Graduate School

For those of you who may not know I have decided to return to school. I am very excited about the prospect as it is something I have been looking forward to for quite a while. We finally hit a place in the chaos of family life where we can manage mom being out of the house one or two nights a week.

After much contemplating I have decided to deviate slightly from my undergraduate degree in Social Work and will be pursuing a Master's Degree in Education specializing in Counseling Education. My future plans include working as a school counselor in K-12. In the meantime I plan to pace my studies so as to place family priorities first, which may mean just going part time for a while.

I am currently working on submitting my application to Virginia Commonwealth University here in Richmond. After meeting with the Department Chair I was enthusiastically encouraged to apply, and I look forward to learning from all of the staff there. It seems like such a good fit for me and my interests and skills. My only apprehension is taking my required graduate entrance exam--the MAT. It is sort of like Jeopardy questions written as analogies. Everyone says to think of it as fun and I will do fine.

Having put Jonathan through much of graduate school, I feel pretty prepared. Wish me luck!

It's Leafing

We have approximately 15- 20 trees in or near our backyard. That means a lot things. The best is that they provide lovely shade in the summer and a nice barrier from the freeway running behind our house. It also means one other very important thing. From the end of October through Thanksgiving we have LEAVES. I am not talking about one little leaf pile. I am talking about 1 foot or more of leaves covering the entire backyard and parts of the driveway. Last year we were inexperienced westerners who thought that we could just rake them up. Yes, it would be hard work but we could manage. Ha! The leaves got the better of us. But not this year. We have invested in a leaf blower, so while it will still be work I think we can manage. To those of you living west of us the children and I have a proposition. We will trade you one day of leaf pile jumping for one day of snow fall heavy enough to build a snowman. I have never seen children so excited over the few flurries we had this morning. Oh well, I guess we can always pray for snow, as long as it doesn't fall on top of the leaves!

Veteran's Day Concert

Joshua had his second grade music concert this past week. The theme was Veterans Day. The music they sang was nice and had fun actions. It was a very nice tribute to our veterans. That being said. One of the funniest things about the concert was that the music teacher announced at the beginning that the children were learning concert manners including keeping your hands down by your side in a performance. Poor Joshua. We don't know if it was dry skin or a funny reaction to the lights. He could not stop scratching his face. He would move from his eyes to his nose to his chin. When we asked him about it later, he just said he couldn't stop itching. After he watched himself he said it was funny because he scratched about every 10 secs. I think we may not have a career in the performing arts--unless it is for an eczema commercial.

Happy Halloween

Halloween was truly fun this year. The kids had a blast carving their pumpkins with Dad on Thursday and then dressing up for Trick or Treat Friday. It was basically impossible to find Star Wars patterns that weren't collectors items and I wasn't about to spend $20 + a costume for my trio of Star Wars characters so I improvised. I found a simple robe making idea for adults on the internet and cut it down to kid size then cut it down again for Samuel's robe. It was tricky but I think they turned out well. The kids had great fun pretending to be battling in the world of Star Wars and loved trick or treating. We walked the whole two blocks of our neighborhood this year and they got bucketfuls of candy which they have happily sorted and resorted. Halloween is much more fun when you are a kid.

Joshua as Obi-Wan Kenobi

Kjirsten as Senator Padme

Samuel as - Yoda - the early years.

More Halloween Fun

Samuel not real happy about getting dressed up

Ready for battle - check out those Anakin Skywalker eyes

Much less fearsome

Mmmm- ready for trick or treating we are.