It's All Over!!!

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and Happy Holidays.

Whew!  What a whirlwind of activity recently.  I am exhausted just thinking about everything we have accomplished in these last two weeks.

The Brooks family successfully survived Christmas, had a pretty uneventful New Year’s but we brought it in together and easily transitioned back into our homeschooling routines.  I was excited to see how easily the kids jumped right back into school.  We changed a few things about our routine and I think we found one we can stick with during this semester.  We’ll see though!

My mom retired last Friday after 34 years on the job. Yay and Congrats to her!  Now we can begin working on getting her healthy again.  We are looking forward to her joining us in Jamaica (even if just for a little bit).

I also bought a house on Wednesday *shock*.  I found a great fixer upper in Rock Hill (it cost the same amount it would have cost me to rent).  I’m still going to have to put a little money into it to get it ready for us, but I can’t tell you how excited I am. It’s within walking distance to the lake, where the kids and I can go every morning to get our school work done. More importantly, it’s within walking distance to my job (although I will have to drive to get the baby to preschool so I probably won’t be doing much walking). When we come back from Jamaica we should be able to move right in and settle in before the fall semester begins.

I just returned yesterday from a two day conference in Baltimore, the Society for Historical Archaeology’s annual conference.  I had an amazing time and met some AMAZING people.  I can’t discuss the entire trip or this blog would start to get really long but some highlights of the conference were: having dinner with Dr Theresa Singleton, Dr Warren Perry and Dr Cheryl Laroche (who are all pioneers in African American Archaeology), seeing many friends and colleagues from all over the country (many of whom I haven’t seen in over three years), learning that I will be the mentee to a spectacular person who I look forward to getting to know even better, chatting with some “big name” archaeologists who actually showed some interest in my research, seeing my mentor from my undergraduate days at Howard University, and meeting many great archaeologists who are truly dedicated to their work and to the field.  I look forward to attending the conference again next year in Leicester England.

Today my oldest son had to be put to sleep so that he could have his teeth worked on.  I had been very anxious anticipating this day. Needless to say the procedure went spectacularly well and he is doing fine.  It was the whole having him put to sleep thing that had me freaked out.  I should have stayed off the internet and certainly off of the sites discussing children dying in the dentist’s chair.  Now that that is over I can breathe easier.

We also shipped off a barrel of our belongings to Jamaica tonight.  I found this wonderful shipping company, located in Monroe, NC, that allowed us to bring all of our belongings to them and fill a big barrel.  They will drive our (and I assume others) belongings to Miami where it will be shipped to Jamaica.  That is a huge relief.  And what’s even better? I actually had an address to ship our stuff to.  That’s right, UWI finally provided me with our very own address.  Now we have some place to go when we arrive and a place to call home for the next 4-5 months. Now THAT is a huge relief.

So with all of these happenings in the last two weeks it’s needless to say, now that it is all over, I am EXHAUSTED. I will spend these next few days sleeping in and veggin out in front of the tv. Then back on the grind as we celebrate my baby’s 2^nd birthday (January 12), start saying goodbye to all of our family and friends and work hard on getting a lot further in our school work. Stay tuned… once we arrive in Jamaica in 15 days I will start posting pictures!