Keal Family Letter, February 2006

Hello Friends and Family! We hope you are all doing well! We seemed
to be over our month long colds, and on the mend, but now Thea has come
down with a fever and an earache, possibly and ear infection. One of
these months, we'll all be well again! Hopefully Thea will be feeling
better for her birthday party on Saturday!

Thea turns 3 tomorrow! We got a new 10 gallon aquarium for Christmas,
and we'll be giving Thea a fish for her birthday! She's really looking
forward to it. It's fun that she's gotten to the age of life where
she's capable of looking forward to her birthday!

Because we've all been sick for so long, I don't have a lot of fun
stories to tell you. But here are some:

Cirdan has become quite the little talker! He can say: dog, duck,
shock (static electricity), poopy, oopsy, happy, sad, horse, Thea,
kitty, sleeping, nap, blanket, piano, hands, knee, feet, Meema
(Grandmother), Deeda (Grandfather), sit (although unfortunately it
comes out sounding more like a swear word), food, drink, sippy cup,
pizza, hot, yeehaw, and so many others. He can also put together
small two-word sentences. He will point at my mom's chair and say
"Meema, sit?" Or he will point at Thea in her crib and say, "Thea,
sleeping?"

Cirdan is getting old enough that he and Thea can play together a
little bit. In good moods they will happily chase each other around
the house for minutes at a time! They also still really enjoy reading
books. Tirah made these wonderful cloth books for their Christmas
presents. They love them!

Thea's latest favorite toy is a little furry kitten that she got for
Christmas. This Kitty goes everywhere with her. One of her favorite
things to do with Kitty is to feed him. The other day I saw Kitty
sitting in his little toy highchair. On the high chair tray Thea had
put... I kid you not... a little toy bird and a little toy mouse! I
think from Thea's point of view these were either "friends" or "toys"
for the Kitty to play with. As appropriate as it may have seemed, I
don't think she intended for them to be "food" for the Kitty!

While Thea and Cirdan can sometimes play nicely together, they more
often cannot. I feel like I spend most of my time breaking up fights.
Sometimes I think to myself that this must be how God feels
sometimes: "I turn around for one second, and My kids are fighting over
some stupid thing!"

I've always been fascinated by the nature of parenthood being
representative of the Lord. There are so many ways that we, as
parents for our children, represent God as Parent of humanity. But
the other day I had the opposite epiphany. It was Sunday, just after
listening to a sermon about how God is in control of our lives, not us.
I remember thinking how obvious that can sometimes be as a parent!
Though we may represent God for our children, we cannot replace Him!
For example, I didn't teach Cirdan how to have a sense of humor, or how
to listen carefully enough to learn language! In actual fact, parents
are mere observers. Our job is to make sure our kids don't die, while
the Lord turns them into adults and then angels. We as parents, don't
have ALL the responsibility, nor do we have NO responsibility. We have
just enough to be guides for our kids. It's a strange role to fill.
Both empowering and humbling.

Tirah is still settling into her job at Jo-Ann Fabrics. Though she
probably won't admit it, I know that she's doing a wonderful job at
what is a very challenging role. Jo-Ann Fabrics has a system called
Cut-Above. It's a system of awards that can be given to any employee
that goes above and beyond, or just really does their job well. After
just 7 months on the job, Tirah has been given 5 Cut-Above awards for
an excellent job done! The awards are these little Scissor pins that
she can pin to her Jo-Ann T-shirt. After 10 Cut-Above awards, an
employee will be given a gold pin.

In January, Tirah's Jo-Ann store had their Christmas party (there
wasn't time during the Christmas season!). I was able to go with her
to the Christmas party. It was fun to meet her co-workers. She's
developing some nice friendships there. One of the challenges for
her, at work, is finding common ground with her co-workers. Aside from
the obvious love of sewing and crafts, many of her co-workers are
either career oriented, or just don't hold a love of family and
marriage to be of very high value, which makes it hard for Tirah.
But, I believe that she has become a good influence in her Jo-Ann
store. Someone who stands for doing her job justly, honestly and
faithfully. Someone who holds customer service to be more important
than monetary gain. And someone that seeks to have good relationships
with everyone around her.

We've finally gotten back to a good routine again, after sickness and
holidays. We're working on a schedule that's flexible enough to
accommodate Tirah's work schedule, while rigid enough to include
everything that is important in our lives, and also gives Tirah
something stable to come home to. We're getting back into weekly date
nights, and back into limiting ourselves to only a weekly movie/TV
night. We're working on making sure that I get at least 20 hours of
music work in per week, while also having time for household chores,
making dinners, and of course my normal parental duties. I think it
will work well.

One of Tirah's new crafty projects is that she's working on re-covering
our living room couch and chairs. I think it will look really nice!
This summer, we will be re-painting and re-flooring the kitchen, thanks
to a very generous Christmas gift.

Some of the things we are looking forward to this year: Tirah and I
will be going to the Marriage Conference in Bryn Athyn, which will be
some wonderful attention for our marriage, as well as some nice
time-off. We are hoping to be able to make it out to Ohio for Easter.
And we are planning a long weekend at Lake Wallenpaupack for our 5th
anniversary in June! Tirah has now worked long enough to earn some
payed time off, which will allow us to do many of these things!

This Sunday is the Superbowl! I'm not normally a huge football fan.
I like watching football. I even watched Monday Night Football on a
fairly regular basis for a while. But I have to admit that I'm a
pretty big Steelers fan. The Steelers (for those that don't know) are
the football team from Pittsburgh PA, where I spent my early childhood.
Once it gets in your blood, it never leaves. I live closer to
Philadelphia Eagles territory, but I'm a Steelers fan through and
through. Well, the Steelers made it to the Superbowl this year! They
were only the sixth seed team, and they beat the number one team! It's
all very exciting! Because of scheduling issues, transportation
issues, and parental duties, I may only get to see the last half of the
Superbowl live, but it will be fun anyway.

My music business continues to move steadily along. I recently
finished doing a financial report for the business for the year of
2005. I'm happy to say that my little business was in the black after
it's first year! There are many projects and plans for this year,
which you can hear about in my music newsletter.

I hope you all have a wonderful February! I wish you all the Lord's
peace.

Love, Solomon, Tirah, Thea and Cirdan Keal.