About a week before we traveled for Thanksgiving Josh found out that in order to graduate this May he has to have a full draft of his dissertation in by January 20 (so the committee can read it by January 30 and decide whether to let him enroll in “dissertation defense” credits for the semester). The pressure is now on to have a full draft . . . not the best time of year to have this kind of deadline. After we arrived back from SC, we decided to buckle down for the deadline, and Josh started going back to school in the evenings, as well as working all day Saturdays on his dissertation and on his other school responsibilities (which also got busier!). It doesn’t make for a very festive Christmas season, but we’re doing what we need to do to make the deadline. Presently, Josh is about 50% sure he can make the deadline. We appreciate your prayers as he works on his analysis. (Picture on the left is of our garden last week when it still felt like late summer…not sure what it looks like since we had some snow on Monday.)

Sunday evening we had the Pawley Family over for dinner. Eric and Mee-Sun are missionaries in Cambodia and are working with the same language group (Jarai) that we hope to work with. There is a possibility that we would join the Pawleys’ translation project.

Monday afternoon we had the pleasure of meeting up most of the Bixby family during their layover at the DFW airport – I think it has been the highlight of my month. We were really glad to be able to see Tim and Ruth, since they are on furlough, and depending on how long our deputation takes, we’re not sure when we’ll be in the came country again. The last time we saw Tim and Ruth we had just found out I was pregnant with Becca – a lot has happened since then. We enjoyed our time with the family. Becca immediately hit it off with Zach. They were crawling, running, jumping, and shouting HALLELUJAH all over the little area we camped out in. On our way to the bathroom, Becca told me she was going back to play with Zachary: “I call him Zachary,” she told me.

Isaiah is enjoying eating sweet potatoes. I had hoped to delay solids until after Christmas, but this little man just couldn’t wait! Wow – the way he eats you might think I’ve been starving him for the past 6 months. He loves sweet potatoes, but is not so sure about squash or green beans yet – actually I’m pretty sure he dislikes them, but this perhaps has something to do with the fact that the sweet potatoes are homemade and the other foods were from the jar. The picture below shows my first batch of sweet potatoes. I thought the blue-lidded container would last a few days . . . he ate half the container in one meal!

Becca is now sleeping in underwear. She’s been wearing underwear during the day for about a year and is potty-trained, except for in the nights. We ran out of size 4 diapers, so I told Becca that I wasn’t going to buy any more. Becca didn’t like wearing big fat cloth diapers to bed, so we tried underwear and she’s done pretty good, with a few accidents here and there. She LOVES being able to get up any time she wants to use the potty . . . like 10 times in a row! The amazing thing to me is that she wakes up in the middle of the night (somewhere around 3am) and goes potty all by herself.

Becca really enjoys acting out the Nativity with her animals and the Little People Nativity set. This week she realized that she could be a character too . . . then she ended up calling me Joseph for the rest of the evening!