Dear friends and family,

This last year has been quite the adventure. A year ago, Jaimie was in her second trimester, I worked for Northrop Grumman, and we were planning on starting seminary in August. Today, Elayne Kaylee Krycho is almost 7 months old, I work for a wonderful little company called Quest Consultants, and we’re still in Norman, Oklahoma – but not for much longer!

The little one

Elayne Kaylee Krycho was born on May 27, 2012. (Yes, that is a lot of y’s in her name! Hopefully she’ll enjoy all the loops when she starts writing in a few years.) She’s now almost 7 months old, which is hard to believe. Watching her grow and learn is one of the most remarkable and fascinating experiences of my life. As all of you who are parents yourselves will no doubt understand, it’s strange how gradually and yet how quickly she changes and learns and grows. Six months ago, she couldn’t do much more than sleep and eat. Now? Look out world; here comes Ellie.

It fascinates that we can already see personality emerging. Soon, we’ll see real language starting to emerge; she already makes a wide range of (adorable) noises. Of course, she also learned to whine a few weeks ago, alas. So it goes!

We’re incredibly excited to see her continue to grow in the year ahead. As she comes into increasingly verbal territory, we’ll have the challenges associated with discipline, but we’ll also have the delight of communicating much more to her. Jaimie and I are especially excited to start helping her understand the gospel, to see how Jesus Christ’s life and death and resurrection transform everything, to build her life on the only firm foundation and to orient her existence on the one she was made for: God. That’s a heavy responsibility, but it’s also one of the most exciting opportunities I can imagine.

Some fun Ellie facts:

• Like her mother, she was and is quite petite. Her proportions, from day one, have been amusing; at her last checkup she was in the 10th percentile for weight, the 26th percentile for length, and the 56th percentile for height.
• She has now entered the phase where “I can reach that” means “That belongs in my mouth.” Combined with her adroit rolling – which, to our mingled delight and chagrin, she started early – this means that nothing within 8 inches of the floor is remotely safe. Let the baby-proofing begin!
• She loves – loves – other little kids. Obviously she can’t verbalize her thoughts yet, but watching her, it’s as if she is thinking, “Oh, look! Another person my size! Hooray!”

There are some fun little ways that she seems to be a lot like her mom already:

• She’s a people-watcher. Whenever she’s out and about, she will usually just sit quietly and observe all the people walking by.
• She is a bit of an introvert: while she enjoys people, if she spends too much time in groups, she gets tired and then crashes hard when we get home.
• When she’s tired, she likes it quiet – no music. This is very different from me; I find music soothing and relaxing when I’m tired.

We’re moving!

Last time I sent one of these letters, we planned to move to Wake Forest, North Carolina in August. Attentive envelope readers will have noted that our address is still in Norman – but not for much longer.

We decided early last year, after thinking about a number of different things – from finances to friendships – to wait to move to North Carolina for me to start my seminary studies until this time. It wasn’t a particularly happy decision; at least, it wasn’t for me: spending more time in Oklahoma was not exactly high on my list of things I wanted to do. But it has proven to be a really excellent decision. In particular, Jaimie has had a good deal more time to adjust to being a mom while having her very close friends around her. I’ve also been able to continue playing piano for our church – an important need to fill, since our other pianist was out of town from April through October!

But now we are good and ready to move. As of December 31st, we will be out of our current apartment, and we’ll drive away on January 1st. Classes start in late January, and I’ll spend the next three years or so studying theology, Biblical languages, church history, and more. Since these are some of my passions anyway, I’m very excited about the time ahead. Where we’ll go after that? Well, we have a few ideas, but only God really knows. Most of all we simply want to live in such a way, wherever we are, that people supremely love Jesus Christ and learn to care deeply for his church.

Food on the table

In the meantime I will keep working as a software developer and Jaimie will continue pursuing her career as a writer.

Jaimie’s writing

My dear wife’s writing career is progressing quite nicely – even though she sometimes doesn’t think so. She finished the second draft of her first novel a few months ago, and after taking a short break, she started querying agents to see if any are interested in representing her to a publisher. (The publishing process is complicated!) She got her first rejection late in November, but another agent has already expressed interest since then. That’s a great start.

She has also been working on some serial fiction at her website, an ongoing story called “Bloodlines of Epheria”. You can visit her site at jaimiekrycho.com, and you can read the story at jaimiekrycho.com/bloodlines. While I really enjoyed her novel – I got to be one of the beta readers – I think “Bloodlines of Epheria” is even better, and I’m excited to see how the rest of it goes. (No, she hasn’t told me the ending. I’m as much in suspense as everyone else!)

In addition, Jaimie has her first professional voice-acting gig with Dynamic Ram Audio Productions. She’s recording a novella one of her professors wrote – putting her vocal and acting talents to good use whenever she can squeak out the time. What with Ellie growing like crazy and all the other things we’ve had on our plate, I’m impressed that she’s had time for it at all.

My software development

This has been a fun year for me. I started working as a part-time web development consultant, and have gotten to knock out some fairly significant projects. One of my favorites was a new interface for a university weather station that makes its data publically available easily. Another neat project was developing both the public display and the administration tools for the Oklahoma Medical Board’s new continuing medical education site.

In May, God blessed me with a new full-time employer. This was an enormous weight off my back. While I was very grateful to have my previous job, I was not exactly fond of my previous employer – to put it mildly. My new employer has been enormously better in every way. I have lots of interesting work to do; the company has 12 employees instead of 120,000; everyone here is a hard worker who cares about doing the best they can for their customers. It’s been refreshing!

In my spare time, I also rebuilt my own website at chriskrycho.com – which you should check out if you want to get updates more than once a year – and launched Jaimie’s professional website at jaimiekrycho.com.

As for the future, that bit is still a little bit up in the air, as it turns out. I’m currently waiting to hear back from my current employer whether they want to continue to employ me as a part-time developer. Regardless of how that turns out, we are confident that God will provide with us – just as he has up through now, as we have been able to entirely get out of debt and set aside considerable money for seminary. It will be an adventure in any case!

Wrapping up

As you celebrate this Christmas, we hope your lives are joyful and peaceful. May you enjoy wonderful times with friends and family, rejoice in the world God has made, and above all delight in God himself.

—Charles Wesley