Winter Review

Christmas has quickly become the distant past and I haven't updated this blog for a long while. Our Christmas travels were delightful. Clara's first Christmas was spent visiting Grandmas and Grandpas and meeting various other relatives and friends. Clara was a good traveler and happy to meet all of the new people. After visiting my family for about a week, we visited Brian's family for almost another week.

The night before we left to come home it was discovered that our car had a serious problem. Not understanding the inner workings of car engines, I can't explain exactly what was wrong...something with a leaking lower intake manifold gasket. Brian's parents graciously let us use their car to come home and sent our car to be fixed by their mechanic. Last weekend we drove all the way back to the farm to pick up our car. This past Sunday Brian took a look under the hood and discovered that the mechanic had overtightened the bolts on the cast iron upper intake manifold. As a result, 4 of the 6 bolts that hold it in place have cracks nearby letting too much air into the engine. Now Brian is going to have to fix the problem. He was highly disappointed in the mechanic's work and now wishes he had done all of the fixing himself instead of refixing half the original job. Brian is almost convinced that the only way that something will be done right is if he does it himself. He is fortunate to have the skills to be able to fix things instead of always relying on a mechanic.

In other news, I'm teaching one anatomy and physiology class at Black Hawk this semester on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. The lady who was hired instead of me is on maternity leave. Go figure! I figure teaching at Black Hawk is better than at the other community college in town as I'm already familiar with how things work and I've kept in touch with many of my colleagues. Teaching part time does not pay well, but it is better than nothing and is rewarding and mentally challenging. It is strangely familiar to be doing the things I once did. A few things are different, namely that I don't have to stay there all day and when I'm there I also have to fit in some time to pump milk for Clara. A lady from church is watching Clara and we are grateful to have found someone that cares for her so well. Clara is getting used to the idea of staying with Ms. Len. Ms. Len takes lots of pictures of Clara...when I arrived this afternoon she had a slideshow of the pictures she had taken today for me to watch.

Now here are some of my recent favorite pictures of Clara.

Here's Clara on her six month birthday, January 14.

Here's Clara last week entertaining herself in her Bumbo while Mommy cooked some yummy food.

Clara sits up by herself now and one of her new favorites things to play with is a "jar" full of "bugs" that my former boss, Pam (of fruit fly renown), gave to her. Here Clara is chewing on a spider leg. She hasn't quite figured out how to get the bugs out yet, but she likes chewing them and shaking them. Signs of things to come?