So much news, so little time

Well, it has been quite a long while since the last time I blogged. Things have been so busy, it's ridiculous! But I don't think my life would feel normal without the busy-ness.

For starters, Malone found out a paper of his was declined to a journal that he submitted it to. Boo. They said it wasn't the right fit for the journal, but that it was good so he should submit it to a different journal. So, now it is submitted to the new journal and we are waiting to hear back about this second go-around. Wish us luck! He really needs this publication so that he can graduate on time. On a more positive note, he has had some real success recently at work. He has discovered something that could be kind of a big deal, so he's (momentarily at least) on cloud nine.

In other news, I got accepted to the Social Work program I applied to at the school I am attending! Yay! It has been such a relief to know what my plan is for school for the next couple of years. They had to reject about 30 applicants, so I feel very blessed to have been accepted.

K baby has been growing like a weed! She is getting taller and she is developing right on track. She only has a handful of teeth left to come in, and I recently trimmed her hair for the first time. Granted, it was just her bangs because they were getting in her eyes, but I thought it was a milestone! I was super nervous, but I didn't cry and it came out looking really cute so it's all good.

This summer our family is also growing a garden. We have some great friends who have graciously allowed us to use a portion of their garden space. We are growing lots of corn, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, cantaloup, watermelon, cucumbers, and zucchini (which already has some baby zucchinis coming on!). So far everything seems to be coming up very well and we are super excited to have some home grown produce. Apartment living has its downsides, one of them being not having a yard with our own garden space. But thankfully, that's not a problem for us this year!

Speaking of apartments, we actually moved from our cute little house. Our friends helped us arrange to move into the apartment they were moving out of for their new job. The apartment has a third bedroom and a little bit cheaper rent. The utilities are also a little less expensive and (YAY) it has a dishwasher!!! We were so sad to leave our house behind though. We formed so many good memories there and we loved not having neighbors in our faces all the time. We will miss it. But although change is hard sometimes, it is also good, and we are absolutely loving our new place!

Ok, to end this long narrative, this past week we had quite an adventure. On Friday we were scheduled to go camping for a family reunion. We decided it would be fun to take an extra day and go up for a little camping trip on Thursday, just the three of us. That way we would already have things all set up for Friday and we would get some quality family time in. Well, we were having a really great time until at 3:00 a.m. we had an unexpected visitor to our camp site. We were sound asleep when a Sherriff's deputy came and knocked on our tent. To make a long story short, we had to be emergency evacuated from the campsite because the creek we were camping next to had flooded and washed out the road bridge. We had to leave almost everything behind (including our car), were shuttled across the water, and a deputy gave us a ride home. They wouldn't let us go get all our stuff back until Monday. It was sort of scary and a lot annoying being without our car. Most of all, however, we were thankful that we were all safe. K baby even slept through (almost) the entire ordeal. Now we are back to normal life and can smile at the whole thing.

One thing's for sure though, that experience taught me a valuable lesson. I really should put 72 hour kits in our car trunk for emergencies. I can't imagine what we would have done if we had been stranded in our campsite. All we would have had to exist off of would have been Doritos, Orange slices (the candy kind. Not the healthy kind. We were camping for goodness sake!), marshmallows, and a few bottles of water. It wouldn't have lasted long and we could have been in real trouble. I am going to be putting those 72 hour kits in both our car and in our apartment right away.

Well, that's it for now! I'll update with pictures soon.

Sorry for the absence!

Day 51 approved and waiting for our baby through the miracle of adoption

Sorry for my absence in blogging world lately, I have been SO busy. I have been working 12 and 13 hour days for the past couple of weeks. It has been EXHAUSTING! (For those of you who don't know, I work with adults who have developmental and sometimes physical disabilities.) But seriously, I maintain that my job is pretty much the best and craziest job ever invented. In the course of the past two weeks at my job I have:

-eaten free breakfast and lunch
-gotten sprayed in the face with a pressure washer
-been told I was beautiful and loved about three trillion times
-been splattered with food
-gone out to see a movie at the theater
-been yelled at by a client
-received the CUTEST drawings and letters for my work space
-gotten soaking wet
-eaten cookie dough
-been pricked by a cactus
-read books
-etc... etc... etc...

Can you believe I actually get PAID to do this?

There are many moments when I just get so frustrated that I wish I could throw in the towel. But fortunately those moments don't come nearly as often as the moments when I want to shout or cry because I'm so proud of my clients' accomplishments. It's funny, when I first started this job, I really thought it would be a good way for me to help them. I never expected that I would be the one doing all the learning and growing.

However, right now I am SO grateful that today is my last work day until Tuesday! I'm totally going to stay up until obscene hours of the morning finishing my book! What can I say, I'm a party animal!