How fun.

The tiny organism which once tried to kill me turned 4 on Friday. It was awesome. Two was hard, three was much harder, but three and half to four has been amazing. I love to watch her grow and learn and become a real human.
My husband makes fun of me when I say that, but it's true, she's beginning to understand the secondary meaning behind what people say, she's making connections between conversations and she listens to everything and responds. She grasps concepts and she makes mental leaps. She's actually fun to converse with, rather than just fun to listen to, or to watch. She can play games and understand rules. Strategy is still a little beyond her, but she does understand goals and can generally figure out how to achieve them. I love it.
This birthday part was even more special because she finally understands what it means. She knows what presents are, and she was excited for those, but she was even more excited for the chance to have friends come over, and to decorate and to help make the cake and the ice cream. She loved to try to blow up balloons and even got a few. She helped daddy hand the streamers and picked out all the prizes for the games. She picked the cake and the colors and she waited anxiously by the door as the time drew near. She played the little hostess as she introduced her preschool and her church friends to each other and besides one episode of tantrum which only lasted a few minutes she was actively involved in everything we did. It was awesome.
So of course I couldn't help myself and we spent way too much money on presents and decorations and activities and prizes, but hey, 4 only happens once, and it was totally worth every penny.
We ended up with pink, purple, white, and blue for the streamers and pink, purple and white for the balloons. They're still handing haphazardly around the living room and kitchen area and the balloons are still scattered around the room, though most of them were popped when we played "keep off the ground" outside on the grass :)
Her presents included a new dress-up set (including a skirt, a crown, earings, rings, shoes, and a purse) and a new umbrella (strangely her favorite thing in the world, and also a favorite of all of the other kids at the party) from Grandma and Grandpa Liddeke; a four foot long floor puzzle of African Safari type animals from Grandma and Grandpa Flannery (and cousins); snow shoes (which I have yet to purchase) from Nana and Grandpa; a new booster seat, a barbie movie, a Shel Silverstein book of poems, a winter coat, and a bouquet of flowers from mom and dad; a tinkerbell tiny kitchen, a Tangled purse and accessories, a Princess makeup set (fake, thank goodness), a doll with accessories to feed, cloth and care for her, another small doll set of some sort, and a cool pair of socks that had shiny sparklies sewed on to them. I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but that was quite enough. Her favorite part, of course, was the cards, for some reason getting cards with each gift was very precious to her this year. She opened each one lovingly. When she got the first one from Grandma and Grandpa Liddeke she actually cuddled it to her chest and said "Oooh, how precious."
Then today at church she was also part of a primary program, which was another memorable event. Last time the children sang in church she was hesitant until we praised her to the skies. This time she was a proud little peacock as she sat up there and waved at us every few seconds. What I really loved was that they sent each child home with a question and then made the program each child's testimony of God, Jesus, and the power of the scriptures. I'm not sure how all of the other parents did it, but we tried hard to simply ask her the question and not lead her to the answer we wanted to hear. It was quite difficult, but eventually she said that scriptures help her to know Jesus and to help her be happy. She also added that they taught her not to say the word stupid, but we edited that part out. (We've taught her that calling people or things stupid isn't nice). It was very cool to hear each child bear their small testimony. As always some were confident and comfortable, and the older ones spoke without hesitation or prompting, but even some of the smaller ones rattled off their lines with conviction.
Between each age group the whole fifty or so children stood and sand a song. Those too touched my heart. Each spoke of the worth of the children, or the amazing things that God had done for them. I thought to myself that if these children can just remember these words and take the true meaning to heart, they'll be set for life. To know that they are important and vital in God's eyes; to know that Jesus sacrificed himself so that they could live and repent and return to God; to know that the scriptures will lead them to make right choices. I really appreciated the whole program and all of the leaders who made it possible.

The rest of this month has been a blur. Jason is doing great in school, he's enjoying his classes and despite a hiccup last week he's going strong and learning a lot. He really enjoys what he's doing and it's fun to hear all about it when he comes home (although when I'm half asleep I don't always appreciate it like I should).

Work is also going well. We had our annual reviews a few weeks ago and they praised me to the stars. They went over my review (which I had filled out nearly four months ago) and marked me up in a lot of areas where I hadn't felt confident and then basically said "We have nothing to tell you, keep up what you're doing." It was nice to hear.
This last week was also our firm annual tax CPE, which is a firm-wide update and training held in Montana so Wednesday night after work my co-workers picked me up in Duboise (where I was out on an audit) and we drove to Montana and stayed there Thursday and Friday and then drove home Friday night. It was a lot of fun and I learned a lot (including the fact that I know almost nothing). The speaker for the two day conference was a Tax Lawyer out of Indiana. He shared a lot of stories about clients and experiences that he and others at his firm have had and brought up a lot of good tax law points and items to consider. The first day was a blast for me because the entire 8 hour session covered estates and trust, which are a favorite topic of mine, but the second day was a little harder for me because it was about S-Corps and Partnerships which I don't deal with enough to know. Despite that I was able to understand everything he was talking about, it was simply over my head as far as complexity was concerned.
In the evenings I wrote (re-wrote) the first 132 pages of my third book. It was fun. This book has been a lot harder to write because I have to continually reference the other two to make sure I'm using my facts and names correctly, and to verify that my timeline is accurate.

All in all we're loving life and thoroughly enjoying ourselves.
We also started the application process for foster care/adoption here in Idaho. Despite my initial desire to wait until Jason graduated I've found myself yearning more and more for a sister or brother for Alisabeth. When we were first married we told ourselves that we would leave all of this up in God's hands and let him decide what was best for our family. In the last few weeks we've had several experiences which have pushed us in this direction. It will be an interesting road. The program here in Idaho is extremely different from what we did in Arizona (for fiscal and governance policy at least) but we'll just have to wait and see. If you want to keep us in your prayers we'd appreciate it.
Winter approaches soon, and we haven't had an accident in nearly a year. . . will we break the pattern? We shall see.