The End is Near

Right now I am rocking a very cranky baby to sleep and thinking about how I only have 2 more days of this term left and 3 more days until we leave for Virginia.

This has been one of the busiest times that I have had in a long time. I'm doing very well in my classes, though. I have A's in both of them! My writing teacher likes my papers so much that she asked to use them as in-class examples for later classes.

I'm so excited to go to Virginia and spend time with Mitchell's family. It will be cool to see Ross again. Joseph is so excited to see everyone, too. It will be an interesting experience with both kids on the airplane, but I'm sure that Joseph will love it.

I'm going that Fall will be easier since I'm not going full-time. Maybe then I will have more time for blogging. I'm not taking early classes either, so I will also have a bit more time for sleeping.

Update on Us

Life at our house is SUPER busy right now. There are times that I have contemplated blogging, but I would prefer to get some sleep right now. Luckily, I am at a slow point in my classes right now, so I have a little bit of time. I even folded some laundry today!

I'm doing really well in my classes right now. I have an A in both of them. After today's lecture in Stats, I've realized that it's going to start getting harder. It didn't help that I could NOT stay awake during the first half of the lecture. We are about to start our 8-10 page Issues paper in Writing 150. I am going to be writing about profanity on television. We'll be required to do a lot of research for this class, but I'm hoping that I can get a lot done during library class days rather than toting my kids to the library.

Mitchell has dropped both of his classes. He was under the impression that he could use the art the he made in his Illustration 2 class to apply to the Illustration program. A couple weeks ago, he found out that he has to submit the art from his Illustration 1 class that didn't get him in the program when he applied in April. He was told that he needed to redo the art pieces to make them presentable. So he dropped Illustration 2 so that he didn't have to work on those art projects, too. Today, he decided to drop his Greek Mythology class because he needs to focus all of his energy on his paintings. He has been working and stressing a lot the past couple of weeks, but he has finally starting making some headway. He is starting to flesh out the ideas he has for each of the projects and even got some initial painting done on one of them. It's going to be a lot of work, but I know he can do it.

Joseph has finally started cooperating with Mitchell's potty-training efforts. He has realized that if he uses the potty, he will get a piece of candy. He has managed to go at least once a day on the potty. He has also recently developed a lot of fears and spends a lot of time hiding between my feet underneath my desk; he's actually there right now because his "room is too scary."

Annabelle crawls all over the house and she is putting everything in her mouth. She loves being able to go where she wants and follows Joseph everywhere. She just got over her first ear infection.

People have been asking how we both go to school while having kids. I tell them that we don't do the dishes or the laundry and we don't vacuum the house. We also survive on much less sleep and very simple meals (cereal, hot dogs, & PBJs are our standard fare). We are so grateful to be students here at BYU and for all of the things we are learning.

4th of July Weekend

We really had such an awesome 4th of July weekend.

On Friday, I was pretty stressed from school and everything and I was feeling a little disappointed that we didn't have any plans to celebrate, but Mitchell let me know that he had made plans to have dinner with some friends on Sunday night.

Then, on Saturday, Aunt Marianne called and invited us over for 4th of July! And I remembered that Dane's baby blessing was going to be on Sunday. We spent most of Saturday getting homework done so that we would be able to have fun the rest of the weekend. We heard from some friends in the ward that the best place to watch the fireworks was in the stadium's parking lot. We walked down there with the kids. It was so amazing! Mitchell and I covered the kids' ears to protect them from the noise. The explosions were so powerful that we could sometimes feel them! It was just so beautiful. Joseph was totally amazed by it all. Annabelle liked watching it, but then ended up falling asleep.

On Sunday, we drove up to Sandy for the blessing. It was so wonderful to see so much family all together at once. We had a really good time visiting with everyone after sacrament meeting. Joseph really loved playing with all of his cousins and Annabelle had fun, too. We drove straight from Sandy to our friends', the Winwards. We ate dinner and played games and just had a nice visit.

On Monday, we finished up a little bit of homework that we still had left. As we were deciding what to do for lunch, Samantha arrived. We all went out to In and Out Burger together. Joseph and Athena just loved being together. Then we went to Aunt Marianne's and a really fun time with everyone. We even rolled down a hill. Joseph didn't want to leave his cousins when it was finally time to go home and go to bed.

The weekend was so much fun that it was hard to get back into the groove of the school week. We've managed to get all of our stuff done okay, though. I got an 87% on my first Stats exam, but the written portion hasn't been graded and added to that, so I might have done even better. It feels good to be doing well in school. I've been having nightmares for years that I would go to school and be so far behind that they would kick me out. It's nice when the nightmares are proved wrong.

I have two very whiny, cranky children that I need to get to bed now, so I will have to be done. I hope that we can all get some sleep tonight.

Moving

No, we aren't moving, but I feel like everyone in our ward is. Almost all of Joseph's friends have moved and many of my friends have moved; this means that we are pretty lonely out on the playground right now. I am hoping that a family with children moves into the ward. I'm not used to being the one that stays while everyone else is moving, so it's really weird to me. I've just moved so much in my life that I've gotten used to it. The longest Mitchell and I have lived in one place since we got married was the year that we lived at his mom's house. It's going to feel really weird staying here in Provo for so long. I keep trying to rearrange the house because I just don't feel entirely at home yet. I don't feel like this is a very permanent place, but we are going to be living here longer than we've lived anywhere else. It's not very easy to decorate because we can't hang much on the walls and we don't have any shelves for setting pictures or knick-knacks on. It is slowly coming together, though. We just moved Mitchell's desk into the living room and the tv into the bedroom so that we can work on our homework in the same room. It's been nice so far, but the living room doesn't really feel like a living room anymore.

Most of our time is now consumed by school. I was up until 11 or 12 almost every night this week either working on projects or trying to get Annabelle to sleep. And I was waking up between 6 and 8 every morning as well. I've realized that I don't do well with less than 8 hours of sleep. I'm hoping to try to catch up on some sleep this weekend. We'll so how things really go.

I'm going to go to bed now so that I can start catching up on that sleep.

How Things Are Going

I am tired and overwhelmed. I knew that things were going to get hard when school started, but I didn't realize how exhausting it would be. I'm so tired all the time. It takes me nearly all the time I'm at home to do my homework because I'm exhausted and the kids always need/want my attention. I've been worrying about how I'm going to make it through the next 6 weeks. I haven't been this grateful for Sundays in a long time; it's wonderful to have a day to rest and forget about school and housework.

It isn't completely awful, though. I enjoy my classes and I love learning again. I have always loved going to school and I'm really grateful to be doing it again. I'm excited to learn more and progress in my classes.

The kids are doing just great with everything. They have fun with Daddy every morning while I am gone and they are always excited to see me when I'm done. Annabelle learned how to crawl yesterday. She's still pretty slow and has to think hard about each "step", but it's so fun watching her and she just looks adorable. It's harder when I take Joseph out to play now because I can't just set her on a big blanket and study while she and Joseph play; she is determined to eat the grass when she is out there and it takes all my attention to keep her from doing that. If anyone has any ideas to keep her from eating grass (or rubber chips or sticks or sand...) while we are outside, I'd love to hear them.

I don't know how often I'll be able to blog, since school keeps me so busy. I'm going to try to keep up with it, though.

Family Photos

A friend in the ward did a free photoshoot for us at the beginning of the month. I just got the photos a few days ago. I'll post a few of my favorites on here and I'll be putting all of them on Facebook... maybe tomorrow. I'll probably blog about my first week of school after church tomorrow.

First Day of School

Today was a really good first day of school. It was nice to wake up early and read my scriptures alone and in a quiet house.

My first class was at 8 and it was Writing and Rhetoric 150. All of the other students in my class seem to be brand-new, fresh-out-of-high-school, 18 year-old freshmen. My teacher is a student teacher halfway through working on her Masters. I think I am much closer to her in age rather than the other students in my class. It is really interesting being in a class where I am the "old" one.

My second class is Principles of Statistics 121. I was very excited to see Annemarie in my class as well as my old visiting teacher and her husband who are very good friends to me and Mitchell. I am pretty sure that I will like this class. The teacher is really a lot of fun and I loved listening to her talk.

My biggest fear is that I will not be able to keep up with the heavy reading and work load that comes with both of these classes. I am going to try really hard, though.

Mitchell had a really good morning with the kids and took great care of them. I'm so grateful for the good day that we had and for the amazing opportunity that I have to go to college.