Pippi Crawls and Peek-a-boos!

Here is a video of Pippi crawling. She has been crawling for about 3 weeks now, but the video is still amazing! It's so great to see her learn and develop. Watch her go!




And I thought you might enjoy some Peek-a-boo pictures. She just learned how and instead of covering her eyes, she prefers to cover her ears. Cute!

Rock-tober!

Hello Friends and Family!

It’s been soooo long since we’ve written and put pictures on this blog, and for that we are sorry! Of course we are busy, but what’s new? Winter has already set in here, with scraping the “windscreen” every morning and freezing all the way to work. We’re all three well into our coats, scarves, hats and mittens!

While we are busy with day-to-day life, nothing major has happened for awhile in the Suel’s lives…no trips recently for once! We’re saving up now (with the credit crunch, it’s hard!) for the big trip home…but more about that later.

Firstly, I’ll start with an update on Jason. Work at 2XL is going really well for him. The company is expanding, and he’s gotten a promotion this month! His new title is Theatre and Education Manager. Fancy, eh? He works hard, though, and has earned it. He is still going into local schools doing drama with the kids, and educating them at the same time (on issues like sex ed, alcohol and drug abuse, and bullying). It’s a perfect fit for him. We see kids all over town when we’re out, yelling, “Jason!”. They are always so excited to see him and point him out to their moms and dads. It’s cool. Also, he just completed the Cardiff Half Marathon last weekend, with his best time yet: 1:43. He was so pleased. (He was aiming for 1:50!) Jason is still leading worship on Sunday mornings, and also doing various puppet and drama skits (we’ve just had some teenagers around with their furry monster puppets practicing, with Pippi loving it!). Jason and I are both doing a Bible study right now, looking at the book of Romans. We take turns each week: Girls one week, and boys the next. It works for all of us couples who have kids. But since we are all doing the same study, us couples can talk about it in between.

As for me, my work is super busy. I only work 4 days a week now since Pippi’s come along, but I actually just do 5 days of work in 4 now. It’s a little crazy. One of the groups I created 2 years ago, a Carer’s Education Group for carers of people with dementia, has started up again last week. It’s our 5th time to run the group, and this is our biggest yet with 19 carers attending. It’s a big success, and I do love having a group to facilitate each week. As for the rest of my work week, I am constantly dealing with crises in my patient’s lives; for example, 2 weeks ago, on the Monday one of my patients with dementia flooded her house, and on the Friday, another lady with dementia caught her stove on fire…it really never ends! I do love my job, though, even with the craziness and busyness of it. Most of my patients are really just very sweet old people who need to “have a chat” with me over a cup of tea about their mental health and well-being. I did just have a big night last week, when I gave a talk about “Coping with Stress” to 71 people at an Alzheimer’s Society Event. It was really nice. The other thing I’m working on is making Pippi’s babyfood myself. It’s so much cheaper and better for her due to her food allergies. Since we’re also using cloth diapers, we feel so domestic and “green”!

As for little Pippi, she turned 9 months old last week! She is aaaaalmost crawling, but not quite! She has finally gotten the hang of solids, and is eating more regularly now (we have been struggling with this for months!). She still hasn’t got any teeth, and no signs of them either! Her skin is still doing really well, so she is sleeping a lot of nights through (praise the Lord!). She is generally a really happy baby, and just smiles and laughs all the time. Her favorite things to do now are: being outside in the sling or baby-carrier, swinging, clapping, being tickled in her tummy, shaking her bell toy at Miss Heather’s, singing, saying “ogle-dy, ogle-dy, ogle-dy”, looking at herself in the mirror (this is the ultimate!), having a bath, eating finger foods (rather than being spoon-fed), and playing with mommy and daddy on their bed. We’ve got an appointment with a dietician in 2 weeks who is going to help me get Pippi on a balanced diet with no dairy (due to her allergies).

As for the big question most of you are wondering about, yes, we are still looking to move “home” in the near future. Our original plan was New-year-ish, but that looks to be moved back a little. That is because Jason has his resume and CV out to a couple of places, but not much has happened on the job front. As most of you know, we are going back once Jason has found an appropriate job (full-time, good pay, theatre-focussed, what he wants). We are not happy to just take anything just to get back to the US. We’ll wait until something comes up that is worth moving for. That’s because we have no dates to be out of here by, and because we both adore our jobs here. It’s hard to leave a perfect job for a crappy one just because it’s in the right area. Thank you to all of you who gave Jason information earlier. He has or is looking into all of it. That is not to say we are done accepting ideas!! Anything you’ve got, we’ll take! Ideally we would like to live closer to our families, but realistically, we’ll take the best job! So we’re still on the hunt, and we still need your prayers and support and help in this.

We will be traveling to the Lake District at the beginning of December for a much needed break. This is one of the places we have always wanted to go to in the UK and we are so excited to have the opportunity. Our great friends Claire and Jez will be going with us! So, we will be sure to let you know how that goes.

I suppose that is all that’s happening here. Pippi was a chicken for Halloween and she was very cute, as you can see here!
Love to you all,

Jason, Sarah, and Pippi