Monday, January 18, 2010

Grandpa Virgil

Friday brought some sad news. Nate's grandpa passed away a little after 7am. We are going to the funeral this week. I only met Virgil 2 times, but Nate spent many summers with his grandparents in Cutbank, they would visit Casper at least twice a year, and Nate went on a few road trips with them when he was young. He has so many memories of them and the things they did together. Here's a picture of Nate and grandpa last summer when we visited them. He was 93 years old; only 2 months away from 94!! The sad thing is we have been weighed down by other things going on (work mostly), it's like we haven't really let the news sink in. It will be good to spend the week with family and hope that things will settle down.
Unfortunately, my grad degree work doesn't go away. I got done with last week's stuff early, and need to work hard today to get half of this week's work done before we go. So I better make this blog short. I also hope I get ahead on that work so I can go to my sister's baby shower on Saturday and get in the habit of being ahead so I can enjoy our spring break trip to Hawaii... how sad would it be if I had to finish a paper or two while I was there!? Horrible thought... :)

So far this year we have been going to Sunday morning services regularily and have really enjoyed them. God's word has been comforting and encouraging to me even though I feel like all I do is work and homework. It will end soon. There is a season for everything...

I need to let Nate take more pics of me and him and us with our friends. We had a few people over a couple weeks ago and then went to Amanda's for book club last Sunday and it was fun... I'll try to remember pics next time...

Saturday, January 9, 2010

Long night...

First off... returning to work this week was rough. I really enjoyed vacation and now I am feeling overwhelmed by work and homework. It's a lot each week. I survived the first half of my degree and am praying that I can do so for the last half also. I am praying my headaches don't return, that I can find the time to read everything, understand my assignments well and formulate my thoughts well enough to remember what it is I am doing as a Masters degree student. As my current professors says, "You are masters of your education. Prove it!". And I must do all of this while working with all my kids at school... planning and preparing for them so that they too can be successful at what they are attempting. It's overwhelming, but I'll get there... :)

So last night after I began one of my assignments and had a pretty good grasp on things, we decided to watch a movie before going to sleep. It was after 1 by the time the movie was over. I let the dog out one last time, shut off lights, and was crawling into bed when I hear a knock or tap 3 times on one of our windows... it freaked me out. Shadow barked his vicious bark and it stopped. Nate was already buried in pillows and said he thought it was just the dog making noises, but I know it was a knock on a window near us and obviously Shadow knew it was something more than himself making noises. Then... not 2 minutes later we hear a bbgun or a paintball gun sound about 4 times hitting our fence or our neighbors fence and then all the dogs outside begin barking... and many of them rarely bark! We get up, hear more 'gun' shots and decide it could actually be a gun from pretty far away and not just some kids paintballing random stuff in our neighborhood, which has never happened to us. We've never had anything like this happen in our neighborhood. I decide to call the police just to get someone to patrol. We hear more shots, all of our neighbors are now awake and turning their lights on too. The cops wandered around our houses for like 20 minutes and we didn't hear or see anything more and then we finally go to bed at around 2:30... it was weird. This morning... no evidence of anything. No footprints in the snow near our windows, no paintball splatters or bullet holes (thank goodness!) and it doesn't seem like our neighbors had anything happen either. It made for a disturbing night and if it was just some stupid people messing around then oh well, but it would have been fun to watch the cops chase them or something... :) I always try to find the positive side to everything. And as Nate says, don't worry. You know how to use a gun too if it ever came down to it. I pray nothing ever happens where I would have to use a gun to defend myself!

So that was our long night... maybe I overreacted by calling the cops (which Nate thinks I did) but i don't care. If someone is going to harrass me and my neighbors like that, I want them to know I don't mess around and I use my tax money by calling the authorities. That's what they are there for.

Alright... enough recall of events. Must get back to my paper of the ADDIE model of instructional design. I know... so much more interesting huh? I love homework...

Monday, January 4, 2010

Here we go again...

So... vacation is done. My weeks of staying up late watching TV or movies and waking up without an alarm clock are over... oh well. I got a lot of our house more organized though so that was good. The more time we live here the more it feels like our home and not just a house we're paying for each month. That's a nice feeling! We really enjoyed our time off. Nate did have to work a few days here and there, but he had a bunch of time off too and it was nice. We will miss taking the dog to the park a lot to watch him climb trees. He does this all by himself! He's crazy fun!

We went to a wedding on New Years night and had a lot of fun catching up with people. New Years Eve involved staying home to watch a Net Flix and then sleeping in. We also had my dad's b-day dinner and then another friends b-day party on Saturday night and Sunday we went to church, ran errands and came home to prepare for the next few weeks.

It's back to work and school now. I have 10 weeks of class ahead of me and Maui is 9 weeks away. This means I need to be ahead of schedule so I don't have to do anything but enjoy Hawaii during spring break. We may go to Keystone in a couple of weekends with some friends, but we'll see. My sister's baby shower is this month too! So busy busy... but blessed and enjoying life. We'll see if we can stay on schedule with our p90X workout, which is really cool but hard and makes us feel really out of shape... but it's good for us! Happy New Year!