Franny just returned from what sounds like a very exciting weekend in Lynchburg. Annie and Tim took her home after Thanksgiving dinner, and she had a very full few days. Biking, rock climbing, a sleepover with a new friend, seeing Madagascar 2, checking out the dead animals on the wall at WT's house, learning to tie her shoes, raking leaves in the yard, dancing to Hampster Dance (yeah, the spelling drives me crazy!).

I've found this to be true in so many things, but Frances is so open to learning things from other people. When she went climbing with us, she was terrified, but with her aunt and uncle, she seemed to be nervous, but ended up going up the 40 foot wall all by herself!


Way up there, the end is in sight. Everyone there was cheering for her.




You can see here how tiny she looks next to regular people.


She parties afterwards!

While she was gone, the rest of us did a lot of nothing. We watched "Vertigo," we watched "Snoopy Come Home," we played some video games and board games. I did some Christmas shopping--pretty much have everything for everyone except Walter's Lego set, Ollie's Nerf gun, and Fran's aquarium or whatever she's getting. Most of the little stuff is taken care of, and Rutledge is well taken care of. He's going to get a lot of regifted items from the attics--a pirate ship, a mini air hockey game, a remote control snake.

Walter caught up from being 2 weeks behind on his electronics class. He had two weekly tests to complete, as well as 10 assignments to build. The work feels pretty difficult to him, so there was a lot of crying today about it. He gets it all worked up in his head as something daunting and overwhelming, when all he really needs to do is relax and just dig in and get it done. He certainly knows far more now about electronics than I do.

Ollie and I finished _Lily's Crossing_ today, and last night we finished _Bright April_ and _The Cabin Faced West_. We're on the verge of finishing _The Penderwicks on Gardam Street_ on CD in the car. The trip out to Farmville today certainly helped in that regard. It's kind of interesting that we seem to be on an extended streak of reading books with girl protagonists. He has really liked all of these books, and so have I. I'm not sure what we'll read next; probably whatever isn't accruing huge fines at the library. This week I got within two books of the 75 book checkout limit our library has now imposed. I don't even want to think how much that is going to cost me when I, as always, lose track of time and give my involuntary contribution to the treasurer of Chesterfield County.

We're getting ready to decorate the gnome house for Christmas, a yearly tradition of ours. I spent way too much time in the attic tonight trying to sort out decorations we don't need, decorations I am not ready to get rid of yet (because they were my family's growing up, and I can't let them go, even though they're really outdated--without being "vintage"--or falling apart or were just cheap plastic in the first place), and trying to thin out the mess up there. I think a lot got accomplished, though grrrr....the lights I put on our Christmas tree somehow managed to get a big problem up at the top and I had to remove a string of lights, which of course could not be fixed with any of the dozens of replacement lights I had in the kitchen drawer. So now I have to venture to Lowe's or somewhere similar tomorrow to pick up two more strings of lights before we can start putting up the ornaments. I'll be really happy when we get the boxes out of the way and move on to the part where we're just living in a fully Christmas-a-fied house.