2008 Wrap Up

I can hardly believe that it is 2009. 2008 flew by so fast. It has been a very eventful year for us. So here is our recap...

Mike - is still in Corrections and loving it. He is in jail that is only 20 minutes from the house. He has debated all year about going to the streets. His calling at church is to check the building 2 nights a week. One night while he was checking the church, he had gotten there about 11:45pm, and the lights were on, and the doors open, so he was very carefully walking through the building with his hand on his gun, when he saw a movement, so he drew his gun just as the mission president and the missionaries came into his line of sight. The mission president stood there in shock, luckily the missionaries were our missionaries and had eaten dinner at our house so they recognized Mike and he recognized them. Once he got over his shock and Mike had put away his gun, the mission president was able to laugh about it.

One of the highlights of Mike's year was being able to baptize the boys. When he confirmed Mikhail Casey, he forgot to confirm him a member of the church and had to redo the blessing, the second time he did it, it was word for the same.

Heather - I finally graduated from UNM after a screwup on their part with a B.A. in Languages. Not an easy feet let me tell you. So with my degree in hand I then went on the job hunt. I got a job teaching Italian in one of the high schools by us. Unfortunately because of a screw-up at the Dept of Education my teaching license wasn't issued before the deadline set by the state to have it, after you start teaching, so I had to give up my class, this also happened to coincide with Mat's latest trip to the hospital, and we had decided that I needed to be at home with him.

I also started my Master's Degree in Education and so far I am loving it. I am also working on my book. According to Kim however I am not writing fast enough. One of the things that I started this year was I started a book blog, this has become a big part of my life as I have made some great friends through it, and discovered a whole other world out there that I never knew existed.

I had surgery in December to fix my foot, because after 5 months in an air cast it wasn't healing, so they had to go in and remove about 2" of the nerve in my foot. It has taken me longer to recover than I wanted it to be, but at least I am out of the air cast.

Mik - he has been full of surprises this year. We found out that he isn't on a 2nd grade reading level like we (us, his teachers, and his therapist) thought, no he is on a 4th grade reading level. How did we discover this you ask, on Constitution Day he volunteered to read the Constitution in his regular class, He read if by himself and didn't stumble over a single word. He is also a math whiz, when he decides to do his work.

Mik is also quite the artist, which we have known for years. He loves to draw, especially dragons.

Mat - he continues to exceeded everyone's expectations. He is doing great at school and is slowly catching up. He loves school and has decided that he wants to get all 4's (A's) on every assignment. He is also our very social child. He hates being stuck at home, he would rather be out with his friends, unless he can play the xbox, then he has to play Rainbow Six his current favorite game. He also loves basketball, the Boston Celtics are his favorite team, everything in his room is Celtics.

Mat's condition was upgraded to a stage 3 reflux, however as he is growing so much (4" in the last 6 months), the surgeon wants us to wait a little bit longer, so we are expecting his surgery to take place over the summer.

The boys got to spend the month of July in Vegas this year. They look forward to that every year. They are already asking when they get to go to Vegas for the summer. They were also baptized in October. We had a great turn out for it. It was great week-end, if only the weather would have cooperated.

The big news for us this year was that we finally moved into a house. We are hoping to be able to buy it this spring, (we are leasing to own right now).

As you can see it has been a great year for us, we can only hope that 2009 is better.