{last first day}

I'm pretty lucky and shouldn't complain about school (yet) this semester. It was the first day back to school and my one and only class runs from 1pm-2:15pm... that's harsh, right?! Ayden doesn't start school until 9am, which means the earliest I need to get out of bed in order to be ready to take him to school is 8am. That is totally doable, and yet I'm complaining about being back at school, ha! Likewise, when I start clinic next week, I probably won't need to be there until 8am and from my calculations, it should only take 45 minutes at the most, which means leaving my house at 7:15am and getting up by 6:30. Now, 6:30am is a little early, but I think I can manage it two days a week since when I start my externship, I'll probably be getting up at 5:30-6am EVERY day of the week. That will definitely take some getting used to. I haven't had to get up at 5:30am EVERY day of the week in who knows how man years! I can and will do it though, no choice.

Today was my last first day of school (on campus) and I couldn't be more excited! I can't say that it was my last first day of school ever because unfortunately I will have an online class each semester throughout my externship and from some comments I've read from current fourth year students, that one class might end up being more work than my two on campus classes. So not looking forward to that, but on the flip side, they are 'working' full time and then have a class on top of it. Right now I have two classes and I am not even working part time. However, I know I can pull it off because I worked three days a week when Ayden was a baby and still did two or three online classes on top of that at a time. Totally doable because I am super woman! Haha!

My class today went well. I am excited that the classes we have this semester are shorter in time than last semesters. Two plus hours of one class gets to be LONG. This semester one is an hour and fifteen minutes and then my other one is only 50 minutes. And with both teachers on the Point campus this semester it will make it much easier to pay attention, especially with one of the professors (for at least the first five weeks of the class) is my favorite professor and makes the learning that much easier. For the second five weeks of one class we have a speech professor and although we've had her before in undergraduate classes, I have heard that she is a much harder graduate school teacher and she is going to be teaching us speech perception and I've never really enjoyed that subject. Formants and such... just not my thing. I'm looking forward to getting into the groove of the semester and getting through it. Just one step closer to moving!

We've gotten quite a bit of snow lately and Jay has been working a lot more. He enjoys having something more to do and we definitely enjoy a little extra money in the winter months. It will be nice when he is working full time all year round at a job that he enjoys and we can start paying back his student loans. That is not a topic that I want to think about right now though since it is so depressing, so lets move onto something better...

My cousin, Amanda, crocheted me a hat and I cannot wait to get it in the mail. She posted a picture of it and I love how it turned out! She taught me how to crochet back around Thanksgiving and I'm bummed to say that I've only 'mastered' the single hook or loop or whatever you call it. I could make a scarf, but that's it. It was my goal to learn how to make myself a hat, but I guess that I just wasn't blessed in that area so I asked Amanda if she could make me one because she totally excells at it and she willingly obliged. I think I will stick to photography, hehe!

As I sit here on the couch typing this, Ayden is cuddling up next to me and reading the previous paragraphs that I have written. It is honestly too cute that he is reading it. I guess I have to watch what I am writing since he's getting better at reading. We have been working through a big book of Curious George stories lately and are almost done. He is doing so great and I smile each time we finish with a page. He is also excelling on his speech goals too. And even though he didn't have school today (lucky kid), we worked on his normal routine of homework when I got home and he didn't even complain. Yippie. Not that we get too much complaining these days. For the most part Ayden is pretty well behaved. He does have some outbursts at times, but they are typical of his age and he doesn't get away with them. They are pretty infrequent though, so I'm thinking we are doing something right, haha! We try! We are not perfect parents, but we try!

CIAO! LOVE ME!