I've actually found that lip-synching isn't so bad! It actually does a lot of help to save your key mouth frames-you know, the big round O's or the gritted-teeth N's, and then tween into them. Try animating lip-synching to audio clips, it's honestly not too bad when you hear the phoenetics frame by frame.
But hey, I'm glad to see you guys are still doing more animations! I tell you, making your pictures move is one of the best ways to make your artwork stand out. People just love to stare at animations.