Non-traditional holiday

For Thanksgiving, we made tacos for lunch, sushi (home-made) for dinner, and Roman donuts for desert. We had cultural cuisines which should not be anywhere near Thanksgiving, but it was really fun. It was really fun to make the sushi, and Dad was surprisingly enthusiastic.

Jake is in town, so the kids have been hanging out with him quite a bit. It's fun having him here.

Alyssa and I have spent the last few nights watching Rome instead of doing our homework, so I'm thinking that's what today is going to be mostly about.

Much to say

For one big thing, Alyssa took her Exit Exam, the Brown Book earlier this week. It's a very large test consisting of 100 terms she must define verbatim from a list of 350, all of which have paragraph definitions or longer. (The final word count on the study list was almost 9,000!) We haven't gotten the score back yet, but I'm sure she passed with flying colors.

I had all four of my wisdom teeth pulled out almost 2 weeks ago. It took a really long time to eat solid food and not be in pain, but I got through it in the end.

Odin has ben having trouble sleeping, we think. He tells us every night about how scared he is. Also the house creaks a lot and he says that scares him all the time. His behavior hasn't been the best lately and we figured that it might be from not sleeping. I found him in his room sitting awake one night and I have no idea how long he was up. We also wake up sometimes to find him in our bed with us, he must be coming in when he wakes up scared.

Freya never stops moving or eating. She also has a lot more words now and can express herself really well. Right now her favorite thing is drawing, she'll sit at the table for an hour with crayons and just have a great time.

I'm working on getting some professors to agree to be my advisory committee for an honors thesis. I'd have to write a small thesis paper and be approved, and then I get to graduate with honors. Rounding up the right professors has proved difficult, but I'm almost there.

Right now we're just trying to finish out the term and figure out how we'll survive the next one. Money is going to be tight on account of Alyssa not getting a financial aid check, but we're thinking about taking out a private student loan. I got way less this year than we normally get, and the federal government wont give me any more so we have to make up the difference with private banks.

Over Winter break I'll be teaching Latin to Alyssa and two other friends of hers, all composers in the Music department. It's funny because Professor Nicols offered $40k to any student who'd learn Latin, and nobody out of 150 said yes, but I have 3 composers with full schedules and extra rehearsals and such who all want to learn.

1 Year Check-up for Freya!

Took Freya for her 1 year check-up and all is going well. She is very healthy and growing great, and surprises the doctors in her ability and intelligence.

Her stats: Height 28" (10%); Weight 22lbs 1.8oz (55%); Head ~18" (85%).

I remember when she was so tiny she fit in my forearm. Now she's walking all over the place, talking about everything, and demanding chocolate.

Did I mention the chocolate yet? She knows what it is, and I mean knows. She knows if something is chocolate, even if it's in a wrapper she's never seen before, and she wants it precious, bad. It's really funny. Sometime I'll have to catch her on video when I'm holding it in front of her, and then let her chomp right into it too, it's really funny....