Goodbye 2010!

Well, it is 6 am on New Years Day, and I am up unfortunately, watching Carol play in her playpen (fortunately!). So this seems like the best time to do the review of the past year!

Daniel continued working at Excel Lawn as the supervisor of the Lawn Care side of the business as well as the music director at Silver Creek United Methodist Church. Originally hired as the choir director for the traditional service, Daniel was able to expand his job in April to be worship leader for the contemporary service as well (which is more up his alley and the style of worship he is more accustomed.) He has really enjoyed this additional service, creating a worship band that includes his cousin Andrew on the drums, his brother Jeffrey with backup vocals, and my cousin Tim on the guitar. His piano and worship skills have definitely improved over the year! In April Daniel also served as the stage manager for the production for the TCU Opera. Not only did he do a lot behind the scenes, he was also able to sing two small roles. The only negative was that the production was the week after Carol's birth and so it was extremely hard for him trying to balance life for those two weeks!

In late July, Daniel started suffering from constant headaches and dizziness. Thinking he just had a bad sinus infection, he went to the doctor who ordered a CT and eventually an MRI. Those tests revealed the presence of an arachnoid cyst in his brain, approximately 3 cm x 8 cm x 5 cm. While trying to get over the shock of the diagnosis, we learned that these cysts are usually present at birth and slowly grow but usually never present any symptoms and are only found by chance. He visited a variety of doctors- neurosurgeon who diagnosed that the cyst was not putting extreme pressure on his brain, an opthamologist  who concurred the pressure diagnosis, allergists, two ENTs, and finally a neurologist (oh, and an emergency room visit and ambulance ride after he showed signs that scared us thinking he was having a stroke). Finally the neurologist gave us some hope that he has seen these symptoms before, and yes, they were due to the cyst but that it would not help to simply drain the cyst. He got Daniel on some medicine to help the symptoms. It helped wonderfully at first, and Daniel had a few "normal" days! But now the headaches have returned, and both symptoms come roaring back under certain situations, like stress. He occasionally forgets to take his medicine, and everything comes immediately rushing back, so he knows that the meds are helping him quite a bit, just not 100%. He has another appointment in January with the neurologist so we'll see if there is a different med regiment we can try and what the long-term outlook will be. He has two side-effects of the medicine- he often feels "tingles" in his extremities like they are falling asleep and the more extreme side-effect-- carbonation tastes terrible! This has been terrible for a faithful Dr. Pepper a day drinker (you should see some of the faces he makes when he tries it because it tastes so bad to him!) , but he is handling it. Occasionally he can handle a sip or two ...but that usually corresponds to those times he forgot to take his medicine. :)

As for me, I started off the year still teaching at Lake Country and serving as the academic coordinator of the secondary school. I love teaching and love my students but after Carol's birth, we felt that that chapter of my life was coming to a close and a new chapter was beginning. So after I got my students through the AP exams, I officially became a stay-at-home mom. (kinda). Speaking of AP exams, my AP Chem students did ok-- had one 5 and several other 4s and 3s....not my normal success rate, but pretty good considering I wasn't there the last month and didn't finish the material with them. My AP Calculus students were amazing! We were able to finish the material before I left and they reviewed their little hearts out and they ALL passed the AP exam! I was so excited and proud! But the summer brought a new stage of my life. I actually started taking classes at UTA in chemistry over the summer for a variety of reasons-- to keep my mind active, to see if there was a degree I might want to eventually pursue in chemistry, and to have health insurance for the girls and I, since we are unable to cover Emma privately with her health history. I took one course over the summer and two in the fall and although it was crazy busy, I really enjoyed the information. We are still trying to decide what exactly the future holds, but it has been fun being a college student again! I also started playing piano at the traditional service at church, and that has definitely stretched me. Just when I starting to feel confident in my playing abilities, the Christmas season arrived with the big Christmas cantata. Let's just say this was my first experience really "accompanying" a choir on several pieces and I practiced a lot. It wasn't perfect but I was pretty proud of myself when it was done. I also have done a lot of tutoring up at LCCS in chemistry with some of my former students, so that has been nice keeping in touch with them. So I've been pretty busy "staying at home". In the Spring I am only taking once class one afternoon, so things will hopefully slow down a little bit.

Emma has grown up so much over the past year! She started the year spending 3 days in day care and 2 days in Pre-K at LCCS and in the fall has been in Pre-K for 3 days a week and with mommy the other two days. She is ready for Kindergarten, though!! She loves school, her friends, and her teachers. She has started to recognize sight words when we reading and I think it is only a matter of time before her reading takes form. Her handwriting and drawing skills have also increased ten-fold this year. She can write her name and Carol's name without prompting and we have written many things with spelling help from us-- just tell her the letters and she will write them. Her drawings have actually taken form too - you can recognize for the most part what she is drawing. I love her pictures of our family that she has drawn! She has also started to color "inside the lines" which I didn't realize was a big deal until I had a child! She loves to run, jump, ride her bike, climb, and dance. She took a little mini-dance class over the summer at the dance studio that I went to as a child and absolutely loved it. She is now taking ballet one day a week at Lake Country after school, and we often have ballet class at home with Emma as the teacher. She loves to help cook and bake, and has really started to play with her Barbies and coming up with stories for them (oftentimes including a wedding of some sort!). She also LOVES to play dress-up. She has quite the collection of dress-up clothes thanks to birthdays, Christmas, and Thrift town. She would rather have on a princess dress than anything else. She loves to go to the movie "bthater" to see a movie and of course, eat popcorn with M&Ms. She has also finally grown into her age with respect to clothes. For all of her life, she has been several sizes behind and just a small girl. However, this year she has grown a lot-- she is now wearing 4T-5T clothes and while still skinny, she is long waisted like her parents. Her hair was getting long, but unfortunately, a major self-hair cutting incident over the summer required us to chop it pretty short. It is starting to grow back now, and she desperately wants it to be long again! She is starting to want to wear bows in her hair everyday and lets me put up her hair without complaint!

Of course, the biggest news of 2010 was the addition of Carol Joy into our family, and I can't imagine not having her here with us. After coming into the world in a stressful, but quick way, she has blessed our lives tremendously. She lives up to her middle name like no other child you can imagine-- she loves to smile, to laugh, and only cries if she is hungry. She is so sweet-natured and easy to care for. I would say the only thing that is not easy with her is that at almost 9 months she is still not sleeping through the night and feeds at least once. But hey, we can handle that considering what Emma's first year was like! Now she army crawls everywhere, but wants to be able to walk. She pulls up everywhere and would much rather stand if possible. She zooms around the house in her walker, and will play on her own for extended periods of time. She will also put herself to sleep at night in her crib for the most part, and finally got her first tooth on Christmas day. She loves to eat solids and now would prefer to feed herself if at all possible. I think she is almost 20 pounds already, a weight that her sister didn't reach until almost 18 months of age. Christmas was a special time--- I found that having a child with a middle name of Joy is WAY to much fun! She lights up anytime her big sister comes into the room, and they have a special relationship. Emma always wants to hold her and talks to her in their own special language. I'm excited seeing how much fun they will have playing together-- and even more excited to see that those play times will be here before we know it!

As a family, we did take our first family vacation to Arizona in August for the wedding of a high-school friend. It was a long trip, but the girls did great. We also enjoyed the Texas Rangers' run to the World Series. As long time Ranger fans and season ticket holders, we were able to go to one game of each of the three series leading up to the World Series. Daniel and I went to the very last game, and although the Rangers didn't play great in the World Series, it was still such an amazing atmosphere and a lot of fun. And hey, not many people can say they attended a game where someone won the World Series!

So that's 2010 for us. We look forward to much more fun in 2011. Carol's done playing in her playpen now, so I better go take care of her!