Where does the time go?

I haven't been writing. I keep coming back to how I should be and then I always find twenty other things that need to be done. Always.

Some highlights since October:

Kids enjoyed Halloween, Advent, and Christmas. We celebrated four whole days of Christmas and visiting family; Mary loved playing in wrapping paper every single day.

Leading up to and through Christmas, each kid took turns with a strong cold: all had coughs; Andrew and Mary had fevers; Mary's got up to 104 with her first ear infection. I think we've all been rotating through sickness since Mary's non-pink pink eye in October with colds, more colds, a stomach virus, and more colds. I think there was one week were no one had anything.

For Christmas Eve when we hosted our parents and my brother, Chris had made a lemon custard with basil syrup and used a ton of egg yolks. Since there were so many egg whites leftover, on New Year's Eve I finally experimented with coconut macarons (consistency was a failure) and French Macarons twice. I'd seen all the kids on cooking and baking shows make them and figured if they could do it, so could I. I'd never had French Macarons before and now I love them. Patrick also loves them and was sneaking them as soon as they came out of the oven. He didn't need the cream cheese frosting in the center.

New Year's Eve was nice; my sister came over to play with the kids, have macarons and sparkling cider, and play 7 Wonders to bring in the New Year. We played a lot of board games during our 2 week break from work and school. One day, we started Caverna around 9 and didn't finish the rules until 10 or so and then didn't finish the game until 3:30 in the morning. Andrew enjoyed playing Pandemic.

We had a week and a half snow break in January, during which I did a lot of grading to finish out the 1st semester. Andrew injured between his toes while running through the house so he missed a lot of the playing in the snow adventures with Lucy and Patrick. Lucy went out in the snow as often as we let her.

Patrick is now three! We had a Blaze and the Monster Machines birthday party for him. His grandparents, great-grandmother, uncle, godmother & her family, and one other set of friends were able to come. He had so much fun, though I cannot convince him to tell me anything about what he enjoyed.

Two of my friends from high school started a book club so I joined. We read "Girl on a Train" which I do not recommend. The discussion and meeting itself went well though. Chris has been playing basketball occasionally with some friends and has been making an effort to come home after work for dinner more often.

Andrew and Lucy started swim lessons last Saturday. Andrew's doing Primary 1 and there are 5 kids in his class; Lucy's doing level 2 of her age group because she's already comfortable in the water.

Mary's now 11 and a half months; she's been working on standing up by herself from squatting or kneeling. She likes laying her head on pillows in the family room, having realized they're soft. As of last night, Mary's been playing her the toy garden by herself, pulling out the vegetables and putting the plastic letters and keys in and out of the mailbox. She thinks she's funny and has a huge three and a half tooth grin (her upper left tooth came in recently and the upper right is trying to come in).

That's all for now!