Friday, December 30, 2016

Josh got his braces off!

After two and a half years, Josh is finally free of his braces! He looks great!


Joshteeth

Sunday, December 25, 2016

Thursday, December 22, 2016

One more school update

Final grades posted yesterday and I got an email letting me know that I am no longer on academic warning with the university! I'm pretty sure I mentioned it a while back, but when I went to my one disastrous year of college at 18, I dropped out on academic probation. And then when I decided to go back to college at 40, I was still listed as being on academic probation all these years later. I got that upgraded to academic warning by taking a little mini class before the semester started, but my good grades this semester (straight A's, yay) finally bumped me off of the warning status and I have now officially repaired the academic mistakes of my 18 year old self. I have spent the past 23 years being really bothered by the fact that I made such a mess of my college goals all those years ago, but as of last night I feel like I officially wiped that slate clean. I know it doesn't really matter, but it feels like a weight off my shoulders. It feels good to fix something that has bothered me for so many years. Even if I never take another college credit (don't worry, I've got 14 coming up next semester), I feel a lot of accomplishment knowing I went back and fixed a really old, but really bothersome mistake. If you look up my college transcripts, there is no longer a big red "academic probation" mark on them, and probably if you looked into my brain, there is no longer a big red "you failed college" mark in the there either. It feels good, and I felt like sharing it. :)


Wednesday, December 14, 2016

Semester complete!!

Last night I officially hit the submit button for the final time this semester and I can officially declare it complete. I'm still waiting for some grades to come in, but I feel really good about everything and I expect to finish with straight A's. Yay me!! This semester turned my life upside down a bit, because I had to get used to a full time schedule for the first time. After 16 years of being a stay at home mom and having a lot of freedom in my daily schedule, having deadlines to stick to and figuring out how to balance school and motherhood was a challenge. But I kind of got in the groove by mid semester, and it got easier after a while. I survived, and I'm proud of myself for hanging in there.

 I'm currently signed up for five classes/14 credits next semester. I'm going to give that a try and see how it goes. My original plan was to do 12 credits, but I want to kick it up a bit and see how that feels. There is a possibility that I may drop one class early in the semester if it feels like too much, but I want to give it a try. The sooner I can get through all of this, the better, so I'm going to keep plugging along. The good news is that I have pretty much finished my boring core classes and now I get to start taking the fun stuff. Next semester I have some marriage and parenting classes coming up that I'm looking forward to. I'm finally taking the classes I want to take for my major instead of all the English and history and math they make you take in the beginning. So that will be fun. It's more credits that I've done before, but it's also classes I'm actually excited about, so that might help keep me going through the semester.

But for now I have three blissful school free weeks to enjoy before next semester starts. Our whole family has been crazy busy this year. Shawn has had a difficult year at work with some things they've been dealing with, Josh's plate is so full with school, work, and extra curricular activities that he's rarely home anymore, and Matthew and Clarissa are always busy with friends and school and their activities. So I'm looking forward to shutting it all down for a few weeks at Christmas. Christmas is the one time a year when everyone comes home and we kind of lock ourselves away from the world for a bit. We have lots of fun traditions that we enjoy and it's a good chance for us to reconnect for a few weeks. After the year we've had, we really need it.

So I guess I don't have a whole lot more to write about besides that. I feel bad that I've abandoned my blog lately, but it feels like the main thing in my life right now is school, and it's a boring blog topic.  The tales of my history tests and English papers aren't really that interesting.

In family news, Josh is currently hard at work on another documentary for National History Day in hopes that he's going to make it to nationals in Washington DC again this summer. He would love to get back there and see some of his NHD and France trip friends again. His topic is really interesting this year, so I think he has a chance.

Matthew is still hard at work at the piano and he's starting guitar lessons after Christmas. Is Santa going to bring him a guitar for Christmas? We'll have to see. He doesn't read my blog. The answer is yes, lol.

Clarissa is loving life, as always. She's such a happy kid, just always excited to be along for the ride. She's looking forward to Christmas and hoping that Santa is going to bring her lots of art supplies to replenish what she is constantly running out of. That kid loves art. She paints, draws, loves to make jewelry and all sorts of little crafty things. I think she can look forward to lots of art supplies for Christmas. She turns 8 in a couple of months, can you believe it? That's how old Josh was when I started this blog. Crazy how fast time goes.

So we're doing good. Busy, but good. I feel like that's all I ever say in my blog anymore, but that's life in our family these days. I'm excited to be done with the semester, eager to start the Christmas festivities and hopeful about what's coming up next semester. Life just keeps moving forward!