the whitings

Hey everyone,

Sorry for the late news from us, but life has been very busy with us here in Bloomington.

I (Justin) just had a major presentation for my program last week and while the presentation was great, I still have a lot to improve on for my research skills so needless to say it is looking like we will be in Bloomington for 2-3 more years, not the 1-2 that we were kind of hoping for.  But I know that in the long run, this will be very good for me and give me extra opportunities to really develop myself while still in grad school so it isn't a bad thing.  I am not able to go as fast as some of the other students that don't have family or church responsibilities so it is ok that it might take another year.  We really like it here, but hopefully will someday finish and get a job.

Megan had been put in as RS secretary several months ago and really like most parts of it (I was her assistant with some of the tech stuff), but recently after one of the counselors moved, she was changed to 2nd counselor.  She had really been acting as a counselor the whole time too because of lots of different issues, so it will be nice for her to focus on being the counselor to our amazing RS president.

Maggie started school at her same school she was in last year and was in a combo 1st & 2nd grade class with a teacher that we really liked.  She was loving school, but then on Friday we got a call that the Bloomington Project School, a public-charter-arts-focused-project-based school (that's a lot of hyphens!), had a kid move out and she was next on the list.  It is a lottery process to get in and we tried both years so we were very excited because it is a really cool K-8 school in a lot of ways.  But she loved her teacher so much so it has been a hard decision, but she started going to the project school and seems to like it.  It is also a combined K-1 class that is quite large, about 45 kids, but there are always 3 or 4 teachers there and in many ways the get more individual attention and she will have lots of opportunities to do cool stuff like be in plays and musicals, share artwork (they turn the whole school into an art museum at the end of the year with kids as the docents), and lots of other project based learning that we think will be awesome for her.  They still have plenty of reading, writing, and arithmetic too, and we are excited for her.  And once 1 child is in, siblings don't have to go through the lotto process, so Eva will presumably go there too.  She is reading like a champ and lost one tooth, though she already had the others in behind, so you can't even really tell.  But she was excited to loose it. It was actually quite an ordeal with trying tying dental floss to a door handle, but the floss kept popping off. We watch a fair bit of America's Funniest Videos and she really wanted to be on but eventually we just yanked it out with out hands.  Maybe next time.

Eva is a wonderful, crazy, kind of sneaky little kid.  Yesterday we were playing and reading stories and then she said that she was a "killer kitty" and that she was going to kill me and proceeded to attack.  She has a bit of sneakiness in her and she likes to tease Maggie and play jokes.  But she plays really well with Maggie and they both love Beau (a bit too much...).

Beau is moving around pretty good and should be fully crawling within the next week or so.  Oh boy...  He has finally started eating baby food but in general is about the happiest, best baby you could ever ask for.  He is pretty happy most of the time, and loves to be held by his momma.

All in all, things are plugging away and we love it here in Bloomington.  We miss you all and would love to do skype or facetime anytime with you all.

Justin and the gang.