And then, just a few days later, it's mostly done.

Okay, so we got the bulk of the Christmas shopping done this weekend.  I was lucky enough to have Friday off, so I had a 3 day weekend with not a lot else to do.  I shopped online at Amazon, Ebay, Etsy, Target, Walmart and Barnes and Noble.   Now in real life, I need to go to my small town and get some gift cards here and there and to Target in real life because they couldn't ship me the items I needed (which is frustrating, Target!)  Anyway, it's almost done. 

Speaking of things that are done, youngest son is done with his first semester of college and believes (is pretty sure) he got the following grades.  He can't for sure find his algebra grade online and they haven't been posted to the official website yet, each professor has just posted them here and there.  I guess.  That's what it sounded like when he explained it to me.  It's different now than when I was in college back in the dark ages and we got our grades through the United States Postal Service. 

Writing 101   B
History          B
Freshman Year Experience   B
College Algebra   C
Chorus          A

Chorus is pretty much a guaranteed A, you just have to show up.   In History and FYE the reason he didn't get an A had to do with, I think, just learning to be in college and messing some things up at the beginning and his C in Algebra stems from his difficulty showing his work.  He knows what the answer is, but he can't show the steps his brain used to get there.  He's both exceptionally gifted at math and learning disabled at math and the school could not (would not) accommodate that, so he ended up with a C.   We're all thrilled with his writing B because, with dysgraphia/dyslexia, writing is the most difficult thing for him.  This is a victory!   I think it's better than I did my first semester in college and I was a traditional, non-learning-disabled person.  I was finding out that I needed to study.   He does not need to study, just absorbs everything from class and reading and so, spent a relaxing finals week not studying and not worrying about anything.   He did well on finals, the fact that he didn't get As is due, as I said, to some mistakes early on while he was trying to get it all figured out.  (Not that we're hung up on getting As, it's just fun for us, watching him do so well when for a while there, we were so worried~! ) 

In other Christmas news, we finally got the tree up, the decorations hung and placed around the house.  Cosmo ate one of our 2 remaining wise men, so I've ordered a replacement from Ebay.  Isn't the internet grand?  It's from a set I bought in the 80s, but I go on Ebay and find matching wisemen.  Pretty amazing, really.