December

Well we got through the year and the semester. This calls for celebration!

Jed got all As and Bs on his courses and is very happy to be done with all but one of his general education courses. He's enjoying his 300 & 400 level courses a lot more than the introductory ones, of course, so that is helping the time go by quicker. He only has 2 more semesters to go until he's done with his bachelors!!! He will be graduating in late July and I am so stinkin proud of him.

I am still waiting to get all my grades posted but am hoping for a 4.0 - my first ever in college and first, actually, since jr high I believe. I had a 3.4 gpa when I graduated high school so I obviously wasn't a bad student, but I most certainly wasn't perfect, lol. Then college came and I realized that I couldn't goof off and still get good grades and suffered my first ever (and last) F in an elementary algebra course. Yea, that one kinda hurt .. my ego mostly. Anyway, my hesitant goal is to attempt to graduate cum laude from my graduate program since I believe I was capable of doing so in high school and my undergrad but just didn't place enough importance on academics. It's mainly to get some of that ego back haha. We shall see.

Work has been a pain in the butt as usual. I am trying very hard to make the best out of it .. and boy does that take some energy! I requested more hours as we aren't making enough money and juggling work and school last semester wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. (I hope I don't have to eat my words later when future semesters kick my butt!) Unfortunately, there aren't really more hours to be had, at least right away, so it's a waiting game there. At least it's making us really analyze what we need and what we can cut out of our spending!

Last year, however, I worked every day of the week of Christmas rotating shifts (a few graveyards, couple days, couple evenings, all mixed up) at a juvenile detention facility with a fever/flu. Though I really enjoyed that job, I am grateful to have had Christmas eve and day off to rest and spend time with my Jeddy and Nova.

We were going to head out to Washington to visit my mom for Christmas, stop by Jed's parents, and see my friends from high school. Unfortunately we were stuck here a second Christmas in a row. :( We had made our plans, I had attempted to figure out how to get most my work hours by splitting our vacation between 2 weeks (my hours are contingent on each week separately), and my mom had offered to pay for gas, so everything was pretty much set .. until we heard that they were having some crazy storms out in western Washington and that the passes (both through Snoqualmie & La Grande) were looking pretty terrible and/or shut, especially since our Envoy is temporarily out of commission and all we have is the Neon. So we opted to stay in Rexburg and not deal with the nightmare of driving through snowy passes with a 4-cylinder, lightweight car. It blows, but what can you do? We are gonna try and get out that way in April, but definitely in August.

Christmas this year was pretty low-key (which seems to be our theme for holidays lol). We hung out together at home, had (vegan) french toast, g+ chatted with the Parker clan, called my mom, opened presents, went for a walk with Nova, and had a lovely "traditional" dinner. A few of our gifts were still in the mail but all are wonderful and we're very thankful for family who thinks of us. It was so nice to hang around for 4 days with Jed; I really needed that.

We went to see The Hobbit the last weekend of the month. I kinda have mixed feelings about it. It was good, but it felt a little choppy as they added lore in to augment the main story line. The cinematography was beautiful and epic as usual, scenery and costumes were amazing, acting was good, but as Jed and I discussed: it's a childrens' book, not an epic high fantasy like the LotR, so making it epic didn't feel perfectly right. Not bad, just a little awkward. But we're excited to see the other 2 in the following years and I plan on rereading the Hobbit, and maybe some of the other lore-type books to fill myself in.

Good times December! We are very much looking forward to January and the new year! Catch ya on the flip side!