Joy, Revisited

Mwa-ha-ha! Victory is mine!!

It turns out that after Evil Instructor spent two days torturing me with his jerky attitude and his asinine formatting requirements for my paper--all of which turned out to be wrong; my paper was correct in the first place--he went ahead and gave me an "A," so now I can officially say I'm done with my master's program! I found out I'm not the only one he was tormenting, either, and the head of the department got a slew of emails and phone calls about him this morning, so hopefully he'll get what's coming to him. (I'd suggest starting with a minimum sentence of 30 consecutive days listening to N' Sync's Christmas album, but fortunately for him, I'm not The Decider in this case.)

In celebration, I have spent the past two days replacing paper-writing with cookie-baking (three kinds yesterday and one more to come today), present-wrapping, spray painting (photo frames from black to white so they look better in our newly-painted hallway), and house-cleaning. Oh, and calorie-consuming. Between the cookies and the yummy dinner at my in-laws' house last night, I think my recent food consumption rivals Michael Phelps' training diet of about 12,000 calories a day...except you won't be seeing my body on a cereal box anytime soon. You should, though, since that appears to be the staple of my diet these days. I think I'm keeping the cereal business afloat single-handedly.

Here are Cubby and Cousin Brandon at Grandma Marmee's and Pop-Pop's Hanukkah kickoff last night (Bear and I are basically heathens but celebrate both Hanukkah and Christmas with our families. Note to self: invest in non-Christmasy festive Cubby dress next year!):


Is this the cutest little menorah ever, or what?


And here's Cubby enjoying her new trampoline, a hand-me-down from Aunt Deb and Uncle Iain that (so far) has not resulted in any injuries, but has managed to teach our little white girl how to jump! For some reason, she thinks the song goes, "Ring around the rosie/Pocketful of hoses..."