We're BACK!

Sorry for the looooooong gap in posting! School swallowed us all up this semester, and I only TODAY finished grading my last papers, and wrote my last recommendation letter, and posted my final grades online, and...well, you get the picture.

But even though we've been busy and I haven't been posting, we've had a lovely Advent! We've had the same snow and cold which Catherine and Tom, my fellow midwesterners have had. Interestingly, this will be the first white Christmas we've had here in Chicagoland for the last five years or so. Fun! Especially with the nightly fires we stoke in our woodburning stove downstairs. Very cosy.

This will be a quick post, just to get get rid of some of my rust. But here's two pics of the kids in the last few weeks. The first is them as gnomes. They were part of the annual Joliet Festival of the Gnomes show, a Very. Big. Event. with weeks of practice, two sold out shows, and appreciative audiences. My kids took to the stagelights like little hams (don't know WHERE they get it from! :)The second pic was taken last weekend, when the kids decided to fall asleep in the living room, under the lights of the tree. It may look staged, but we took this at midnight, and they really were sound asleep.

Okay, I lied. Here's one more pic. A few months ago, we adopted another cat, Pippen. She's a bundle of energy, who loves nothing better than chasing Lucky around the house. Lucky is burning off LOTS of calories since Pippen joined the family. Here they are in a rare moment of peace this fall. Lucky's on the left, Pippen on the right.