Year in Review 2009

Our 2009 started out with a bang! Just after Eric passed his PhD Candidacy exam, we took a winter vacation and met Robyn's sister's family in Orlando. We stayed at a great resort with pools, a lazy river and waterslide; went to Disney's Magic Kingdom; shopped and played at Downtown Disney; and drove out to Cocoa Beach.



Even though the weather was COLD for Florida, it was better than being in Columbus in January!


In February Robyn turned 29.



In March Eric was scheduled to go to Louisiana on a tour of Shell Oil Company for Spring break. Jolie ended up getting sick and throwing up all night the day before the departure day. Eric had to make a critical decision about his career right then: he is NOT going into the oil industry as a geologist. He chose academia, and will be looking for a teaching career after he finishes school and a post-doctoral position. Spring Break was much better than it could have been for the whole family! Robyn had enlisted her sister to come out and help with the kids during the week, so she ended up coming on vacation and we all enjoyed some time together.


That Spring Break brought the joys of watching "Twilight" with the commentary. We highly recommend it! :)

In April we attended our first Duckling Day for Easter weekend at the city library. After an Easter egg "dash" (there was NO hunting going on), the kids dressed up as ducks for a parade around the library just like the ducks in the book "Make Way For Ducklings." It was Jolie's 2nd birthday that same weekend, and we celebrated with a princess castle cake, along with all the Easter candy Sunday morning.


In May Robyn gave a recital with an oboe friend from BYU who moved to Columbus. Robyn's parents were coming out and were able to be there.

(Celebrating with frozen custard after the recital.)

Then we moved out of the apartment we had lived in since moving to Columbus 5 years ago, stored our belongings and headed out west for Eric's internship in Richland, Washington at Battelle's Pacific Northwest National Lab. We stayed with family on the way and had a great stay in Orem before heading to Washington. We moved into Eric's cousins's apartment in Pasco and loved getting to spend time with her and her daughter just Mierae's age! Eric had lots of family in the area, and we couldn't have been in a better place for an internship--cousins in our ward at Church and instant playmates for the kids. It was the best!

In June we celebrated Mierae's 4th birthday. She shared her special day with Eric on Father's Day, but got another celebration Monday with the Barbie cake she'd been asking for for months. That day we also went with Grandma Taylor to the Oquirrh Mountain Temple open house.





We had a great time at our Taylor family reunion. It was the first time since our wedding we had been with Eric's whole family.



After the reunion, back in Washington, we got back to swimming everyday, going to parks, and boating. The girls also learned the joy of "make-kuk," especially "chopstick."


The girls went to bed faithfully at 7:00 each night (Jolie decided to give up naps when we moved there), so Eric and Robyn got to watch a lot of TV shows on DVD (we recommend "Pushing Daisies," "Chuck," and "Psych"). :)

July brought an Independence Day celebration with even more cousins in Moses Lake and a day-trip Seattle. We had a great time in Seattle at the aquarium, on a harbor tour, walking down Pike's Place and eating fried seafood. Smelling all the cigarette smoke, the dead fish and BO brought us right back to Russia and Ukraine. :)



Another highlight of our time was seeing "Up" in 3D as a family.


We were lucky enough to spend the first week of August in Orem before heading back to Ohio. We finally got to check out Thanksgiving Point's dinosaur museum, and made our traditional trek to BYU for donuts and chocolate milk. :) On our way back to Columbus, we camped for the second time as a family, and this time was just as wet. We couldn't believe that at our reunion in Capitol Reef we got soaked and in Kansas we were sleeping in sweat.


The girls loved their late afternoon swim in the nearby reservoir, but we were happy to leave and get an air-conditioned hotel the next night in St. Louis. We had a blast the next morning at the St. Louis Zoo before making it back to Ohio. The rest of August was spent readjusting to humidity and our new townhouse. But we did make time before the school year to play in fountains and go swimming with friends.


In September our little girl started preschool.


Mierae was so scared over the summer when we spoke to her about going to school, but after visiting the school and meeting her teacher she was excited. Since that first day she has loved school. Sometimes we think she loves school so much because we are too boring for her at home. But then other days she has no desire to go to school. Is 4 the magical age when we all start asking our parents: "Do I have to go to school?" Jolie would gladly go in her place. Every time we take Mierae to school, Jolie wants to stay. She has also begun announcing each morning that she has to "go to work," and when I ask her why she needs something she gets into, the answer is always, "it's for my work."

Mierae is learning to write and enjoys learning new words and their meanings. One day we were talking about a new Barbie movie she saw a preview for, "The Barbie Diaries." She asked what a diary was and later on proudly repeated the name of the show, "The Barbie diarrhea!" We'll keep working on vocab!

Because we enjoyed our Seattle day-trip in July, we decided to make another big city trip to Chicago in October. Several of the attractions offer free admission, so we went over Columbus Day weekend. We went to the zoo, the aquarium, the planetarium, and had some great deep dish pizza! With the cold settling in this month, all three girls in the family got sick, and trick-or-treating was a brief, albeit magical, evening event. Eric ended up running our ward party all alone as the rest of us sickies stayed home and missed out on all the fun. Eric did a fabulous job on the girls' costumes, so at least they got to wear them once, even if it was for less than an hour.


Eric turned 30 in November!! Only humble celebrations were to be had because of all the sickness, but we squeezed in the usual Coldstone trip, a lunch at the mall, and a week later had a child-less trip to get frozen custard.


Robyn's cousin had just moved to Michigan, so we spent Thanksgiving there with them and Robyn's sister from Cincinnati. We were happy that there was an IKEA just outside Detroit to visit on our way home on Black Friday!

December thus far been filled with indecisiveness as we kept changing our minds about heading to Utah for family Christmas celebrations in mountain cabins and lodges. Alas, we stayed in Ohio and tried our best not to be sad. We have had some fun times already this month, though, after seeing "New Moon" and "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs." But the real feeling of Christmas has come to us as Mierae has proudly and lovingly given us a gift she made at Preschool and Jolie has gently held the baby Jesus from our Nativity. We hope you all have found joy and the Spirit of Christ this season.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!