catching up

Looking back through my recent posts, I realized that I haven't written much about our lives in a while, so I thought I'd write a brief (though probably not very brief) post about what we've been doing over the last couple of months.

I'll start with Christmas. I wrote about our ridiculous holiday travel experiences, but then completely neglected to write about our actual vacation. We were at Greg's parents' house for about ten days, and it was wonderful to spend so much time with his family after a full year without seeing most of them. We did all the usual holiday stuff -- played games, watched movies, lazed around, ate a LOT -- but probably the most remarkable thing about the vacation was snow. Snow! In the Pacific Northwest! As someone born and bred in upstate New York, spending seven Christmases in green, snow-free Washington state never felt quite like Christmas. But the Pacific Northwest got hit with some unusual weather this winter (luckily, not affecting our travel on that end at all), and we were able to play in the snow, to build snowmen and have snowball fights and go sledding in a place with real hills.

It's always hard to say goodbye to Greg's family, knowing we won't see them again for a long time, but this year we're hoping to visit again in the summer, for the first time in three years, thanks to the travel vouchers and frequent flier miles the airline gave us after all the trouble we had. I didn't realize how long it had been since we'd been to Washington in the summer until the boys and I were watching an episode of Blue Planet about tidal areas, and James, when asked, told me he can't remember exploring tide pools in Washington. I had to stop and think that the last time we were there, he was four, so he probably wouldn't remember much about it. Hopefully that will change this summer.

I say hopefully, because the biggest thing going on with us lately is that Greg is in the final stages of writing his dissertation, really pushing to finish it within a month or two, so by the time summer rolls around, hopefully Dr. Schmidt will be employed. And hopefully whoever employs him will be willing to give him a little vacation time over the summer. We could all use a vacation -- with Greg trying to finish, he's working ridiculously long hours, and we don't see him nearly enough. I've been feeling lonely and overworked on the domestic front, and the boys are even losing out on weekend playtime since Greg is going in to work most Sundays. To give you an idea of how things are, today is Wednesday and James hasn't seen Greg since Sunday. We'll all be glad when graduate school is over and done with.

James is still enjoying first grade, as much as he can enjoy doing a bunch of work that's too easy for him. He brought home another perfect report card a couple of weeks ago. Evan and I are going to more community classes for preschoolers, and we're looking into real preschool for the fall. Last week was winter break, in which the boys and I spent waaaay too much quality time together, which made me incredibly grateful for public schools and birth control.

There's not much else to tell -- we're all healthy (most of the time), we're all content. Pretty boring sometimes, but nothing to complain about.