Thanksgiving, etc.

Speaking of the semester flying by, here we are nearly at the end of 2018! It seems I ought to get caught up before the year is over.

So--Thanksgiving! Mark and I enjoyed another lovely visit with his family in Michigan. If I'm counting right, this was our 8th Thanksgiving there, and I always look forward to it. This year we were joined by the cousins and their kids, so for our big meal on Thanksgiving, we had 24 total, including 13 kids under 10! Aunt Debbe Jo and Uncle Mike rented their church kitchen and a meeting room, so we took all the food over there and had a good space to eat plus plenty of room for the kids to run around and play inside. It was fun to see how excited the cousins were to see each other and hang out.

Mark and I enjoyed some extra time catching up with Mike and Sarah and their kids, who were also staying with Aunt Debbe Jo and Uncle Mike (since they live a few hours north near her family). It had been 4 years since we'd seen them for Thanksgiving because they had a newborn two years ago and didn't make the trip down.

Even with all the grandkids around, Aunt Debbe Jo and I managed to find time to make our Christmas wreaths (on Friday morning, while Mike, Sarah, and family went out for a photo shoot with Erin).

It's a quick visit, but I always come home feeling so blessed by the hospitality and good company, and refreshed before taking on the rest of the semester.

After Thanksgiving, we had two more weeks of classes, plus finals week, then the loose ends of grading and admin projects. In the end, I had some trouble winding down; it had been such a demanding semester, with so many unexpected challenges and changes. On the other hand, I absolutely loved both of my classes--ESOL 5050 (for international teaching assistants) and ESOL 1000 (an undergrad writing class). The students were fantastic, and I enjoyed reworking the 1000 curriculum (though it was also very time consuming!). I was able to make some progress on a few big admin projects during finals week and the week after, and I was also very thankful to be heading out of town so I felt like I could really step away from work and take a serious break.

I'm glad to have the longer time between semesters (due to the new 3-week winter session in January), so there is time to get organized for placement testing and finish planning for my spring class in the coming weeks. Spring should be good--I'll have a reduced workload (in exchange for the extra class I took on in the fall), so I'm imagining all sorts of ways to spend my time when I'm not working evenings and weekends again (hooray!). Up next: a Christmas post.