My last blog post was your typical apology for not blogging more often.  And I followed that up with a three month silence.  Oh well.

2010 has had no small share of excitement, for lack of a better term.  December was very busy at work with the typical end-of-the-year rush as everyone attempted to get their slates clean for the Christmas break.  Then we had Christmas in Columbia, followed by New Year’s in Chicago.

Sadly, while we were in Chicago, my grandmother passed away.  It wasn’t a huge shock, as when we saw her on Christmas Eve it was obvious she wasn’t doing very well.  But it was still very sad, and we’ll miss her greatly.  Emily lost her last surviving grandparent in 2006, and now I’ve lost mine.

The next week, the earthquake in Haiti struck.  While natural disasters have always meant “all hands on deck” at my job, this one was particularly exhausting.  There were UMC executives caught in the quake, and this marked the first “big” event since a staff restructuring that was supposed to facilitate faster and more numerous updates to our website (but with fewer staff members to share the load).  It was stressful to say the least.

Colleen is doing great – just growing and learning every day.  She’s sitting up on her own, her first tooth is coming through, and she’s starting to talk – in a manner of speaking… she’ll say “dada” without much prompting, but she doesn’t associate it with me  – yet!  Her personality is really coming through, and every day is a new adventure with her.  She’s now seven months old – hard to believe she’s closer to being a year old than she is to her birth date.  Where does the time go?