Wintery-ness and school-ish stuff

Snowstorms, extremely low temperatures, whiteout conditions...looks like South Dakotan winter is back. That lull of warmth and very little snow over Christmas was strange indeed.
We've been slowly getting re-accustomed to the school year, which has been more difficult than usual with almost a week of schools letting out early and starting late. Tessie has had comparatively little school homework to do, but for homeschoolers snow days don't exist! We save our days off for when we actually want to be outside.
All of my classes have restarted except writing and French, which begin next week. Soon I'll have to pick another novel to read in French. Also Latin was cancelled on Thursday due to the weather, surprise surprise. But I'm trudging along through book II of the Aeneid all the same.
During the slight gap of school-not-being-on-full-force-but-break-is-over, what else would there be to do but read? I am rereading The Rosary by Florence Louisa Barclay, and also listening to Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey again for some new insights. I always like books better the second time around. (Or the third, or fourth...)
Apart from reading, I've been doing a lot of writing as well. One of my New Year's resolutions is to write for at least 30 minutes daily (because, as my writing teacher puts it, writers sit in the chair and write!). My goal is to finish the first draft of the book within 2015. I'm also dabbling a bit in my other story (remember Sebastian and Antonio?), trying to come up with the perfect way for my two protagonists to meet. I still don't really have a plot yet for that story...but I have a while to decide, as I'm focusing on Helena right now.
Ah, what else is there to say? We've been mailing lots of packages to siblings who forgot half their possessions here (it seems like) and talking to others who accidentally took stuff that wasn't theirs (namely Claudia, who is inaccessible by post in Morocco)!
Also I've been having some reeeeeealllly strange dreams lately. One of them involved living in L.A. and traveling to London by train in 3 hours. Weird.
That's all for now. I think.