Peter's home, Sarah's swimming, and the Christmas cards will be late!

Peter's been home from school a week now!  His last in person exam last Monday morning and I picked him up right after that.  Then he had a paper and a presentation due on Tuesday (he recorded the presentation in PowerPoint) and submitted that.  And then  he had an online exam on Wednesday which he happily did from home.  He has been enjoying himself by staying up way too late and sleeping in way too late.  All his friends are home now so he is currently making plans with them.

Sarah has exams this week and will be done Thursday and then she will officially be on break.  Except for swimming.  She will be attending as many practices as possible - which means early morning and normal afternoon practices.  She's trying to shave time so she can hopefully make it to States in at least one event.

Here are some pictures that were taken for her Senior banner which is  currently hanging in the school gym with all the other senior winter athletes.

 

And here's a picture of the banner:

So what have I been up to lately?  Well, Christmas shopping for one.  And I'm almost done.  I'm heading out again this morning to get some final things and just currently waiting for all my online purchases to be delivered.  So while I'm ahead of the game (or at least not behind) on that, my Christmas cards will probably arriving at their intended destination after Christmas.

We finally got around to taking a family picture this past Sunday.  Typically this involves setting up the tripod and getting a picture in front of the tree or on the front porch. Two times it involved a professional photographer but that was only because we had fall family photos taken as part of a school fundraiser and I just used those.  Sarah wanted to do a family photo shoot with a professional this year but with Peter at school, I knew that there wouldn't be enough time to get the pictures done this past weekend and then have them back in time for a card. 

So we did the next best thing. We took my old DSLR camera (which I never learned how to use properly), set it on Auto, and asked my brother to come with us to Old Salem to get some shots.  The pictures turned out good and I was able to use some of those shots for our card.  I designed the card yesterday as quickly as I could on SnapFish and they should be here  by 12/21.  I'm hoping they come sooner but I doubt they will.  That means the absolute quickest I could have them back in the mail is 12/22 which means my local friends and family might get theirs by Christmas but everyone else will be closer to New Years. Oh well - it's the thought that counts, right?

And not to panic anyone, but there's only 11 days until Christmas!