Hello there, favorite students!!!

It's approaching winter break, and I know you are excited for the festive vacation - looking forward to plenty of free time to snuggle in front of the fire and READ or maybe do a new puzzle. Maybe some of you are celebrating holidays and will see family and friends and maybe get a present or two . . . I hope you have fun.

I was so thrilled to read the posts sent by some of you - I almost started CRYING I was so happy to hear from you!!! So I have some notes back:
Gretta - I'm glad you liked The Golden Compass books - I'm definitely going to try the others in the series. The first one went quite well.
Ben H - I'm so glad you tuned in for homework and found me! Thanks for your kind wishes!
Phebe - Hi back. I miss your sarcastic antics.
Prudence - Thanks for being so encouraging. I hope your family has a nice holiday.
DAN - Thank you SOOOOOOOOO much for the post! I miss you and your class like crazy. I hope that I'll be able to come in to visit soon. How is your book going? I haven't been doing nearly as much reading as I'd like to be. It's a little distracting here. . . Anyway, you are a champ! I hope you have a merry Christmas, and I'd love to hear from you again soon!

For anyone who wants to hear my reading history, I just finished the most recent IT Girl book - Reckless. It was great, but . . . some of the characters are starting to seem a little too much like Gossip Girls characters . . . Easy is a little to Nate-like and Tinsley is too Blair and Heath is WAY too Chuck. See what you think. I read the David Sedaris book Holidays on Ice which was very short and VERY funny - in a very inappropriate way. One story was about a tv producer talking to a Kentucky congregation in their church on Christmas - might make you laugh until you wet your pants. Another one was about totally selfish families competing to appear the most generous in the land - very dark but very funny. Now I'm reading The Kite Runner. It's wonderful so far; I can't believe I haven't read it before. I, as always, have an enormous stack of books beside my bed.

If you'd like a Hannah update, she appears to be in remission right now which is good news; her doctor says: "Do a happy dance." Hopefully, she will be going in for a bone marrow transplant on 12/27. She'll have 9 days of really hard chemo, and then the doctors will harvest bone marrow from her sister Olivia and transfuse it to Hannah. It's scary, but we're all hoping for the best.

I miss school and you guys so much! You might not believe this, but it's hard to be away from school, from you, from home. We're going to have our Christmas up in the hospital. We have plans to decorate our tree (a huge fake one that I got at the thrift shop) and decorate gingerbread cookies and maybe even leave the hospital to go out for dinner (if Hannah's allowed). I'm sure it will be fun - just different from what we're used to.

Have a great vacation!

Love, Ms. Wallace