I can hardly believe that our month off of home schooling is over already, but here we are, day 3 "back to the grind", and December is but a blurry memory. Before it becomes much blurrier, I'm going to give you the bullet-list of what happened last month.

• Kids began holidays on Dec. 3. Mommy sighed as she looked forward to a month of paperwork and school planning. (Remember how I finished 2009's books and taxes in June? I hadn't even started 2010's until December 5 of this year--but at least I was in the same calendar year! That is step up. I have been playing "catch-up" ever since March of '08 when I left Arkansas.)

• Kids get to watch movies, play outside, play Wii. Mommy gets to do paperwork and play taxi, as there was still Swim Club and Squirt's kindergarten until Dec. 17.

• All other activities finished, Mommy takes a small break from the books to clean house thoroughly and attack a few projects--company is showing up on the 25th.

• Got to spend a couple of Saturdays at D&A's playing board games and visiting. Been missing that.

• Started watching the Season 1 DVDs of "Battlestar Galactica" that my brother Logan gave us (in September!) on Dec. 23. 

• Finished a few knitting projects. Started a couple more.

• Had lots of fun with the Xbox 360 and Kinect that my brother brought up on the 25th to totally spoil his nephews with. There were plenty of sore gluteus maximus' (among other things) from the bowling, jumping, and lunging, I tell ya!

• Played numerous board games with family, including my dad and brother. The obligatory Scrabble game was included, as well as "Apples to Apples" (so fun for groups) and "Pandemic" (a co-operative game that is surprisingly a lot harder than it looks.)

• Started Season 2 of Battlestar Galactica on Dec. 31.

• Spent New Year's Day at a sledding party. The kids did "Extreme Tobogganing"; well, not Jabin--I took him to a tamer hill and he slid up and down for a while. This was followed by a delicious potluck supper. One of my best New Year's parties in years.

• And, to sum up, I finished my 2010 books at about 11 p.m. last night! Yippee!

I have to say, though, it didn't really feel like a holiday--and I still have school units to plan. Phooey. No sewing, like I'd hoped. Very little work completed on the musical, on which I had hoped to gain some extra ground. And no chickens butchered--my girls would appreciate a couple less boys in their midst, but although I bought a nice new sharp axe for the purpose, the cold weather (and full list) deterred me.

Still, it was a good month, albeit a busy one. And currently, we are enjoying unseasonably warm temperatures of around -4C in the day (which showed up just in time for the sledding party on Saturday), so who can complain about that in January?

Happy New Year, friends!