Visiting

I love Christmas time.  I've spent the last week baking... Oreo truffles, muddy buddies, apple bread, fudge pie and of course, geiba (a polish sweet/nut bread).  The Imp decorated the house the first weekend of December, before she had to start studying for exams.  The pictures tell it all.

This is her favorite gift from last year: a set of silver bells with the gifts of the 12 Days of Christmas depicted on the handles.

 She may actually love Christmas-time more than me.
Here's the Advent calendar I made for her this year.

Of course, her birthday being right before Christmas adds to her excitement.  I was a little apprehensive about her ability to settle down in study with her exuberant decorating, but she rose to the occasion and  aced all her exams.  Physics was her hard one and she spent hours and hours at home studying and met with a study group for 4 hours the day before her exam.  Her diligence paid off and now she can enjoy Christmas vacation.  Going into exams she knew she needed a high A on the physics exam in order to pull an A out for the semester.  Having not done that well on most of the tests, she wasn't sure she could do it, but she told me "I know I might not get it, but I'd like to really try...then if I don't get it, at least I won't wonder, "If I'd studied more could I have gotten the A?".  That she was willing to try even though the odds were against her made me proud.  That she was rewarded for her efforts just makes it better.

And what do math geeks do for fun?  Make snowflakes of course.

Look closer... what does that say?

M-A-T-H of course and to make it really fun, we threw in a pi sign.  Yep that's what we do for fun in my house.

We're enjoying a visit to Sumter to see my parents.  They've moved into a retirement facility that has independent living rooms and assisted living.  They have a nice apartment, but it's hard on my mom leaving her house and all her space.  There is a dining room in the facility so the kitchens in the apartments are tiny (and that's being generous).  My mom really misses her kitchen.  I think the place is great and can envision Hubby and I in a similar place when we reach our 80's.

We got to spend time with Gwyn and her husband tonight.  I really enjoyed that.  Hadn't seen Gwyn in quite a while.  She looks happy.  I'm glad she found Michael.

I'd promised some people more pics of the Imp as coxswain.  Here they are.

That's the Imp with her back to the camera.

Here she is yelling, oops I mean encouraging, her team on.

And here's just a pic of my two girls.