Thankful

What a lovely past few days this has been. My husband and I went to visit his parents for a few days and just got back a few hours ago. We ate great food, got in plenty of baby-wrangling time seeing the nieces and nephew, and even managed to go shooting one morning with my husband's dad at some property they have there. It was a great time and I love seeing my husband and his parents interact. There is such love there and you can see it in everything they do together.

I remember it was over a Thanksgiving when my husband first proposed to me and the whole ride to his parents' house, we talked about how we would make the announcement. It ended up where we really didn't have to say anything. His mom saw my ring and smiled as she took my hand in hers and we officially became family. They had treated me like family even before then, but every Thanksgiving, I'm reminded of when I became a daughter to two amazing people.

Now that we are back home, we are transitioning back from fun-mode to work-mode. There is a week and a half left of classes before finals, books to review (by the way, I recently became an official book reviewer for Stirring: A Literary Collection), and stories to revise and send out again, so it's going to be a busy time, but I'm looking forward to it!

A lot of new stories are starting to pop up now that the holiday season is here. Hobart was kind enough to publish chapters seven and eight of my dissertation and you can see the story, "All God's Children," here. More stories will soon be up at PANK and JMWW, so stay tuned.

For now, though, it's time to put up some Christmas decorations! Good luck to you all with the end of the semester!