Ellie has been fortunate to have lots of time with her grandparents lately (I've been fortunate as well, because it has allowed me to dig away fervently at my dissertation.) She even carries around a picture of them when they're not here...
Ellie's biggest changes lately are her abilities to verbalize and imitate. We're curious to see how she handles the two languages (Korean and English), especially because our original plan of JooYeon speaking 100% Korean and me speaking 100% English has long since crumbled into both of us speaking a blend. She seems to understand simple objects in both languages and then verbalizes the object in whichever language is simpler.
Ellie's favorite activity of playing with anything dental-related (floss, toothbrush, etc.) has slowly been usurped by cooking, playing with water, and fishies.
Randy and Marla had us over for a huge Thanksgiving feast; one of the few times we've actually seen them even though they live down in Athens now!
We don't have a television, so Ellie is in awe whenever she sees one. :)
Ellie helping my Dad set up at a ballcard show, something he's able to do a bit more of now that he's retired.
Mom and JooYeon took Ellie to a Children's Museum and out shopping while I worked on my dissertation.
Growing up, our family always had traditions throughout Advent. Grandma and Grandpa helped set up some similar traditions of a daily ceremony with Ellie this year.
Ellie and her first snowman.
Our coffee grinder broke, so we've been reverting to the old-fashioned way. We're down to our last bags of coffee from Cinco Tucanes, a coffee farm started by my friend from EMU, Jaime Miller.
And another year draws to an end. Assuming a correlation between number of posts per year and level of busyness (which there is), it's fairly obvious that this year has been my busiest since I started the blog in 2008. Two things make the busyness bearable though: One, I enjoy doing almost everything I'm busy with and two, I view it as a temporary busyness (at least this level of busyness).
