Keal Family Letter, December 2006

Hello Family and Friends. Happy December to you all.


Christmas time is here! We just got our Christmas tree the other day, and we've put lights on it, and we've set up our nativity scene. We even had snow flurries on Tuesday (the 5th)! We haven't yet put ornaments on the tree, because we... um... because we can't find them! :-) We've been doing some re-organizing in the attic, and things got moved and we currently can't find our Christmas tree ornaments. Don't worry we'll find them, it's just a little funny.

Part of the reorganizing that we're doing in the attic is because we are planning to finish the attic in the next year or so. At some point, Thea and Cirdan are going to need separate rooms. So the plan is that we will finish the attic (leaving cubby-holes in the eaves for storage) and then the attic will be the kids bedroom and playroom. I will then move my studio into what is currently the kid's room, which will be very nice. The room my studio is currently in, is a 9 foot by 9 foot room, just barely big enough for what I have in it. I recently recorded a our 7 part men's A Cappella group in that room, and it was a bit cozy.

The current kid's room (my future studio) is a 15 foot by 12 foot room, which will greatly increase what I will be able to do as a recording studio.
The attic is a 21 foot by 13 foot room, which will be great as a kid's bedroom/playroom. It will also be further from the living room which means that we won't keep the kids awake when we're having meetings, or watching movies.
The room my current studio is in will then become another kid's room, once Thea and Cirdan need separate rooms. Hopefully at that point, one of them will WANT a small 9X9 room!
So those are our renovation plans for the coming year.

Thea and Cirdan have been enjoying the Christmas preparations. Just last night we took them to see the Christmas Village in Bernville PA, which is about 30 minutes from our house. It's sort of like a Christmas Amusement Park for kids. It's the size of a small park, and everything is covered with christmas lights. There are fun little houses with Christmas scenes inside, and Christmas music playing everywhere you go. As an adult, it's a little cheesy, but the kids just ate it up. At the entrance/exit there were two adults dressed in a Christmas Mouse, and Christmas Bear costumes. Thea, and especially Cirdan loved these "people." It was hard to drag Cirdan away, because he kept wanting to wave to them. Both Thea and Cirdan have really gotten into puppets lately. Sometimes I think that if I really want the kids to listen to me, I just have to put a puppet on my hand, and they're all ears.

In a way, entering December feels less stressful than November was. I hope that feeling continues through Christmas. November was full of things like: Getting my new album "Peace of Heaven" done, doing the Bryn Athyn Craft Sale, finishing the Kempton New Church Men's A Cappella album, and then preparing for the Whisperings Concert on December 1st. Now it's just time for Christmas.

The Whisperings concert went fairly well. Because of how the concert flows, the order of artists on the playlist generally goes from least experienced to most experienced. I was the least experienced of all the artists, so I went first. Which in some ways is nice, and in other ways is not. I was very nervous, so I ended up screwing up the first piece that I played. The rest of the concert went better, but it was hard to let go of that rough beginning. All the other artists were very comforting, and told me all their horror stories of messing up in concerts. The more time I have away from the concert, the less I feel bad about it, but it was definitely not how I wanted my first Whisperings Concert to go. But I got to hang out with David Nevue, Greg Maroney, Michael Dulin, and Gary Girouard, who are all great guys, and wonderful pianists. After the concert, Tirah and I went out for coffee with David Nevue, Gary Girouard and his wife. It was lots of fun.

We have two more Marriage Support Group meetings for this group. Sometime next year we'll start it up again, with new people, on a different day of the week. Tirah and I will also be leading a workshop at the Caring For Marriage Conference in Bryn Athyn in February 2007. Our topic will be Marriage and Depression. We are looking forward to finally (hopefully) getting to go to this conference.

We've finally gotten back to a good date night routine. Every other Wednesday night is now date night. It's great to have it set up like that, because it's amazing how - even thought marriage is such a high priority for us - regular maintenance like dates nights often takes a back seat to lower-priority/more-pressing things like getting new tires!

Tirah has vacation time coming up! We're thinking that we might take it sometime in early 2007. We are still trying to figure out what we want to do. We haven't been on vacation since 2002!

We had a very nice Thanksgiving at Peter and Roxanne's new house above Leaser Lake. And we look forward to a very nice quiet family Christmas. Merry Christmas to all of you. May the Lord's peace on earth fill your hearts, and last the whole next year!

Love from,
Solomon, Tirah, Thea, and Cirdan.