Happy 2019!

Yes, it has been way too long between posts. All my fault, of course, but life has just been really busy on all fronts. Abbie had a pretty good holiday season, I think. Her semester ended well and her ballet performance of the Nutcracker went great.

Before the show

She also had her winter string orchestra performances and the annual performance at a local retirement home, which her violin teacher arranges every year.

Frosting cookies

As for Christmas, I think that Abbie got most of the stuff on her list - some clothes, a new clock, a mini waffle maker, temporary hair color, a poster, and a bunch of Bath and Body Works products.

This year we decided to take a little trip between Christmas and New Years to alleviate some of the inevitable boredom. So, we drove over to New Orleans for a few nights and it turned out to be a really fun trip.

Sporting one of her new sweatshirts

We ate great food (of course), walked around the French Quarter a lot, took a ghost tour, and a trolley ride. The guy that led our ghost tour was lame, but the cool piece of the tour was that it included an EMF meter, which they let Abbie use for the bulk of the tour. Perhaps not surprisingly, there wasn't much for activity most of the time, but we were surprised to see the meter go wild in Jackson Square. Given all of the executions that have occurred there over the years, maybe we really were surrounded by ghosts!

Standing in front of some of the decorations in our hotel

Abbie has been back to school and the usual routine for a couple of weeks now and everything has been going pretty smoothly. Although she did stay home with a fever yesterday and seemed worse today. A quick swab at the doctor's office revealed the culprit - Influenza A. Yes, she gets to spend the long weekend on the couch with the flu, but hopefully she will be better by Tuesday.

Next week her school will release the narratives that they produce each year. To me, these are better than report cards. They are the qualitative reports that every teacher provides for each student, and I love reading the teachers' perspectives based on their interactions with the kids. Last year they seemed pretty accurate and I am curious to see how they look this year.