January: D. continued to mostly enjoy working from home except for the fact that K. did not appreciate his version of the water cooler chat: randomly appearing in the kitchen. She took to ordering him back down to the basement whenever he happened to pop up upstairs and threatened him with the enforcement of the no workplace relationship clause common in most employment contracts.
February: It’s official. There will be no medical doctors from this branch of the family. Frog dissection makes T. vomit. And the middle school is relieved to hear that he’s the last of the weak stomached K. children to come through their hallowed halls.
March: And then there were three: T. became a teenager this month. K. and R. were rear-ended driving home from a dance competition. These two things (three teenagers and being rear-ended) are actually pretty similar—angst and aggravation all around.
April: This month had some pretty big highs and a horrible low. K. was asked to sit on a blogging in the literary world panel at the local community college’s literary festival. It was even covered in the paper. While it hasn’t led to an increase in readership, it’s just an honor to be nominated. ;-) W. turned 18 this month, making him a legal adult despite K. being sure we just brought him home from the hospital yesterday. And this is also the month we lost our beloved Daisy dog. There are no words.
May: D. took a new position this month, Senior Service Cloud Specialist (don’t you just love corporate speak titles?—and no, K. can’t tell you what it means either), which calls for pretty constant travel. Only the airline miles people could tell you where all he’s been this year. T.’s show choir went to States in May after winning Regionals. Unfortunately he didn’t get to perform as he managed to throw up on his friend’s shoes on the bus on the way to the competition. The biggest disappointment in all of this was that the music director had finally granted him permission to sing at a regular volume instead of very quietly so no one got to hear the result of all those voice lessons. K. and D. went to London for their twentieth anniversary this month. This is the same trip that D. gave her for their tenth anniversary and their fifteenth anniversary. K. reckons that means she’s still owed two trips over there.
June: K. went to New Orleans for the WNBA National Meeting. She came home just a couple of days before W.’s graduation and immediately had to jump into party planning mode. Before W. even walked across the stage to get his diploma [(it was really in there—we checked! (misspelled name and all)], his first college tuition bill arrived.
July: Remember all of the news about shark attacks? Dance Nationals was in Myrtle Beach, just up the beach from most of the attacks. If R. and her friends weren’t too young to get the reference, they probably would have been unimpressed by K.’s Jaws theme song impression. After dance was over, we (and again, I am leaving D. out of that collective noun) headed up to the cottage, where K. was willing to get in the water, confident there would be no hungry sharks around. With an unpleasant sense of déjà vu, we went down the dock one morning to find the boat half-sunk. This is an improvement over the summer K. fully sunk one, but still not a fun (or cheap) problem to have. W. and K.’s dad partnered to win the tennis tournament up there, a fact that tickled them greatly but annoyed K., who had to play against them (and lost badly).
August: We sent our first baby off to college this month. W. headed to High Point University for his freshman year. Given half a chance, W. wouldn’t be the only one in college as D. suffered serious pangs of jealousy during move-in weekend. As W. started his freshman year, R. started her senior year of high school and T. his last year of middle school. Just in time for him to go to school, T. came down with mono. The source of the virus, and by that we mean her name, remains a mystery.
September: T.’s braces finally came off so the orthodontist is going to have to find another way to fund his kids’ college education. K. painted both W. and R.’s bedrooms but not T.’s this month. She wanted to make sure he gets the full “third child” treatment. She’s promised to paint his if and when he cleans it up so she can see what color the carpet is. This is why it took so long to paint the others’ too.
October: W. came home for fall break this month and it was wonderful to have him ignoring us from the same zip code instead of from afar. To be fair, if you text him about something football related, you’re likely to get a response. If you are his mother and you text him with a question or an “I miss you,” you are not.
November: R. hit send on her college applications and got her first college acceptance this month. D. is still trying to ignore the fact that this means she really will be leaving us next year. T. had his biggest role yet in the middle school musical playing Ed the dumb hyena. That he plays the baffled and befuddled so very well is either a sign of some impressive acting talent or is terribly concerning.
As 2015 comes to a close, we hope that all of you are surrounded by family, peace, love, and happiness now and throughout the coming year.
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