No, the end of the world is not here, at least as far as I know. The end I am referring to is the end of school. Okay, so maybe the title is a bit dramatic, but I have been in school for what seems like forever. My last clinical day is scheduled as December 11th, the same day that Anna turns 2 and Janna turns 22 (or something like that). That means that I only have five weeks left; only 16 days of clinical. I have thought about this end for awhile now, anticipating it, and now that it is so close, it almost feels surreal.
I had hoped that by this time I would have all of our moving arrangements lined up, and dates finalized for our trip back across the country to some exciting place in the west. That hope however, will not be realized, at least not at this time. No we will be staying here in Williamsville, at least for another six months. I confess that I am a little disappointed that we will not be moving closer to family, but at least we can let the girls finish out their school year, and I will be able to sign with a good anesthesia group that I am pretty comfortable with. So in response to the poll which has been on our blog for the last month, we will be stayin' put.
Okay, so Thanksgiving is long gone,but we failed to put anything about it on our blog, so here it is, just under one month later.
As always, Janna got into the baking spirit with a beautiful, and rather tasty turkey.
But she didn't stop there. She also made two awesome pies. The one shown above is her homemade cherry pie, with intricate lattice work.
For the third straight year we had Thanksgiving dinner with our good friends David and Chantel. This year we ate at their house, and then played games and had pie at ours. As always, there was tons of great food and loads of fun!
So now that we are caught up on holidays that have passed, oh wait, we missed some birthdays. Happy Birthday Shannon (12/1), Katie (12/10), Casey (12/11), Little Josh (12/14), Ashley (12/16), Jessica (12/17), and Scotty (12/20). Sorry if that seemed like some sort of rapid fire birthday acknowledgment, but it needed to be done.
Janna had the girls make a gingerbread house. Janna practically had to hide in the corner, plug her ears, and hum to herself to let the girls build this on their own, but they were able to do it. As you can see, Anna ate more than she put on the house, but her print was definitely left in the houses construction. Alyssa is the one that put the army guys outside the door. I thought it was to shoot Santa when he comes out, but she told me she was thinking more along the lines of shooting the wicked witch.
The picture above is of Alyssa and her good friend Tabitha. They both performed as part of their third grade holiday program. Tabitha recited her poem, while Alyssa played the recorder. In the video below, Alyssa can be found sitting slightly off center to the right of the screen. The program contained songs about Christmas and Hanukkah.
Posing in front of some license plates at the Anchor Bar from left to right: Ellie, Ambrey, Alyssa, Anna, Tabitha, and Charlotte.
Anna's asthma kicked in when she got sick, so here she is doing her breathing treatment while sitting warmly under one of her new presents from Grandma. Kind of a funny story, but Anna has a favorite blanket. It's another one from Grandma, white with little red hearts on it. Well on Sunday Janna and I were resting on our couches with blankets, and Anna came to Janna so they could lay down together. Janna told her to go get her blanket, so Anna went upstairs to her room. After a couple of minutes Anna came back down the stairs empty handed and agitated. I asked where her blanket was and she grunted in an angry manner and pointed up the stairs. I got up to see what the problem was and found that she had tried to man-handle her big, new, heavy blanket down the stairs and it had gotten wrapped around the rail at the top of the stairs. She had left her "favorite" blanket laying on the floor in her room.
Anna and the girls posing with the birthday cake. Poor Anna wasn't feeling well so she didn't get to blow out her candles.
Sorry, wrong ape. Happy birthday Apryl!!! 
Thanks for all of the wonderful memories! We hope that you have a wonderful birthday! Click on 
