Where'd my Winter Break Go?

Alas!  Less than six hours of Winter Break left, and I didn't manage to make a dent in the list of stuff that I wanted to get done this break!  That's not to say that is wasn't a good break - I did get several things finished, and I had a nice time with family, I just wish it could be a little longer! 

Putting up a blog post before the end of the year was one of the things on the list, and it didn't get done.  I am a bit disappointed in myself as a blogger, having not posted anything since October.  And I signed up for blog statistics about six months ago, which lets me know that I have about 12 faithful people who pop in every Monday to check and see if anything is new.  So to you, my faithful dozen, I apologize. 

So. . . are you ready to hear about all the excitement there has been since my last post?  Too bad, there hasn't been much!  Not to say that there hasn't been ANY excitement.  Let's see. . .  Oh yes, the great rodent adventure came to an end, but not before we had a rodent escape.  We were so close to the end - the rodent owners were due to pick up the critters the first week of December, and all was well.  The weekend before the pick-up, Jerry, super nice guy that he is, decided to clean out the cage so the owners would have a nice, sweet-smelling rodent habitat to take home.  The gerbils were relocated to a five-gallon bucket, and as he was sudsing up the aquarium he asked Gracie to check on the gerbils.  I was busy in the back of the house, reading research articles for my final paper of the semester when I heard a shrill, "There's only one!"

Jerry: "You're KIDDING!"

Gracie: "NO, one is MISSING!"

I'm alert, thinking, "Uh oh!  Surely they aren't talking about a gerbil."  I'm fighting every instinct to get up and run in there, thinking, "Jerry can handle it.  It's not like it's a gerbil loose, right?  Whatever it is, Jerry's got it."  Then I hear my full name hollered along with, "WE NEED YOU IN HERE NOW!" 

I jump up, zip in there, and Jerry and Gracie have the gerbil trapped under a wicker chest that we keep extra afghans in.  We manage to box it in (literally - with cardboard boxes) and Jerry lifted the chest, we shooed him into a box, and put him back in the bucket with his buddy, and promptly covered it with a 10 pound ceramic bowl.  The crisis was ended, but Jerry didn't think his heart rate would slow down for several hours.  He had visions of the gerbil getting cozy in our sleeper sofa and turning it into a chew toy.  Who knew that gerbils could vertically jump 24 inches?  Apparently, not Jerry ;-) !  Well, he knows now! 

Let's see. . . reaching even farther back in our memories, the girls and I went to Texas for fall break:

They played with Nana and the goats, and I worked on schoolwork. 

The girls carved their pumpkins this year completely by themselves:

For Halloween Gracie went as Hermione Granger, and Maggie went as Athena:

Thanksgiving was extra-special this year.  It had been a year since Brad, Amy, and the kids were in their horrible accident.  It has been an year full of stretching experiences for them, and we were extra grateful to all be together with everyone on the mend.  Everyone made it to GGma's for turkey dinner with the trimmings, and we were all smiles:

The next day at Dad and Terri's we all attempted to take our Christmas card photos, but we were still pretty silly (and we found out just how far Crazy Uncle Jerry would go to get Carissa to smile!) 

Of course, Crazy Aunt Amy pulled some tricks out of her bag too:

 

But we finally got a good one:



Now I've really waited until the last minute to get stuff done, because now it is only one hour and three minutes until my Spring 2012 semester starts!  Wish me luck!