What's New?

Wow! A lot has happened in our family since our last post. The day before we left Rochester, Jonathan accepted a position as Assistant Organist at St. Paul's Church and Choir School in Cambridge, MA. While we are disappointed to be heading even further east, the job was otherwise perfect, and we couldn't pass it up. Jonathan will be playing the organ for services, directing the parish adult choir, accompanying the boys' choir, and teaching theory/handbells in the school. Joy will be staying home with Julia (finally! hooray!) and is contemplating a per diem RN job and/or taking the training to become a Kindermusik instructor. Last week, we flew to Boston and after much trial and error finally located a lovely condo to rent in the Quincy area.

Jonathan begins his new job the beginning of September, so we won't be moving from Peoria until the end of August. We have spent most of the summer thus far in Peoria, where we have been able to take care of his mom and his parents' house while she recovers from her shoulder surgery and his dad is away at LSM. We also spent a wonderful week out in Iowa with Joy's family. Next month we look forward to traveling to Jonathan's grandparents' cabin in northern Wisconsin for a week of outdoor relaxation and fun with Jonathan's parents as well as his brother and sister-in-law and Ginger Puppy, followed by a visit to Joy's brother's family's new home in eastern Iowa.

Julia has truly been quite the little trooper amidst all the drastic changes and transitions taking place in her life. She has enjoyed all the time she's been able to spend with both sides of the family, and we are so grateful to have this opportunity visit with our family and friends this summer before moving so far away.

As far as Julia updates, here are all the random things I can think of:

• Colors. She now consistently gets her colors right about 90% of the time. Also has started taking a real interest in coloring. Going along with that, she will now consistently count from 1 to 5 correctly.
• Reading. Still LOVES books, and now she will "read" many of her favorites aloud.
• Singing. She loves to sing songs of her own composition :-) as well as many of her Kindermusik songs. When she sang "Love Somebody" all the way through with me for the first time, it was so sweet I cried.
• Being outside. Sadly the steamy weather has kept her indoors more lately, but she loves being outside whenever we give her the chance. In Iowa, she loved running in the yard with Peter and Sallie Dog, playing in Marmee's fountain, running through the sprinkler, and blowing bubbles with Marmee. In Peoria, Julia likes driving her car, going down the slide, and going for walks. Today we took her on her first bike ride and she absolutely loved it!
• Church. It has been so good to be in church all together. Julia does better sitting still each week and likes to talk about the Pastor, Jesus, and the cross.
• Favorite games are peek-a-boo, "sneaky" (where she sneaks up on people... she has a silly walk and whispers "sneaky" as she goes), and "squishy ball" (Julia sits at the top of the stairs while someone tosses the squishy ball up to her, she catches it, and tosses it back down [this is actually harder for the adult than you would think, given the nature of the ball]).
• Tea parties. In addition to enjoying tea parties with real tea, Julia has also discovered the wonders of pretend tea parties with her stuffed animals and any big people who can join her.
• Big girl bed. As of our last update, Julia had just switched to a toddler bed. After a couple so-so weeks at the beginning, she is now doing very well and is very proud of herself for having a big girl bed.

That's all I can think of for now! :-)