pictures

Here are the pictures I tried to attach last post. 

Taras and Alicia battling it out in a jump rope contest. Yay! Alicia won! Girls rule!
Sarah attempting the hula hoop. Andrew actually won the contest! He beat all the college kids!
Professo Dan Valliancourt and me at the BVM symposium. He is one of my favorite professors.
Kaeli, Sister Dorothy, and me at the symposium. Kaeli wrote a poem for Sr. Dorothy. I made the lake collage out of paint, felt, stickers, papers, modge podge, and glitter.
This is the mixed-media collage I made for my BVM as a gift for her sharing her life-story with me. The memoir project inspired me in so many ways. She is a remarkable woman!
The 2008 LaFramboise holiday pose.
My mom and I on the couch with Andrew, Sarah and Simon.
Having lunch at the American Girl Cafe.
Setting up our Charlie Brown tree. Apartment living at its best!

Finally, a break!!!

The semester is over, thank goodness. So far 3 of my grades have been posted and all is looking very good. I had a killer anthropology final exam that (if you can even imagine) was twice as hard as the primatology exams I took last spring. But it is all over with and I can finally start to relax and enjoy the holiday festivities.

Our tree is decorated, I am all done shopping, and I got the ingredients to make enough cookies to feed the entire Rogers Park neighborhood! (Not really, but it is at least enough for 7 different recipes.) Plus, the kids and I are going to make salt dough ornaments and paint them. They will make nice gifts for teachers and aunts.

I will be posting a few pictures from the past 3 weeks of our hectic life! (But right now blogger.com is having issues and won't let me.) My parents visited for Thanksgiving, the anthropology department hosted a holiday party, and my philosophy class held a  symposium culminating the BVM memoir project. 

We will be in Michigan for 11 days over Christmas. We don't get to see our family much since we moved out to Chicago, so we are looking forward to relaxing and spending time with them. 

Enjoy the picture. I will have more to post this weekend after our baking, ornament decorating, and Jamie's work holiday party at Ron of Japan's. (His office has the BEST parties!)

Talk to you soon! 

Final Exams

I have been busy with Thanksgiving, holiday shopping, entertaining my parents on their 4-day visit, and getting the apartment decorated for the holidays. It has been a whirlwind week!

But I had to come down a few octaves and remember that final exams are next week! YIKES!

If you know me at all, you know that whenever I get anxious, stressed, nervous, or worried my jaw locks up, I get physically ill, and fall apart at the seams! I get stage fright. I get cold feet. And with exams, I get stupid. Literally. I forget everything I ever learned and feel like a helpless newborn baby. It is not a pretty sight.

To make matter worse, my phoenix lost a wing on Monday. It fell off 30 seconds before I set it on the shelf to be graded. My instructor pouted with me and said I could fire all the pieces and super-glue them together afterwards. :-(

As I sit and write this post my husband (Jamie) and my best friend (Slavica) are out shopping for my Christmas presents. I can only hope they aren't at Home Depot, Circuit City, Sports Authority, or Jewel Osco! LOL!

Despite the final exam panic and my phoenix mishap, I am feeling confident in my performance this semester. I was happy to get back my last English test and got a 100%! And I got my ANTH 304 research paper back and got an 'A' with very positive and back patting remarks from Breidenbach. And I got my last Globalization test back today with an 'A-.' So I guess I am doing something right for once!

Thanks for hanging in there with me as I discover what all my life is meant to be. I am so fortunate to have such great friends and family! All the notes, calls, and even flowers really mean a lot to me! You all keep me going and make me realize my efforts truely are worth the effort!

Keep warm this week, and sing a Christmas carol for me!