Triumphs and Challenges

The rush of school always surprises me.  I think "wow, I can keep up with everything and still blog" and then I find months have gone by since my last post.  This past semester was really hard as I struggled with Spanish, or rather a Spanish teacher who was from Spain and spoke very little English and therefore taught all in Spanish.  Note:  talking louder does not help people understand words in another language.  It took a lot of work, but I did manage a B in that class.  In my other 4 classes, I got all A's.  All in all it was a good semester.  The fun part was having Jessica and Matt on campus with me and seeing them throughout the day.  Weird, but really fun!

I was able to knit several things for Christmas, however the best thing I did was finally finish Matt's Stained Glass Afghan.  When he was 4 years old, I took him to a stained glass exhibit.  After returning home, he drew a picture of a stained glass window and asked me to make it for him in an afghan.  I began it soon after that.  Then we moved x5 where it lived in a basket in a box.  Well this past year I have worked on it when he was at work and here it is....
First as parts:

 Then together:

And then wrapped around my son.  

He was most surprised!  

We have several challenges right now, so it is nice to remember several of our successes.  As to the challenges, Bill's job ended when his story closed at the beginning of November, and then Bill was VERY sick for a good chunk of December.  Most of the family has had very bad colds, however we are starting to get better.  As the new year approaches we have great faith that things will get better.