Free Money

I was awarded a $1,500 scholarship by my college and in April they had a dinner where all those who had received scholarships would be awarded their's in person. Sorry ahead of time but the pictures are from my cell phone and they were super yellow so I just decided they all looked better in black and white.

This picture is me about the time the faculty started awarding the scholarships to students and I was getting nervous about going up to accept mine. It was pretty fun to be able to go to a dinner involving school for ME for once and not David. When I was initially told I had won the scholarship I remember being disappointed that it was for the whole year and not per semester but after the ceremony I realized that there was only one other scholarship awarded that was more money and it still was only $300 more for the whole year.

There I am!

 I wasn't being greedy it was more a hope that I could replace my scholarship I have had the last two year which was $1,200 a semester (you can only have this scholarship for 4 semesters... lame) which is a LOT of money to try and compensate for.

This is one of my favorite Professors! After first arrived and I sat down she started talking to me like she knew who I was, but I had no clue who she was! Then she introduced herself and my little brain light bulb turned on. With online classes you basically never see your professor, in fact she is the only one I have met in person. It was a funny moment.

 Can I also say it was great timing because my mom had flown in just the day before so David and I were able to go to the dinner by ourselves!

Vanna White

My academic advisor who helped me figure everything about CLEP testing out and just about everything else! If it wasn't for her there is basically no way I would be graduating next Spring.

This is the Dean of the college within University of Toledo that I attend. Now if I can hopefully get just one more scholarship I'll be pretty good! Since my degree is a liberal arts degree (and an online one besides) I have been trying my darndest to graduate with a 3.9, but it's been tough! Thankfully my current GPA 3.85 is still high enough that it puts me towards the top of the list for the scholarships I have been applying to. **(crossing my fingers!)**

Unplugged

Just a friendly FYI I have recently deactivated my Facebook account. Yup I'm unplugging. No need to worry if I un-friended you (all 5 of you cuz yea I'm that cool). Between this last school semester of 16 credits, Davie, David being gone, some travel and everything else in life I have decided that I just can't waste my time on Facebook for the foreseeable future. Have I also mentioned that Facebook kind of annoys me? Yea, it does. I get really tired of the "repost this if.... blah, blah, blah" or check out this pinterest (NO!) and the memes were funny at first, but really I end up feeling like I have to sift through several pages of PURE garbage just to see pictures of my friends and family. I want to see and share stuff like this...

 Davie's new (kind of it's almost three months old now) Cheeser smile

 Hey Mom, what are you doing?

 What? Am I in the way??

 If I smile like this can I do what you are doing??

 Look at those teeth!

Such a cheeser!! He is the most independent baby on the planet when he wants to be, except for any time he thinks you should include him. For a kid who despises cuddling he sure does want to be right by my side. He is already internally conflicted :)

 Lastly in less than a week I will start my summer block of school May 13- June 21 and I will be taking at least 12 credits (I'm signed up for 15 but we will see how I cope). So yea I am going to be doing my best to only update my blog since it's more important anyways and all my family and fiends who actually care can check in on me whenever and I hope to update much more often that way. 

Biting My Tongue

I'll admit that aside from being busy with school, Davie, David and life another one of the reasons why I haven't been blogging too much lately is I have felt really negative. Not all the time but a couple of times a week I almost literally find myself wallowing in all of my frustrations, past and present, and something else that I hate to admit- jealousy. I have struggled a TON with jealousy over the last couple of years for countless reasons and in just about every situation and it's really quite embarrassing even to admit! 

A couple of months ago I literally found myself, in the span of 15 minutes, being jealous of a friend who recently graduated from her graduate program (she has no kids) and another who had just found out she was having another baby.... wow, really Kari? To begin with I hope that shows how ridiculous I feel and how silly my jealousy can be at times because having babies and graduate school don't typically go hand in hand. And I was really bothered by both, which just gets me even more upset with myself. Haha and then all the ladies wonder why I don't do pinterest.

 Not to mention the weather here about this time of year makes me so... just... bleh, claustrophobic, lazy, grumpy etc!The picture above was my house on Monday at 8 am... I had to keep the lights on all day. It's dark and cloudy almost everyday and the rare sunny days that are few and far between the sun doesn't even typically come out for the entire day either. That is one thing I have learned about myself, I can handle the cold NO problem but cold without the sun? No way! Lets just say that I am ready for Spring. Days like today and the ones that have been happening make me DESPERATELY wish I was closer to friends and family, living away from friendly faces can be so disheartening at times. So yea... that's how it's been and in attempt to not use my blog as "Negativity-ville" I have avoided it entirely, but like all of us who miss the sun when it comes back life will get better.

Losing My Marbles

Do you ever feel like something in your life is missing? Like the last time you reached for the brush it was mysteriously gone? Well it's not you and you are not losing your marbles. For those of you with small children I think you know what I mean. 

One of Davie's favorite things of mine is a black cricket brush with a red rubber handle. Every other time I go to reach for it it's magically no where to be found, this can be quite frustrating when I am in a rush to get ready. I would like to mention it's one of my favorite brushes too. Then the other day David looked and looked and LOOKED for Davie's little sneakers, he only has one pair that we really like and that I would consider real shoes, but David could not find them. 

Later that night Davie was playing with the diaper genie again and when he opened it up I realized I could see one of his white sneakers inside the bag with his used diapers. The boy is a camera nightmare getting a good picture of him is most likely with my phone camera but it's also not as good of quality because the shutter speed is just NOT fast enough. In a way he is kind of like bigfoot.

This is what I saw...

Can you see the shoe??

Lovely, at least we only put wet diapers in that can. 

David admitted to me that he helped teach Davie to put his dirty diapers in the can a few days ago. Knowledge is power. I had seen him trying to put his shoe in the can a couple of times but he never even got close to actually doing it so I hadn't been worried.

Why do little boys like things like bathrooms and garbages so much!? The boy is like mysteriously and or magnetically attracted to both and it's so gross! I now know that my fear of him putting my brush in the garbage can is completely rational, which is a scary thought.

Not only did we find BOTH of his shoes but a third, scotch tape and a spoon... lunch anyone?

It Pays to Fly

This is a small update. When we flew in December to Idaho for Christmas I lost Davie's bag, or rather the airlines did. I handed the lady at the check in counter both of my bags, she took both of them and put them on the conveyer belt... but apparently she didn't bother to tag the one that had Davie's things in it. This really wouldn't have been THAT sad except for the part where I had ALL of Davie's brand new clothes in that suitcase! UGH! Seriously, I had just spent about $50 at Old Navy on some of the CUTEST stuff ever (I know lots of caps in this paragraph just stick with me), but the tricky part was all of his new clothes were on like SUPER clearance (like $1 for pants etc). Also he had finally started to fit into some of the really cool clothes I had been slowly picking up at our local second hand store. I was also completely convinced that Davie's brand coat, Toledo Rockets hat and gloves, and monster hat were all in his suitcase as well.  

Dino pajamas- gone

cute monster hat- gone

I can barely move my arms!

He is pouty in this picture because he did NOT like wearing his coat :(

The super cute Ralph Lauren puff vest was like $3 or something there was no way I could replace it for that!

So when I got to sit down and write out the report for his luggage I wrote out what his clothes were worth I wrote down the cost of his clothes originally because I knew there was no way I would replace them for what I had paid. When I initially started searching for my bag the lady who worked for SouthWest told me that technically it wasn't their fault that my bag was lost because it wasn't tagged... WHAT!? I laughed but only because I was ready to strangle her, which would have been unfortunate because she was being helpful and was pretty nice. It was just frustrating to be told that the airlines may not have been "technically responsible" when their employee was the reason for my bag not being tagged. 

no more polar bear outfit 

This candy cane stripped outfit was one I was more upset about! It was soooo cute and I figured there was no reason why I couldn't put a girl in it as well because it was so adorable. I liked the hoodie outfits at Old Navy as you can see below and they just happened to ALL be on sale. 

David's mom and I spent the evening picking up clothes for Davie in the likely event that Davie's bag was not found. Initially they said that both of my bags were gone, but VERY thankfully I got mine within the same day and from that moment on I decided to accept the fact that I would never see Davie's bag again. That way if it came it would be a pleasant surprise and if not I wouldn't be anymore disappointed than I already was. When I got my suitcase lo and behold there was Davie's coat! This is the second time that I randomly packed something important in a suitcase that was not left or lost somewhere else. The first time Davie's blessing outfit was packed in David's suitcase, so the outfit had not gotten left behind in Detroit with the rest of Davie's stuff. This is where my spastic packing skills comes in handy ;)

Grandmas sent these fuzzy jammies and he wore them like twice before we packed them for the trip. The Long story short is about a week and a half ago I got a letter in the mail from Southwest that said they had received my claim and were (get this) actually planning on sending me money to reimburse me!!! I got the actual check this week, so even though I was irritated at Southwest they took care of my problem pretty quickly for it being the holiday season and all that jazz.

 I was soooooo happy! So even though we had already basically replaced Davie's entire suitcase it was ok because this meant I was getting paid for the stuff we had to buy... again. And Davie lived clothed happily ever after :)