So, in the spirit of this blog really being all about journaling for the family to look back on one day, I figure I should just sit down and write about some of the things that currently take up our time in an effort to see how much we change next year . . . . or next week, whichever one we actually make it it.
SCHOOL:
Eric is currently working on his Masters in Health Administration and Informatics through the University of Phoenix. He chose this concentration when he saw how much someone in that field can get paid . . . okay, maybe that's not the reason HE chose it, but it's the reason I was okay with him tacking on an entire year to his degree and another fifteen grand - you gotta pay all that back somehow. His current class is a marketing class in which the teacher is apparently setting all the students up to fail. The grading rubric goes as follows - you can either get a 100%, 50%, or 25%, but nothing in between. So either you ACE everything, or you fail. Pretty crappy right? Well it gets worse! He started the class with 10 kids in his group to accomplish all the group assignments with. Apparently he is not the only person struggling in the class because every other day he gets notification that another student has dropped the class from his group. As of today, there is him and one other person in his group - the other person has already told him she is in the process of dropping the class. So things could get interesting for him. His job at the University of Phoenix makes it a little easier for him to know how to handle the situation, but it's not helping is grade. He currently has a 70%, which is strange for someone who has a B+ average, and that is the highest grade in the class. I think he's getting excited for this class to be over with and to have the two week breka that comes after.When we found out that UofP would pay for 80% of my schooling, we decided it was time for me to go back. I'm working on my degree in Health Administration and should be done in October. I am currently in an effective essay writing class and a critical thinking course. I thought the essay writing class would be the hardest as I HATE to write. BOY WAS I WRONG!!!! The essay class involves one large expository essay that we work on for the entire nine weeks. Every week we work on a different aspecet of it - developing a topic, narrowing the field, finding sources, outlining, body paragraphs, intros and conclusions, etc. It really hasn't been so bad, and with only two weeks to go I am maintaining my 100%. Critical thinking? Uh yea, I used to think I overthought EVERYTHING! Clearly I was mistaken. Identifying arguments, deciphering premises and conclusions, analyzing rhetoric and fallacies, grasping deductive versus inductive logic, and the list continues. Who would have thought this class could be SO difficult?!?!?! Didn't help that I had a baby right in the middle of the class, and that two weeks after that I went back to work. Or that I'm sleep deprived. Or that my hair is currently purple. . . . . well my hair isn't really purple, but you see what I'm getting at. NOTHING is helping me accomplish this class. I finally got so fed up a week and a half ago that I emailed the teacher and was just like, "SERIOUSLY!!!! Seriously???? SERIOUSLY!!!!" I really mixed that in with a whole bunch about how much time I spend reviewing the chapters (it takes me AT LEAST four hours to read 15 pages) and how my grade history in this program (HELLO I HAVE A 4.0) clearly indicates that I have the desire and logic to work through things. She responded by telling me that my 85% was the highest in the class. . . . . . hmm. . . . . well that's good I guess, but if you get me dropped from the dean's list I will NOT be happy!
WORK:
Eric is still working for the good old University of Phoenix. Although he doesn't always get off work at his regularly scheduled time (try an hour late EVERY day last week) it is WAY better than when he was working at Sight & Sound before. They are absolutely NOT ALLOWED to work overtime, and when they do, they have to get it approved. So it's nice that when he works overtime during the week, come Friday they are practically kicking him out the door at noon. He's in charge of the Cultural Committe, working on becoming the lead for the Health programs, and can never get a bad review from any of the upper management. The director of the campus has also recently become his best friend. They bond over hunting. Somehow that annoying thing my husband loves to do that takes him away from his family just might be the best thing for our family. For whatever reason, every boss he has LOVES hunting too and they create common ground on it enough that the bosses see all the AMAZING things he does, that do NOT pertain to hunting, at work and put him up for all sorts of leadership opportunities. Leadership opportunities = RAISES! So I'm okay with that. He's also been contacted by a person who trained him when he started about taking over as the trainer for the Idaho campus - this involves a LOT of travel, so I'm not sure I'm too keen on it. We'll see how it goes.
I went back to work about two weeks after Pax was born, I struggle with the down and boring time. It's hard to get ANYWHERE fast with three kids. The amount of stuff I have to pack into the car, and the amount of things I have to do to get out the door is insane. I want to hire a nanny, or a babysitter . . . . . cause the TV as a babysitter thing doesn't ACTUALLY work. I haven't been able to get into the office before 1030 since I went back. It's also hard to accomplish much at work with three kids. By the time the older two get settled, Pax wants to eat, and as soon as he's done with his bottle, Parker and Preslie are ready for lunch. And then it's bottle time, and break up fight time, and restart the movie time, and I really want to watch phinny ferb time, and please get my two year old who somehow climbed on top of a file cabinet and is now stuck down. INSANITY!!! And not the work out people, that is life now. insanity. pure and simple. I love it though. We keep talking about getting Parker into pre-school and Preslie into day care a few days out of the week, but somehow, as crazy as it gets there, I can't imagine work without them. So nothings happened yet.
FAMILY:
Family life with three kids isn't so bad. . . . until you try to do anything. Let me rephrase. Adjusting to three kids wasn't nearly as bad as everyone told me it was going to be. Unless they met that you will always be late, never be on time, never get sleep, never have a clean house, never have alone time, and never keep on top of laundry. Maybe that's what they met the entire time, and I just took it to mean that somehow the addition of a third child meant your absolute derision to the outer rings of hell . . .. now that I think about it, it's really the same thing, isn't it? Okay not really. Life is crazy, and life is hectic, but at some point in time you reach the realization that this is just life. It is Life as we know it! There ain't no changing it, so there really isn't a reason to get all down on yourself about it. I don't know. I guess that's God's way of helping me out. I have been lucky that no matter what is happening in our lives, I never feel overwhelmed. hmm . . . . that's not true either. I feel overwhelmed - CONSTANTLY! When we were dealing with Preslie's diagnosis, it was extremely overwhelming. Being pregnant and in school and working and mommy and wifey is all extremely overwhelming. Family life and callings and school work and housework and everything is entirely too busy (Eric and I were just talking about this the other day) but somehow even though we feel overwhelemed we DON'T feel overwhelmed. Make sense? Ya, I didn't think so. It's like we know that we should be overwhelmed, but somehow we just find ourselves laughing at everything instead. Which is a good attitude to have I guess.
HOUSE:
Somehow, in the midst of all our craziness with regular lifely happenings, we have decided to tackle even more fun stuff in our house. Nothing too huge at the moment, we'll save that until the good old tax returns get here. But we've definitely changed things. We recently decided, while doing a massive spring cleanign that took place in January (hey, there's no snow and it's 60 degrees outside, it might as well be spring) that we have to make some changes. Too often we house things that are given to us becuase they were given to us, and not because we like it or will ever use it. We're "growing up" per se in the lines of our house and what we use to furnish and decorate it. For the first years of our marriage it was just whatever we found at the time that fit into our budget and could fit in the door. I mean we've always tried to decorate nice - luckily we didnt' have to do the dumpster diving to furnish our trashy apartment ever (not that that is a bad thing) but we always had really good jobs even in college that allowed us to opt for the furniture that was only slightly used at 3 years old than completely thrased at 15 years dead. Well, now we've decided we need to save up and buy things that we actually like and that we actually need. This started with the purchase of a king bed! Holy cow! I can't even believe it! We needed a new mattress anyways - the mattress that was there we had since we first got married, and we adopted it from my parents who acquired it in a real estate investment two years before that, and who knows how long the mattress sat in the guest bedroom of that house before they bought it. Really there was no telling how old that thing was. So we got a new one, and in the process decided the bed should probably be big enough that when all the kids decide to harass us on Saturday mornings there is actually enough room for all of us to sit on it. Potentially it was a bad idea becasue nobody every wants to get OUT of the bed, but we sleep well, and even when Paxton invades the space both of us has room so we don't end up with sore muscles from contorting our bodies around the smallest human being in our house who happens to take up the most of the bed all night long. Preslie loves to jump on it, which is cute and annoying all at the same time. We had to get new bedding for the new bed in a room that we had JUST painted to match the old bedding. AWESOME that we ended up finding, and actuallly liking, a bedding set at Bed, Bath and Beyond that happened to be on major sale - and then we splurged and purchased sheets that were only sightly less in cost than the mattress itself. Eric says there is no greater purchase than good sheets . . . . . I happen to think there is no greater purchase than lip gloss, so we have different opinions on the subject. So aside from setting up and rearranging our entire master bedroom, we also have painted our living room - a color I can't tell if I'm completely sold on, but grows on me as we hang up more on teh wall - decided last night to repaint our office so it is a bit lighter and so we will be forced to finish our built ins and our van is currelty ABSOLUTLEY full of stuff to take to DI (like really, there is only room for us and one child to go.
PAX:
How do we find time to finish all of our homework (for classes that require at least 15 hours a week EACH) while keeping a semi-picked up house, changing the wall color in every room, and handling a spring cleaning? That's easy, his name is Paxton, and he never wants to sleep. That's not true, he actually sleeps quite often. It's more that situation where he finishes eating about 10, then we put him down, take a little time to unwind and it's already 1115, then the debate is do I really attempt to go to sleep now in the hopes of getting 5 minutes before he wakes up again at midnight, or do I just stay up and watch Swamp People? Well usually the latter wins that argument. And then we are frustrated when midnight thirty rolls around and the child still is not up. He confuses us greatly with his eating schedule cause he goes from every hour to a six hour stretch back to needing food right NOWWWWW. The last two nights have been pretty nice with his 6 hour stretches, so I'm hoping those stay up. Preslie was sleeping 8 hours straight at six weeks, and Pax will be six weeks on Saturday, so if we can evern have him close to that I will be happy. He's in that crappy inbetween stage with clothes. You know the one. Newborn clothes are small, they overaccentuate the fact that he he eats often by clingling to his ginormous belly that would indicate malnourishment in Africa, and his pants barely cover his socks. HOWEVER the three month size clothes are all huge and fall off and make me look like I don't care to dress him appropriately. Too many times have I bought clothes at the store only to bring them home and decide they just won't work now. I've given up on shopping anywhere close to us. It seems that EVERYONE has a boy the same age as ours because even if I happen to find cute clothes (which is a rare occurance) they are always gone in his size. It's rather annoying. So I've decided I am only ever going to shop at Carter's which is now conveniently opened up right next to Cabela's - the best of both worlds for husband and wife. Anyways I was telling Eric the other day that I think I love being able to call my child PAX more than I like saying the names of any of the others. It is highly probably this is because he is the newest, but none the less I have decided I truly love the name.
PRESLIE:
Pres has decided that she wants to be grown up. Well I don't know if she decided it so much as she had it THRUST upon her. She all of a sudden got old. She gets up and out of bed on her own and downstairs and plays without me ever having to do anything. Her vocabulary is getting huge! And she's becoming even more of a diva then she was before. She has decided that she HATES naptime, and she has all of a sudden developed this fear that anytime we walk out of the room, we are actually leaving. So now she stretches out her hands and yells WAAAIIITTTTT!!!!! as she runs after us - it is completely hilarious. I keep wanting to repaint her room, but Eric won't let me. We'll see who wins that argument.
PARKER:
Parker is a good big brother, most of the time. Maybe in reality the only problem is that he is TOO good of a big brother. He has to micro manage everything. Where people sit, what Preslie is doing, how she's talking. He even tries to discipline her - in true first born child fashion. We're working on it. He has been going on the scout campouts with Eric recently, which he loves, and I love that he is getting out and socializing, and I love that I don't have three kids to keep track of ont he weekends that Eric is out of town. That's super nice. His room is the next to get a makover. His current bunk bed is HUGE. One of those that has a desk on one side and shelves and a drawer on the other side, and the bed sits on top of them. Then the lower bed is supposed to come out perpendicular like. Needless to say, with the addition of another child, and putting the crib back in the room, there isn't enough room for the GINORMOUS fortress that is his current bed. So we're on the hunt for a more sleek bunk bed - let me know if you find one. Then the debate is what to do his room like. Currently it's this old vintage golf room. We're debating between taking it enitrely crazy and doing an extreme sports room with graffiti style painting, or doing a retro baseball room. I guess we shall just have to see what we can actually find stuff for.
This post is too long, and it's not even fun rambly, so now I'm done. I'll post again under a new title.
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