Lifestyles of the Frantic and Frazzled: Amazing Christmastime!

Since I got lazy and started this post last week and then didn't finish and/or post it before the Christmas festivities begin, it will be a hodgepodge of what I had written and what I did write today.

Last weeks installment went a little something like this...

It's been a relaxing few lately, with no class, homework, tests to study for. Relaxing it is! Definitely feels nice, and I definitely don't miss the whole school thing right now, but I do know that I will be ready for the semester to start again once break is over... you know, to just get on with it because the sooner we start, the sooner we can be over! Give me a few weeks to recoup from this semester and I'll be rearing and ready to go for next semester. Anything has to be better than what we went through this fall! But, we do have SIX classes this spring. Count them... one, two, three, four, five, SIX!!! AND clinic! But clinic is off campus so when I leave for the day that's it, nothing more to take care of! And I still only have class on Mondays and Wednesdays and I will have breaks in-between so I will still be able to fit in a few hours of work and NO CLASS ON FRIDAYS!!! Or hearing aid duty! Oh how exciting!!!

And my class list does sound kind of enticing this spring. The only downside is having to take three classes with the third years and I am not looking forward to that. It means bigger class size, but oh well I suppose. In any case, here is what I will be learning about... Pediatric Audiology, Amplification part 2, Vestibular Pathologies, Geriatrics, Practice Management, and School Methods. Despite the fact that my hellacious Monday schedule will not become a hellacious Wednesday schedule this week, I have NO LABS!!! And that will make up for it, I hope anyways!!! Keeping my fingers crossed, keeping them crossed tightly!

I am SO ready for Christmas! Not for the gift getting part, but for the seeing my family part and to just be together with everyone. We have such a busy schedule, but it will be fun and totally worth it! Yesterday morning, Ayden asked me if we could leave cookies and milk out for Santa before we leave, and then he said that if we didn't have carrots for the reindeer that we could leave them some sugar out. It was super cute and I think that we might be able to wing it and make it look like Santa came while we were gone visiting family. We went and visited Santa at our small town mall the other day and I have to say that I was highly disappointed. I didn't expect much, but at Ayden's age, he knew he wasn't the real Santa. But he was okay with that and with my explanation for him.

Finals grades were put up late yesterday afternoon and wouldn't you know that yours truly pulled off five 'A's and only ONE 'A-'... how fantastic is that?! But I was disappointed in my balance final exam grade. Katie told me that she had gotten a 94% on her final and so I was expecting at least that or better since I did so much better than her on every other test in the class, except, apparently this time. My final exam grade was almost 10% LOWER than hers! I got an 85% on the final exam and I know that grades were curved because he always curves them! It makes me sad to think that even with all of the studying that I put in, I still did so bad. It doesn't even matter to me that I got an 'A' in the class, its the bad grade that bothers me. I suppose I should just be happy though, right?! Could have been worse!

I found out last night that there is a good chance that I will only have five classes next semester. The one that we might not be having is just a one credit School Methods class, but one less hour of class a week, I'll take it!

And here is the installment from today (pending I actually get ambitious and post this sometime today as well, haha!)

We had an AMAZING Christmas! It was SO great to get to spend some time with family even though we were super busy and shuttled from one place to the other. The weather was decent... not super cold or super snowy so Jay was able to be home and enjoy all of the Christmas festivities with us which was nice! Ayden was spoiled at almost every place we went, and super great memories were made all around!

I co-founded the Couch Club with my sister and cousin on Christmas Eve and it was hilarious, all thanks to one mistaken statement we were all laughing so hard we were almost crying! I have to say, that was probably the best memory of the weekend! I also got to play some Royal Rummy (or Rummy Royal, however you say it) and have LOTS of fun doing that! I had never played before and we laughed and laughed again, and my sister and I tried to ~~cheat~~ help each out. Unfortunately, Jay caught us and we were unsuccessful. Maybe next time though, hehe! And we played some Taboo and I helped our team pull out a win the second round (or maybe I just think that I helped)! It was a fun time, that’s for sure!

Here are more than a few picture that were taken this past weekend. I didn’t get as many as I would have liked, but I was just too lazy at some points to get out my camera and take pictures. I was more interested in just sitting back and enjoying the time with my family. And I need to learn how to accept that not every picture is going to be perfect and that I should just sit back and shoot sometimes instead of worrying about how the picture will turn out.

Here are just a few of the peanut butter balls that my sister made for Christmas. I think she said that she made over 100 and I probably ate at least 50 of them! They were SO good and addicting! The amount of chocolately goodness that I ate this past weekend is insane! I probably gained like sixty pounds! And then there is Ayden with the Swamp People t-shirt that my sister made for him! He LOVES Swamp People and can’t get enough of them!

I saw a lot of this, this past weekend… Nintendo DS in hand and Ayden not paying attention to anything around him. I think he got four new games for it for Christmas, which means that he is now up to eight games. He was having SO much fun playing each new game and the best part was that each game was easy enough for him to play by himself and he didn’t need any help from myself or Jay!I really just love this picture that I took of the Christmas tree lights so I had to share it with everyone!Jay’s mom made me a new camera strap for Christmas. This isn’t the original fabric that she had picked out, but she said that the stuff that she originally got was too short and so she just made one with some fabric that she had at home. I really like how it turned out, but in all honesty, am going to need to get some new ‘me’ fabric and have her make me a new one, which she said she expected anyways. But she made it with this fabric to see how easy it would be and how it would turn out.

And, apparently, my younger sister Alexis is obsessed with Justin Beiber, like every other girl in America, and so my other sister Emily made her a Justin Beiber t-shirt and she just about flipped out when she saw what it was! She was SUPER excited!

Here are Emily and Alexis playing with my camera at our dad’s house and taking silly pictures with it! Love ‘em both!And here are just a few other pictures that I took copying something that I seen on the computer a few days ago. I wanted to try it out and see how it would work and I sort of got the effect that I was looking for… I think, haha! Just a few of about the fifty pictures that I took turned out, but that’s okay!