I am doing well with my pregnancy. She is moving around all the time. Feeling her move is one of my favorite parts of being pregnant. I told my nephews, Tyler and Casey that I am pregnant. They are seven and understood about being pregnant although we did have a longer discussion on how the doctor knew that the baby was a girl. Lots of people ask if we have names in mind. I bought a 1001 baby name book and so far no real progress. We talked about it for maybe a week or two and then other things started getting busy and we have not returned to the name discussion. I painted (wearing a respirator of course) the baby's room. I scare the crap out of Buddy when I wear my respirator. He is such a sissy for a pit bull. He runs away from me like he doesn't know it is me. He also is freaked out by me if I have a towel wrapped around my hair from the shower. Poor dog has such a hard life. Since I painted the baby's room, I had to move my office out into the dining room. My wireless connection is not consistent so I drag my network cord down the hallway. It is a disaster waiting to happen. Eventually I plan to move back into Todd's office, but we need to figure out what to do with all the stuff that was put in there that used to be in the baby's room. It is hard to live without a basement, attic, garage or any nice size closets. Oh, poor us. We went swimming on Christmas day and I had to put on 36 sun block so I didn't get burned.

     It has been so dry. We haven't had any significant rain this month. The grass is all dead, the coffee trees look very thirsty and my baby cocoa plants are having a very hard time (especially since I forgot to keep them watered). Todd has used the water in our catchment tank (old pool) to water some trees and he is also working at spreading the mulch from our compost piles.

     The month of Christmas is always really busy. I put up and decorated the tree myself this year. At first Todd was a little shocked that I didn't wait for him and then he was totally fine with it. It was one less thing. We were working on some of the gardens around our house since Christmas was going to be at our house instead of going out. For the last two Christmases we went out to the Keauhou Resort with Charlie, Grace, Charlie's parents, his brother, Dennis, Una and Una's mom. It is expensive and really geared toward the meat eater. Last year the desserts weren't even that great which should be the best part of the dinner in my opinion. The last straw was when Todd got food poisoning from the dinner. So I said that is it. Everyone is invited to our house for Christmas. I made a 20 pound ham, mashed potatoes, eggplant parmesan, homemade whole wheat bread, vegetarian gravy and Charlie brought a turkey, stuffing, potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce and cheesecake. Una brought ravioli, vegetable curry and ice-cream. Kale and Anna brought a raspberry torte. Grace brought salad. I spent the whole day in the kitchen and didn't get to socialize much, but it was still fun. Everyone said they enjoyed it and I hope it was more enjoyable that Keauhou Resort. I invited dogs, so it was also BYOD, bring your own dog. Buddy and Louie got to play with Grace's dog, Pepper and Kale and Anna's dog, Chammie. They all got along well and enjoyed their doggie Christmas. At the end of the day, Todd and I were wiped out. We spent the two days before Christmas cleaning the house and I mean cleaning. Todd took every piece of furniture out of the living room. We cleaned all the windows inside and out in the living room, dining room and kitchen. We cleaned all of the woodwork, wood floors, tile floors and the bathrooms. There was no lizard poop and no dog hair (or Kim hair) to be found. Todd complains that my hair strangles our roomba. He likes to make a big deal about how he has to clean the roomba because I just let it struggle with all my hair knotted around it. He is good at cleaning it, so I just deal with his raving.

     We had one family take both apartments this month for a week. They had adult kids and were definitely into having fun. Our rental will pick up next month.

     We went camping at the beach for New Year's. It was not nearly as packed as Thanksgiving so it was more relaxing. We saw humpback whales jumping and spouting. I didn't get to see any last year. It was a nice treat. Todd got some pictures of their tails, but missed the full jumps out of the water. They were out near the horizon and still looked as large as the boats that were out near them.