It’s the Holiday Season!

I took this photo at Whyte Horse Winery in Monticello, IN, over the weekend. Clearly that means I’m in the holiday spirits?

Final grades for this semester are due one week from tomorrow, at noon. I’m trying really hard to chug through the grading, but it’s. . .mentally exhausting?

I guess that’s a good way to put it.

Even when the papers are excellently written, it can be a struggle to read multiple research papers in once sitting. Unfortunately, I have about 250 papers (not all research-based, thankfully) that I need to grade and add to the gradebook within a week.

It’s going to be a very, very long week.

But after that, I am free for a few weeks, and I’m pretty excited about that!

I’m going to read!

I’m going to knit!

I’m going to spend time with my family!

I’m going to sleep in and watch TV and spend too much time on Twitter and Facebook, Buzzfeed and Instagram!

Speaking of family and the holidays, my parents, brother and I had an interesting conversation this weekend that I think reveals a lot about each of us. Instead of buying us presents, my parents suggested we all just spend a day out shopping and have some nice meals. My brother and I can pick out our own gifts and then my parents won’t have to worry about it because neither of them have a lot of time left for holiday shopping this year.

Personally, I was all for it from the get-go. A couple of years ago I went shopping with them and picked out most of my own presents. They loved it because they also made me wrap them myself.

My brother, however, kept getting hung up on needing to have that “Christmas feeling” on Christmas morning, and he wondered what we would do if we didn’t have presents to open on Christmas morning.

My dad said we would probably be going to our grandma’s, like usual.

My mom said, “We would still wrap the presents!”

This was a surprise to me. If we were going out shopping as a family, why would we bother with the process of wrapping the presents, just to unwrap them a week or so later?

Mom then called Dad and me scrooges. But it was interesting to see how we each interpreted the experience of going shopping as a family for Christmas gifts.

Just to annoy my brother, I offered to wrap all of his gifts in the awesome glitter paper I bought.

I used it over the weekend to send out a Secret Santa gift, and he keeps complaining that there is “gold glitter everywhere.”

Who wouldn’t love this gold glitter paper?

But. . .but isn’t that the reason for the season? To put glitter on everything?

PS: It’s not too late to vote in my giveaway poll! It’s open until midnight this Friday, so vote away!