Mi sobrino, Brytan Seth.  Born 1/17/09, weighing in at a whopping 8lbs 12oz, and 21” long… and he was almost a week early.

Congratulations to my brother Scotty, his beautiful wife Kelly, and Brytan’s big sister, Charlize.

For some annoying reason, it’s cheaper to cross 6 countries in Europe than to fly 2/3 of the way across our own country, so I wasn’t able to be there for his birth, but I hope to get out there soon.

We’ve been keeping ourselves pretty busy lately.  I never blogged about it, but Scott got laid off a couple months after we returned to San Diego.  But layoffs have always worked out well for us, and we were blessed that he ended up getting another job pretty quickly.  He’s so humble, so I’ll brag for him – the new position is a great career move and he’s really enjoying it – I’m so proud of him!

I’ve been putting a lot of time into my book lately.  Turns out I wasn’t as far along as I thought I was.  I guess when you put something down for a while then pick it up again half way around the world, you get a fresh perspective.  So, I’ve been beefing it up full of what I hope others find to be useful and entertaining content about our experience with moving/living/traveling abroad.

I can’t believe we’ve been home for over 4 months.  I can’t believe it’s been over a month since Christmas!

Considering that Scott had no vacation time, we actually got to spend quite a bit of time with family over the holidays.

And, for the first time ever, we spent Christmas by ourselves in San Diego.  Of course we missed hanging out with family, but we enjoyed the nice quiet day, just the 3 of us.

Wanna know the trick to getting Penny Lane to pose like that?  Set the camera on timer, then just as it’s about to snap throw a wadded up piece of paper toward the camera, then hug Penny tightly to keep her from chasing it.  It works 1 out of 10 times.  If anyone else has a better idea, please share.

Happy 2009!