Merry Christmas 2009

NOTE: To those of you who got this as a printed card, I'm so sorry about the tiny font. Obviously I was too wordy and didn't catch that I was looking at it too zoomed in! Yikes! Embarrassing!

Hello for the first time in a couple of years! As you probably know by now, we moved the day after Christmas last year, so I just didn't manage to work in a Christmas card. Last year the holiday season kind of went by in a whirlwind of packing, loans and renting out our old house! So I have two years of catching you up to do this year. We are now just 5 minutes from our church in a beautiful new home that backs up to Glen Creek. We have room for both of us to have  offices, and space underneath to add another level as Sean's business grows if needed! Our numbers and email remain the same, email me at Amy@DentBeebe.com if you want our new address (and I thought when we moved we'd get something easier to spell than "Arithmetic" - yeah, not so much).

We have been overwhelmingly blessed the last two years, but of course birth of our little Willow Ruby on April 26 of 2008 was the biggest of all. Yes, I am the crazy home-birther that you can say you know. Willow smiled the day she was born and her happy personality has continued to blossom.

In February of 2008 (yup, right before Willow was born!), Sean quit GE and is now programming for financial traders full-time through his business, DB Trader. Despite a few sleepless nights debating if this was a good idea with a baby on the way, in just a couple of months, this turned out to be a great decision - his business is going so well that he had to turn away new clients after a very short time! He hired a long-time friend and GE co-worker to work with him to begin taking on new projects again and both are doing well. He has also started to get back into running.

I've managed to keep busy taking on occasional freelance projects, working at the church some, and - oh yes - taking care of two extremely busy little girls! They are keeping me running and I love it! I'm working on losing the baby weight I've packed on over the last two years by doing CrossFit - it's varied, short, high-intensity workouts with weight training, running and gymnastics - I've lost two pant sizes so far! My Christmas list this year is filled with things like kettlebells, weight gloves, resistance bands and a squat rack. I also unfortunately won the "Most Injured" award at the CrossFit Salem gym and am currently nursing a severely sprained right wrist. The doctor would put me in a full arm cast if I didn't have small children, and my left arm is getting very buff from working only that side out. I'm currently looking at at least another 4 weeks of healing.

I also have a side project going at WhiteDogBlackDog.com where I sell some of my designs on t-shirts. I just created a new line of "Scripture to Inspire Your Workout" to add to my previous "She is Fierce" and "Land of the Free, Because of the Brave" lines.

Anya still thinks Darth Vader is pretty cool, but is now also into Tinkerbell, Thomas the Train and Nacho Libre. She has been going to preschool, but we are excited to begin our homeschooling adventures with her starting next spring! Anya is quite a bundle of emotions and can go from joyful over learning that "God loves us and He sent His Son!" one moment to crying that Rudolph can't play any reindeer games the next. I have no idea where she gets it from (seriously, stop laughing right now). Both girls enjoy a music class, and we are hoping to get Anya started in ballet next year as well. To no one's surprise, she also keeps up a constant stream of words while doing pretty much anything. At her three year checkup, our doctor was pleased that she could put together a 4 word sentence. At which point I asked Anya a follow-up question, to which she responded with a complex, two sentence statement using past and future tenses correctly while the doctor's jaw hung open!

Willow is our little climber and explorer, with a penchant for hats of all kinds. She actually climbed before she walked! She learned early on exactly how to push her drama queen of a big sister's buttons, which seems to be her favorite hobby. Willow takes care of her "babies" (a pack of stuffed animals) and is learning to sing the ABC song. No problems with food for her - this kid loves mealtime! Willow is already extremely polite, and says "Bless You" whenever anyone sneezes or coughs. She seems to have a more steady temperament than Anya, and puts up with the natural tendency of a big sister to be bossy with good humor most of the time (although she does have an absolutely blood-curdling scream to let you know when she is upset or excited). She will be starting preschool one day a week this next year.

Beagles Sorka and Belle are aging well and even finally warming up to the kids. Belle adores Willow as she drops food all the time. In a related note, Belle now weighs more than Anya.

We got to go down to Southern California again in September. We visited my brother Jake, Natalie, Isaac, Noah, Eli and Joey at Camp Pendleton and stayed in a cottage right on the beach there. Anya loved the sand, but Willow wasn't so sure about it. We had a couple of bonfires on the beach and got to listen to the boys tells us jokes and stories - so much fun! Then we headed up to Anaheim where we spent a week at Disneyland. Anya was just tall enough to ride the Matterhorn and is still talking about it. She was bummed to be just a bit too little for the Jedi Academy. Willow explored Tom Sawyer's Island like a pro, and did NOT enjoy any of the characters she met. Both were completely entranced by the dragon at the Fantasmic show, so they were both cute little dragons for Halloween. You can see lots of pics of our life and times at www.DentBeebe.com - just click on the "Our Photos" link from the top menu.

I hope that you all have a great holiday season and we look forward to connecting with you in the coming year! May 2010 be filled with blessing and a deeper relationship with Jesus! Amen!