First week of 2017, update

Here's a short update from our family.

We began the week with a good luck dinner: my husband loves taking charge of our annual (Pennsylvania Dutch-inspired) tradition of bringing good luck into the new year with a hearty dinner of pork, sauerkraut, mashed potatoes, and apple sauce.

And then I left my family, and headed to the giant math meetings in Atlanta, Georgia, where I got to rub shoulders with 6000 of my closest friends.  Well, except that I wasn't actually rubbing shoulders, because my arm was still in a sling (but not a splint). The math meetings were just as wonderful as you would expect they would be -- actually, much better than you would expect, probably!  And encouragingly, my rehab is going surprisingly well -- I can not only bite my fingernails, but also scratch my ear.  Both of these are useful abilities to have!

Back here in Pennsylvania, the boys started school again in spite of several small snowfalls. J-son had what we thought was an ear infection, that turned out to be just a cold.   N-son has enjoyed watching episodes of The Man in the High Castle with his friends and then with his dad.

And we've re-started our trash count, having sent nine garbage cans full of trash to the landfill in 2016.  My husband has been taking care of lots of small to-do items around the home (and wishing it were warmer and less icy so he could be out on his bike); he tells me that all this cleaning means  we'll probably have to put out our first trash can in a week or two.