A semester came and went. My grades were pretty good. Sure, I got a B in lab, but I wasn't exactly impressed with my professor. To be fair, he had never taught Gen Bio at all, and it was his first go at this Gen Bio lab business. I really think he'll fair much better next semester, and the school has given him a chance to teach the class as well as the lab this time.
It wasn't easy, and I don't want to make it seem like it was. I skipped out on this blog mostly because I was so stressed out about my grades and having a lot of trouble finding time and privacy to do my homework. I figure if don't feel like you're under pressure, you're probably not learning anything new or challenging.
M's birthday happened. It kills me that she's five. She still hasn't learned to read. I taught her sisters at four, but M is considerably less interested. I guess she's got better things to do. She's also a lot more free-spirited and flighty than I remember her sisters being. I definitely don't want to kill her happiness, but I grit my teeth when she smiles at me while I'm trying to talk to her about her tantrums.
Anyhow, I'm teaching her to read this year. She's making great improvements in the way of remembering her letter-recognition and learning phonics already. We're also seeing some considerable strides in her writing. All of this centers around her rapidly improving attitude, which I'm thrilled to see. 
Of course, there was Halloween. And, of course, we had an Elsa, though no adult I know can comprehend why children all seem to prefer Elsa. We also had a Yoda, a Bat Girl and a Victorian Princess. I loved M's costume so much. E said, "coo coo" at every house, to much adoration. At the time, it was his way of saying, "thank you". He has since upgraded to something like, "Tek oo". 
Thanksgiving happened in a strange sort of way. We all took turns getting sick, which resulted in very last minute cancellation of our traditional road trip to St. Louis. (To those of you we missed seeing on that holiday, you dodged a bullet. Please remember we had you and your children's best interests in mind when we cancelled.) So, instead, we had our first Thanksgiving at home with my mom, sister and niece. It was actually quite nice. However, the kids and I haven't seen some of my in-laws since summer vacation, which is unfortunate.
Christmas came and went. There was a fake tree, because of time and budget restrictions, but there were something like five different kinds of homemade cookies, several flavors of glass candy (from my sister) and two different fruit pies I made from scratch. And that fake tree was adorably dwarfed by the pile of presents for the five children who woke up here Christmas morning.
Cub turned two (which is also freaking me out) but we haven't had his party yet. We were hoping to improve his birthday experience by 1.) distinguishing it from Christmas with at least one whole week of buffer and 2.) financially recovering from Christmas before trying to throw him a party. I want him to have a real party with a theme and all like everyone else gets, and his birthday falling on the 26th makes that awfully difficult.
He suddenly wants us to read him every book from the bookshelf, several times a day. He sleeps in a toddler bed, faces forward in his carseat, and mostly takes showers with us instead of baths. Cub loves all things that go: firetrucks, dump trucks, backhoes, helicopters, rockets, robots, airplanes, and trains. His current favorite things to talk about (and request youtube videos of) are rockets and astronauts. He even says "Atronot". He got a rocket for Christmas (A note to Tutu, who got it for him: he sleeps with the detachable lander portion) and has a small toy Ernie doll he like to put in the rocket. Now, he's pretty sure that Ernie is an astronaut and asks me if the NASA astronauts in the youtube videos are Ernie.
New Years was lovely. We finally got to see a good friend we hadn't seen in six months. He wound up staying the night because, upon his opening the front door to leave at 2am, we were greeted with the disharmony of police sirens from who knows where and realized... driving home might not have been the best idea.
We had our traditional milk in champagne glasses, cracked holiday crackers, wore paper crowns, popped poppers and let the twins try to stay up until the new year. They made it to 11:45. To pass the time, we played a bit of D&D, because that's how we roll.
I finished up the 2014 memory jar, but we haven't reviewed it just yet. I think I don't want to let it go.
**I really wanted to add about 20 more photos to this, but it was getting ridiculous.**
