We are back family and
friends! Sorry we are so late, but house
projects, potty training, and pregnancy have kept us busy for the last few
weeks. We hope that you had a good year in
2014 and are looking forward to the rest of 2015.
Andy has had a good year
professionally. He was promoted at the
beginning of the year. Of course there
are some additional responsibilities that accompany the promotion. Being a little professorial by nature, Andy
was a mentor to only 5 engineers at work.
He may teach a class next year. And at the end of the year, he received
a special award for work that has been very beneficial to the company.
Addie is all about MORE! She is doing more, talking more, wanting
more, having more opinions… Basically,
she is a typical two year old, but she is still fairly sweet for which we are
very thankful. Who knows though, she
might be building to a crescendo for 2015. At her two-year check-up, she weighed 32 lbs
and was 36 inches tall so she is still around the 90th
percentile. At the end of the year, Mary
had to clear out her drawers so that they now have a few 3T items and mostly
4T; the only issue is that 4T pants are long for her. She was getting too big for lots of diapers,
cloth and disposable, so we decided to give potty training another try over
Christmas. Thankfully, it is going
fairly well!
This year Andy started teaching
Addie to spot while he spins her in her infant/toddler swing. She has transferred that skill to spinning in
place, one of her favorite pastimes, while in the house. Mary thinks it is amazing because she can’t
spot and starts getting dizzy on a second spin.
Addie also enjoys helping do
chores (except cleaning up her toys – funny how that works). She is great at wiping up any spills she
makes. Sweeping, vacuuming, dusting, and wiping kitchen cabinets make her fun
list, but the most exciting thing of all is to help unload the dishwasher. If she hears one of us start removing dishes,
she comes running. There have been some
close calls, but so far no dishes have been damaged.
Mary was responsible for most of
the progress on entertaining more and managing our time and money better. She has made some new friends this year. She is trying to make progress on having a
cleaner house although keeping a schedule doesn’t seem to work well for
her. It seems like most practices flew
out the window with the craziness of the Fall illnesses and pregnancy. So far, Mary is not feeling as well with this
pregnancy as she did with the first. We
are hoping that things will get better with the second trimester.
We were doing pretty well on our
2014 goals with only a few detours along the way. As Andy was trying to complete his thesis and
prepare his defense in the Spring, he repeatedly (eventually almost weekly) was
experiencing severe abdominal pain.
After several medications and tests, the doctor determined that he
needed to have his gallbladder removed.
So he defended his thesis, graduated (but didn’t walk), and went to have
surgery. The surgeon was amazed at the
hundreds of gallstones and resulting issues he found; no wonder rich &
greasy foods have been giving Andy problems for the past 15 years. We got back on track with normal life until
the Fall hit and with it came multiple illnesses and first trimester
ickiness. But we did have some fun this
year; here are a few highlights.
We were blessed to have lots of
people visit us over the summer. Many
family and friends came through the area and stopped over at our house. Andy’s aunt has even moved from Texas to
about an hour away from us.
Both of our sisters moved last
year – Meg (Mary’s sister) moved to Germany because of a new leadership
position for Greg, and Cici (Andy’s sister) moved to Tennessee to be closer to
Logan’s family.
We joined the masses as Costco
members. Addie loves shopping
there! As soon as you say Costco, she
says hot dog (all day long); they are synonymous for her.
We got several new “toys” this
year. Here are a few of our
favorites. Andy got a professional-grade
weed-eater for his birthday. It has a
carbon-tipped saw blade on the end, which is a good thing because torrential
rains watered the weeds very well over the last half of 2014. This spring and summer are going to have even
more growth because of the rain this winter; it is the most we have experienced
in our 3.5 years in the LA area. We
bought our first tablet; it was almost like having another computer. We don’t have to compete for screen time
anymore…except with Addie. She LOVES it!
Well, we’re running out of space
in this letter. If you’d like to chat
about more hilarity from our household, mishaps with computers, DIY home-repair
failures, and much more, please call us at home. We’d love to hear from you.
We send you our sincerest
blessings for this new year!
Love,
Andy, Mary & Addie Walker
