Honorary Aunt

The end-of-semester crazy continues around here, and in order to stay out of Scott's way while he went crazy finishing his classes, I took a jaunt down to the cities to visit family and finally meet a new friend!

Sarah has been one of my best friends for a very long time, and she and her husband Dustin welcomed their son Ben 6 weeks earlier than planned back in December.  Luckily, he's a strong little dude that has turned into a giggling, smiling baby.  

Since Sarah is an only child, I'm one of Ben's "Honorary Aunts", and Sarah and I have already both agreed that I'll be the one to take him to do the scary stuff that we don't tell Mom about until we're showing her the pictures when we're back from whatever shenanigans we get up to!  I'm pretty okay with this role, and know that I have a lot to live up to. ;)

Besides finally meeting Sir Benjamin, I got to spend time with my brother and his girlfriend Kendra.  I love hanging out at their beautiful place in Woodbury; we spent time outside grilling, playing croquet, and even throwing a softball around.

(Kyle taking his shot while Kendra and their friend Jordan look on.  I'll give you a hint about this game- I WON!)

And yes, I brought the giraffe down and finished two of his legs while watching the Minnesota Wild win Game 4 against the Chicago Blackhawks!  

With a lot of dedicated effort, I think I'll finish this guy before our show on Saturday.  There's a lot of fiddly work left, but the limbs are one of the last "big" parts of the project.  The spots and poofs and ears and embroidery are smaller things that just take time.  

Only one issue stands in my way.

Finals week.  

I'm in the middle of my extreme-grading marathon for the end of the semester, which was exceedingly successful yesterday and hopefully continues to be successful today!  I have a lot of long papers to go, but I'm hoping I can finish by tomorrow sometime.  I only have dance tonight, which will be a welcome break to jump around and move after sitting all day.  This final batch of papers is the last thing I have for the semester before being able to say Adios! to the 2013-2014 school year.  I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, but it's still a little too far away to reach it.

Time to make another pot of coffee and dig in to the papers again.  Ooooh boy...