Our Christmas picture this year is a play on the duality of our lives. We are teachers and students; professionals and professional nerds. Hopefully, these pictures will give you a glimpse into our lives over this past year! Without further ado…
January – entertaining friends and homemade hot apple cider
January was pretty slow and involved lots of apple cider, gaming, and having friends over. Then, the semester started back up again, and we were back to teaching/working/being generally sleep-deprived…
February – a new friend…
Inara was the nicest rat we ever owned. She was utterly friendly. She also didn’t use her claws. At all. Quite a nice feature. Sadly she died within the year from internal tumors. An easy way to die for rat, but she isn’t the kind if rat that can be easily be replaced.
March – a couple new fish.
Two more in the long line of “Communist Freaking McFascist Pants”. “Pants” was such a fun goldfish name that we decided to name all future goldfish “Pants” in the spirit of the Pharaohs of Egypt…Ramses I, Ramses II…Pants I, Pants II…
April – birds and poppies
We acquired these two beautiful, skittish diamond doves. They enjoy: flying around our house (a little), finding high places to sit in our house (a lot), talking to us (quite a bit), and playing with us (not at all).
We also headed out to the Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve and got some great pictures and had a lot of fun in the wind :)
May & June – summer vacation
We traveled through up through Sacramento (board meeting for Corinne), Northern California, the Oregon coast, Washington, took the ferry to Victoria BC, met Corinne’s friends in North Bend, and checked out Portland. Tons of hiking, exploring new cities, water falls, horses, book stores, a castle, so many beaches. It was beautiful.
July-ish
Then, a quick trip up to Crestline, CA with some friends…
Then, an overnight camping trip to the Salton Sea (weirdest place visited this year)…
August through September – Prudence, work, and school
Our latest (and now only) rat, “Prudence”, joined our family. We frantically tried to enjoy the end of our summer break before beginning a busy semester. Corinne taught 4 sections of Intro to Spoken Communcation at TMC, took two classes as GWU, and continued working in the IT department doing Educational Technology. Mike is still working as a Software Architect at TMC and is working to finish his degree…
October – a fun trip down to the beach cities to get us through the semester.
We discovered that taking short, fun trips really helps break up the pattern of daily life and relieve some of the stress. It also provides great opportunities to catch up on sleep and do some exploring…
November – we celebrate Corinne’s birthday in San Deigo and visit the Penguins!
Yes, that is Corinne touching a real, live penguin. Said penguin also jumped out of the trainer’s arms and tried to go home with the group. If only…
December – rain finally comes to Santa Clarita and it’s a little cool. Time for Christmas vacation!
Santa Clarita finally got some rain, and it was such a treat. Our dirty car definitely appreciated it, too.
And we’re off to San Francisco this year since…well…San Francisco is a cool place to visit! We’re really looking forward to downing lots of clam chowder (maybe even crab!) and walking all over the place to discover new and exciting places.
We hope you have a wonderful Christmas this year, full of good fellowship and good food!
Cheers,
Mike and Corinne
Beautiful, clear pictures of God’s faithfulness to you, Mike and Corinne!
Excellent photography, artistic reflection of God’s creation.