a week after the new year began, we had a visitor!  Josh’s mom came to visit us for a week!  It was so much fun to see again just how well kids know that they love their grandparents, even if they haven’t been around for a long time!Mom’s visit was one of the reasons that we didn’t get back into real life. We were way too busy going to the park, and going swimming, playing games, and eating delicious food to do any work!  Another reason that we didn’t get back into real life very quickly was because some crazy stuff happened with Josh’s school/work schedule.  One minute we thought he was going to have 40 hours of stuff to do each week, the next we found out that he only had about 12.  It has all worked out now, though, and we were just starting to get back into life when…

There was Martin Luther King Jr. Day!  Josh didn’t have school, so of course we had to go do something fun!

This is a horrifically bad picture. I apologize. We went to the Natural Science museum in Raleigh, and the whole family loved it! Fay loved seeing the stuffed animals (like, they used to be alive and walking around, but now they are on display in the museum habitat displays) and the fish. She wasn’t quite sure about the enormous dinosaur skeletons.  Carter enjoyed looking around, but he LOVED watching the butterflies in the butterfly room!  He would track them with his whole body, trying to figure them out!  Josh and I learned some interesting new things (like how introduced species can have pretty dramatic affects on the environment) and super enjoyed watching the kids both have so much fun!

But now we are done with vacation (we think), and beginning to figure out a new routine.  Fay and I are working on potty-training this week. It is going well, but it turns out that potty training is really taxing even when it goes well.  Josh is working on more and more projects. Carter is mostly eating. He nurses and all that, but he LOVES eating real people food! The doctor said to let him do what he wants, though, so we may have to increase our grocery budget soon…

The biggest news of the past month, though, is that Josh has accepted a job in Salt Lake City! We are excited to have a job, and we are excited to move back to the land of temples that are open all the time, and babysitters abounding, and cousins, and Western Family Alfredo-sauce packets; but we are very sad to be leaving the land of party-at-the-playground-every-evening-between-3:30-and-5:30, and Bullock’s BBQ, and trees galore, and people being impressed by the fact that we have two children.  Fortunately, we will be here for a few more months!