Keal Family Letter, February 2008

Hello Friends and Family!

Happy February to you all!

Jaden will be 6 months old on Monday the 11th! Already half a year
old! Time flies when you're having fun (and kids, apparently)!

He just started teething recently, so his usually cheerful nature is
somewhat dampened lately. He has also started eating a little bit of
solid food. He's had banana, rice cereal, and we tried giving him
some sweet potato, but he screwed up his face and spat it out.
Due to the teething, we haven't made any progress in getting him to
sleep through the night, so Tirah and I are still zombies most of the
time.

Cirdan continues to be a citizen of the Imagine Nation. He has a
fascination with "bad guys." Yesterday he drew a picture of "bad
guys fighting." It consisted of a page full of brown squiggles. You
could see the action... it was pretty exciting.

Thea turned 5 on the 2nd! We have a 5 year-old!! We had a fun
time going out to Cracker Barrel for a birthday dinner. Then we came
home for cake and ice cream.

We find ourselves starting to think about Kindergarten! Currently
the options we are looking at are either the Kempton New Church
Kindergarten, or the PA Virtual Charter School, which is an online
home-schooling program run by the State. The upsides of the Kempton
Kindergarten are:
1. Thea would get a chance to learn how to interact with other kids
her age.
2. I would get several hours a week with one less kid to take care of.
3. It's a New Church school.
The upsides of the PA Virtual Charter School are:
1. It's free.
2. It's home-schooling (which Tirah and I both like).
3. We wouldn't have to worry about Thea "exploding" outside of the home.

At this point we're sort of leaning towards the Kempton Kindergarten,
despite the fact that we don't really know how we'll pay for it.

Thea continues to get better every day with her drawing skills. She
is starting to learn how to draw profiles of faces! It's very cool.

Tirah has been doing a little better lately with her Seasonal
Depression. She started taking as much Body Balance as I've been
taking, and it's really been helping. She has also been having a lot
of fun being politically active this winter. Nothing like a fun
project to get you through the winter doldrums!

Tirah is running as an alternate delegate for Pennsylvania. She has
to get at least 250 signatures from our Congressional District to be
placed on the ballot. She only has until February 12 (I think) to
get those signatures. If she gets enough she will be listed as an
alternate delegate on the PA Ballot in our district. If she gets
elected, she will then be a back-up delegate if one of the other
delegates drops out. And if that happens there's a chance she could
be going to St. Paul Minnesota in early September for the Republican
National Convention. If she does, then she will be very actively
voting for her favorite candidate. The Pennsylvania primary (along
with several other states) is really just a "beauty pageant" or a
popularity contest. When you vote in the Primary in Pennsylvania,
your vote does not actually go towards electing anybody. The
delegates are the people who do the real voting and electing.
It's pretty interesting! We'll let you know how it turns out.

I'm still struggling to find the time to work on music. Taking care
of an infant and two toddlers is definitely a full time job. But I
did manage to start constructing a sound booth for my studio this
past month. I bought some 1X2s from Lowes, and some hardware, and I
put together 8 basic panels which will form a small octagonal booth.
Tirah is helping me with velcro and fabric to line the booth. The
idea is to have an enclosed area in which a person can stand with a
microphone and sing. The fabric-lined booth will cut down on
bouncing sound waves and create a cleaner, more usable signal to use
in a recording. All of this is working towards the release of an
album of love songs by Tirah and I. My goal is to release it this
year. We'll see how it goes.

On the 2nd, I went down to Bryn Athyn for a second time to lead a
discussion group on The Secret and the Writings of Emanuel
Swedenborg. Once again, it was a fun group, and they've asked me to
come back a third time on the first of March. If you're interested,
you can read my notes here: http://thesecretofheaven.blogspot.com

Tirah has had several "snow days" in the past couple weeks. Although
they were odd snow days. The weather was such that Hawk Mountain
was iced over, but down here in the valley there was only rain. It
was very strange for Tirah to be home on a "snow day" with no snow in
site, and no reason to be stuck in our house. On one of the days we
were glad to be able to get to church, which we aren't able to do
very often since Tirah works on Sundays.

Tirah and I were given a bread machine for Christmas, and so this
past month we never bought one loaf of bread... it was all home-
made! The smell of home-made bread filling the house every couple
of days is yet another thing to put a smile on our faces in this
dreary time of year.

This weekend we head down to Bryn Athyn for the Parenting Conference
(http://www.caringformarriage.org). We'll be taking all the kids
with us (unlike the previous year's Marriage Conference), and we'll
also be performing as an entire family on Saturday night! (If all
goes well....)

That's all for now folks!

I hope you have a wonderful February!

Love from,

Solomon (30), Tirah (almost 28), Thea (5), Cirdan (3 and 1/2), and
Jaden (almost 6 months)