Goodbye 2015, Hello 2016!

Let's not focus on the almost 2 months that I didn't blog and just focus on me being back now, k? :) It has clearly been a little bit busy around here, with the holidays and everything, but life is getting back in order now and it feels good to get back to the normal routine. 

First Christmas at our new house!

Christmas Eve dinner at my parents'. Note the huge snowman cake (it
was almost as delicious as the rib-eye my dad roasted)

Matt & I got to go to the Gaylord Texan for the huge ice display

Yes, it is all made of ice.

I was brave enough to slide down and it was really fun!

We had a great Christmas and were happy to spend it with both of our families. It was great to spend good quality time with everyone and good food was enjoyed, like always. After we got back from traveling, we had a week at home before Matt went back to work. We took advantage of that to do some much needed organizing and cleaning. One of the closets upstairs went from being an absolute wreck to being neatly organized and with room to spare. Wish I had pictures of before/after, but I'm just happy that it is so much better now!

For Matt's birthday, we went to see Star Wars. We loved it!

I survived my first semester as a professor and when all is said and done, I think it went really well. I enjoyed my students (for the most part) and received ratings that I'm happy with. I definitely enjoyed teaching more this semester than I had last spring, and I hope that will continue. I was able to have some really fun and enlightening discussions with my undergraduate students and I know several of them really enjoyed the class. I have some things I want to change the next time I teach these courses, but overall I was happy with how things went. 

Our New Years Eve consisted of homemade white chicken & herb pizza

And some amazing dessert (store-bought from Kroger's-- SO good!)

This semester will be different as I'm teaching 2 graduate-level courses, 1 online and 1 in-person. I think it will be a good semester and I hope to get to know the graduate students better. Research has been going well and I have been able to get several new projects started. I have been able to work on some really exciting collaborations with different scholars, both at and outside of my university, so I am excited to see where those take me. 

We have some exciting plans for this semester! My sister-in-law will be having her first baby any day now, so we're looking forward to meeting our new little niece or nephew. We will be adding to our own family and hope to adopt a dog in the next couple of months (no, no human babies anytime soon!). We have several house projects on the horizon as well, so it looks like I will have several things to post about here. I will definitely try to be better about posting on the blog this year, promise!

Random question for you: The first day of class is next week and I will be teaching my graduate-level statistics course on Tuesday. What random question should I ask the students? It can be an ice breaker, a get-to-know-you question, or anything. Looking for ideas :)