update on the periphary

We are now planning on visiting friends in Shanghai on the 13th (This coming weekend).

Vikki has been feeling more pressure lately with the baby, and last night remarked that he felt like he was sitting lower. She considered not going to Shanghai this weekend, and based on how she feels now, is thinking that a trip to Suzhou for Christmas (rather than Putuo Shan) is not going to work - which is what Jay thought originally, though he got excited about possibly visiting somewhere...

We've made contact with the first school we had contracted positions for this school year, again - this is the very school that declined our contracts once we found out we were expecting, and that I thought (while in America) that we probably wouldn't want to work for because of that. However, another friend was considering the same school and Jay is going to go visit (probably on the 23rd) to make a personal visit and to collect information for ourselves and our friend. We hope to make many more contacts with other schools in the coming semester, and this was a convenient way to finally do something about it this semester - albeit just barely!

We went in to look at our pictures at the photography studio, but are still waiting for them to complete the finished product and give us a call so we can come view it. At this rate, Vikki's birthday present will serve as a Christmas present too!

We are going to be very busy this month - trying to also place importance on our Heavenly Father (which we have sorely neglected), our marriage, and Christmas. Jay has never before felt like a humbug around Christmas until this year! There is just something ironic about taking time to put up a small plastic tree in the corner of your room, with blue Christmas balls hung on it, when seemingly there are a ton of other 'much more important' things to do. We are going to try to put up our tree on Wednesday - if we have time to go to the bookstore on Monday and are getting ready for our trip to Shanghai this weekend.

We stayed up late last night trying to think about what things we really want to see happen, and are willing to sacrifice to see them accomplished, versus what things are good and probably should be done, but may not be completed. We actually were able to have quite a bit of fun doing so, not having laughed together as hard in quite a while. We make a three column sheet to help us prioritize when we do this, putting 'must', 'want', and 'could' on one column each. This time, I thought even things on our 'want' column will not be done...we later put hanging decorations on the first column, only to put 'buy Christmas decorations' on the second - when I didn't think those would be completed...talk about putting the cart before the horse. Maybe you had to be there. =)

Hopefully we'll be able to put some more effort into getting more pictures up After Vikki's mom gets here and before the baby comes.

The baby's name, unless we put a lot more thought into it (unlikely), is going to be Joseph Micaiah.

Happy Holiday Season!