Fast away the old year passes

I haven't posted recently, but I've been busy with holiday "fun" and with trying to rescue our home from a semester's worth of neglect.

I ended the semester with an A in Stats and a B in Theory. At least I finally got the damn B out of the way. I hated that I got it though. It all came down to lack of time to prepare a paper and the choice to just submit what I had. All the rest of my papers were fairly high As, but that one paper just sunk me. Oh well... I survived the semester!

Dad's wreck happened about 3 weeks before classes started and I traveled to Bama twice since classes began. I also went to a conference in Canada and for a well deserved trip to see my good friends in Maryland. I don't know that I've had a semester with THAT much travel ever!

Christmas was fairly uneventful. I was feeling guilty at not going to Mom's, but it turned out that Chloe had spilled the beans anyway at Thanksgiving! Oops!

Thanksgiving was pretty much a big bummer, so we really needed to go to Dallas so the kids could see cousins and have a normal Christmas. We had the same usual inlaw drama. Tom's brother lost his job, Tom's stepbrother was ignoring his son (but at least I got to see his son who usually lives in Florida - that was a wonderful surprise!). My mother in law was so stressed that she was no fun at all (despite everyone's offers for help which were shot down), and Tom's stepdad was his usual rude self. At least Tom's grandmother was pleasant and I got to see his other grandmother (Granny) who is one of my favorite people in the world! I also got to meet my brand new nephew and I got to hold him a lot. There's nothing like holding a sweet baby!!! (And yes, I really miss NICU sometimes!)

Another fun thing was going back to our old church. We hadn't been there in years and I got to see a few people who I literally grew up with. Mom had sent a special message for the Griggs family, so I was really happy to see them. Going through what we've had with Dad this year, it's been amazing to see how some people have just embraced us with love.

Part of the fun of going back to our church was playing guess who the kids are. There were so many teens running around. Thankfully their parents looked just the same, but I really felt old hearing that some were already in college!

I've missed posting a lot:
Our church did Little Bethlehem again, and we had a blast even though it was FREEZING outside! The kids got mini camcorders from Santa and they've been hard at work documenting all of our embarrassing moments.