Still around. . .

No use totally catching up, so here's a recap. Hooray for bullet points! In the last 2 months:

• Abby started first grade! She's a great student, and really thrives on that energy and in the presence of so many kids. So far we've been really happy with her teachers. We try to stay involved and of course extend her education to outside of school. We're hoping that we can get her into a charter school at least before middle school hits. The demand is really high around here and the waiting lists are long. If we don't get her in one of the Harbor charters by then, we'll seriously consider an arts charter. Still a waiting list, but not as long.
  
• We celebrated Jennifer's twenty-tenth birthday. Boy, did that one sneak up! No tears here though, just excitement.
• We celebrated our tenth anniversary! We are so happy together, and we're off to a great start. Forever together looks better all the time!
• We had a staycation. . . a whole week at home where we largely ignored the phone and all of our worldy obligations. We spent the week doing things we love to do: playing video games, going fun places, laughing together, having our favorite foods, getting ready for Halloween, putting ourselves in diabetic comas. . . good times! It went way too fast.
• Jennifer got a new calling as primary chorister. Right before the primary program. That's right. . . It's fun though.
  
• We helped plan and execute our ward's ridiculously overdone but seriously fun Halloween activity. Matt is still on activities committee (as well as teaching Elder's Quorum a couple times a month) Didn't we say we were going to simplify last year?
• We got a new niece, a new nephew, an older nephew home from his mission, engaged, and married, and and older niece got engaged to be married in May; learned we are getting another great-nephew, great-niece, and niece or nephew of as-yet-unkown gender. The family is growing and growing!

and, of course,

• Watched the United States of America elect her first African-American president. We didn't vote for him as he wasn't the closest match to our politics, but the historic significance of the event wasn't lost on us. We still think it's pretty cool. More on this later from Matt.