The trees are up, the cookies are baked, bring on the vacation!

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat, please to put a penny in the old man’s hat.  (If you’ve no penny, a ha’penny will do – if you have no ha’penny, then God bless you.)

Sometimes I miss my high school madrigal-singing days.

Rob is working today, and I wish he weren’t.  Due to the need for some year-end work and lots of Christmas services preparation, I stayed with the fam from Thursday till last night (to work at church).  Rob came for Saturday and Sunday, but I still feel like we have some hanging out catching up to do, particularly since I’ll be spending some of next week at Grandma’s in Minnesota while he’ll be back at work.

My two online courses for the quarter ended up being merged into one, as there were only four kids in one district.  Things started off great with the four, a little rocky with the nine others, many of whom had taken classes through the organization before and were assuming they’d get 4′s (from a 1-4 grading scale) on everything they turned in.  Since these gifted students are purportedly taking my class because it offers them more of a challenge than is available in their regular classes, I have no problem maintaining rigorous standards and pushing them to excel.  And, in the final weeks of the class, I am pleased to be seeing some improvement.

So, let’s see… life.  Rob and I have been enjoying checking out housing listings sent to us by a realtor friend.  When we met with him a couple of months ago, he urged us to get a loan pre-approval right away.  We still haven’t (though I did recently talk with a loan guy at our bank), so we’ve felt a little sheepish and haven’t wanted to ask the friend to show us houses.  Silly, we know, but there you have it.  Instead, we’ve driven by a couple we thought would be interesting and have creepily walked around and peered in through the windows.  (We’re pretty sure all the houses are unoccupied…)  Even in our pre-pre stages, we’ve gotten attached to a couple of houses that have been bought, which is sad but also good, because we know there will be other nice houses out there.  It’ll be super if we find something soon that will allow us to take advantage of both the low winter prices and the government tax credit.  But if not, it won’t be the end of the world.

I was lucky to be able to have breakfast with a friend from Hawaii on Monday.  We were at college together, and she’s been teaching band back in Hawaii since graduating.  It’s hard to believe graduation was about 2 1/2 years ago.  I’m so old!  (I like writing things like that every now and then to make my future self hate me.)

All the driving back and forth has gotten to be a strain, so I bid farewell to my choir after our concert in early December.  Singing with them has been great.  Who knows, perhaps I’ll be back someday, or at least find a different group to join.  For now, the extra time is welcome.

I’ve been thinking about trying to find a closer job as well, but an obstacle to turning on the hunt engines full steam is my somewhat illogical loyalty to my summer camp job.  Who knew – many jobs don’t get the summer off!  Growing up with a college professor father has skewed my perception of The Way Things Should Be.  I am scheduled to teach online for the next couple of quarters as well, so I might sort of spin my wheels until August, at which point “real life” might begin.  Incidentally, I always feel like I am putting off real life – like there’s always some goal in the future that is supposed to launch it, but surpassing those goals doesn’t end up making me feel any more grown up.

I’m excited for Christmas!  I think Rob and I are most looking forward to giving each other the gifts that we’ve made.  Yay.

And now for some pictures.

Rob gave me a PowerPoint presentation about why it would be a good idea to buy parts and make a new computer.  The presentation included lots of technical info, but also…

…explained things in terms I could understand.    The result of his labors:

New computer!

We raked a lot of leaves this fall.

Veterans Day – Rob didn’t have to work, we went walking and saw a bunch of crazy trees.

Mom gave us a mini bottle of champagne for our mini (6 month) anniversary.

Rob’s work gave everyone some very fancy chocolates for Christmas.  These babies are hand-painted and delicioso.

And finally, a plea from the box that held a commemorative edition of a movie (a Christmas gift for Rob’s dad): “Please remove the contents of this carton prior to displaying on store shelf.”  You have to wonder what prompted the company’s decision to print that request on every box.

Merry Christmas!

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