Our Top Ten for 2010

Here it is again...It's New Year's, time to remember the last year, the good, the bad, and the other stuff! (Here's a look at last New Year's post where you can tell I had no clue what 2010 had in store for us!)
1. This is a no-brainer - we moved across the country! Goodbye to Georgia, our home for two years,and hello to California. We now live 2 miles from where we moved from two years ago! We miss friends in Georgia and our family in the South but we've enjoyed reconnecting with old friends and having quality time with the family we do have here in California.
2. Andrew got a new job, a job he is really happy about, with Samsung Electro-Mechanics (and yes, he does get an employee discount, and yes, it extends to friends and family.) This new job has already included two trips to Korea, as well as travel all over the United States. Fortunately, when he's in town, he's only a few miles away and even makes it home for lunch on occasion.
3. Andrew and I were apart for the longest time since the day we met. Andrew's hiring was rather sudden so the rest of the family stayed behind to pack up the house and then to sell the house while Andrew moved to California and began his job. He lived with friends (thank you Harris family and Hobbs family!) His new boss was kind and found a reason to fly him to Georgia right around the 4th of July weekend so after 5 weeks apart (5 weeks that included Jocelyn and Beth's birthdays!), we were able to spend a long weekend together. We then had to wait three more weeks before finally driving across the country together and moving into our new condo as a family.
4. I did not want to live alone in a house with four children and a dog while trying to sell it so I depended on the kindness of family and lived in North Carolina with both my sister and Andrew's sister. This was great for the kids. They had so much quality time with cousins. It was a horribly hot summer but they managed to entertain each other, and amazingly when we left both houses were still standing. It really was crazy at times but I feel truly blessed to have had that experience with both the Burns' family and the Longs' family. Thank you for having us! Oh, and did I mention we brought a dog with us...and left her there? Yep, the Burns' family adopted Cocoa. We miss her, miss having a pet, but are thrilled that we'll get to visit her!
5. Swim lessons this fall mean I have only one non-swimmer now, woo hoo! We will continue lessons this spring to build endurance and confidence but watching Beth finally face her fear and conquer the water was a beautiful thing to experience, a major highlight for my year.
(She's much better than this video but this was shot the day she first did it!) There were other extracurricular lessons. Beth and Adam started gymnastics, and Jason started piano lessons. They have all been quite successful and are continuing in January! I truly look forward to seeing them each advance in these skills.
6. I don't want to remember but it was part of our year...I grabbed a swinging door and broke my ring finger last January. I'm still in the process of healing (hoping 2011 and a new doctor will help) and still have cut wedding and engagement rings waiting in a safe place to be returned to my finger. Enough of that memory, on to more fun...
7. Snow! We got snow in Georgia multiple times and even enjoyed a week in Virginia with cousins during a huge snowstorm. There was so much snow fun last winter!
8. We have a new baby niece - Selah Grace Elonen. Her coming arrival made leaving Georgia extra hard, and we can't wait to meet her next year! Fortunately for me, she's small so hopefully I can cuddle her at a year and pretend that she's still a newborn :)
...Speaking of babies, I have to add a side note just for me - a top ten event would be the witness of my friend, Stefanie's, home birth. I feel so privileged to have shared in the experience of welcoming Malachi into the world! Thank you, Stefanie!
9. We said goodbye to our Georgia church family, and that was hard, but we also got to say hello again to our California church family. It's amusing being the new people at a church we've attended for 10 years (minus the last two :) but God is good and takes care of us wherever we are!
10. Our last top ten event isn't really a new event but I need to remember the importance of it. We have homeschooled for another year and are going strong! (picture is our first day of school)I now have two readers and am watching Adam begin to understand letters and how they form words. I've learned American history right along side my children. Jason's reading is so out of hand that we may start taking books away from him! We've been on field trips to rock quarries, state parks, Sea World, zoos, state capital buildings, and more. I feel so blessed that I have the freedom to teach my children and to experience all of these amazing learning moments with them. I look forward to many years of new moments and adventures.
So what will 2011 bring? We're hoping for a trip to North Carolina to meet a new baby Long (due early June). We will start considering what to do regarding our housing (to buy or not to buy, that is the question). But otherwise, I'm looking forward to many board games, good books, fun field trips, time at the pool, learning moments, and lots of giggles.Happy New Year from the Skellys in California!