March Recap

So much for weekly posting, right? March has been busy for me. So, tonight I have some free time and am going to try to get caught back up. So, what do I have to talk about...

Dieting
I kind of fell off the bandwagon in March. I haven't been horrible, but I haven't been exercising or journaling my food intake. I think I'd lost about 3 pounds a month ago. I'm at about 6 right now. Only 1 pound from my pre-pregnancy weight. I keep saying I'm going to get serious again, but I really don't know. I'd like to lose about 10 more pounds still.

School
This is the major reason for falling behind on posting. Anatomy was tough. Not that the subject matter was overly difficult, but there was just so much of it! The lab part had usually a 2 to 3 page list of bones/markings (i.e. there was a whole page of terms for the skull/bone section)/muscles/organs(usually 2 or 3 columns per page). Our lab practicals consisted of about 70 identification items. Then the written exam went into more detail. Hard to explain exactly, but it was different information than the ID part, more like the function of different body parts or how they related to other areas of the body. Anyway, I had to study nearly every night just to get through the material to be prepared for the exams. My final was on 3/14 and 3/16 and I needed to get a 90% average on the final practical and exam to get an A in the class. I got a 93 on the practical, not sure on the exam, but did end up with an A for the quarter. Whew, I was sweating that one a bit. Next is Physiology which I also think I'll enjoy. I'm taking it on Friday nights for the Spring quarter and start this Friday. I've been slacking a bit about studying for the GRE, but eventually will get to it. I'd like to get serious on all the application stuff over the summer.

Babies
No, not me. Late February, Samara had a bit of a scare with preterm labor and had to do home bedrest for about a week. It was a bit scary, but she and baby behaved and they let her off restrictions. She's now 3/4 of the way through her pregnancy and I can hardly believe another friend is about to have her 3rd baby! Speaking of having babies, on Monday 3/23 Danialle after going almost 2 weeks past her due date had her daughter Addie! I wasn't able to travel to Chicago for the birth, but got frequent texts from Jamie (her sister) on the updates. She is a GORGEOUS baby and I can't wait to meet her in about a month. Yay for new babies!

Mini-Home Makeover
For at least a month, I planned to take Friday 3/20 and Monday 3/23 off of work to clean the house. I knew that weekend I'd be done with class and not have to study. I also knew, I'd have a really hard time getting done what I needed to get done with the family around, so I had Eric make a trip to Indiana to visit his Mom and take both kids. After getting so psyched about all the alone time with my house, we expanded our plans to include doing a little revamping too. We took some tax money and bought paint, new bedding for our room, some new rugs, curtains, a slip-cover, some throw pillows, a couple lamps, and new matching frames for the kid's milestone pictures to make the whole house look like new. I ended up painting 6 rooms in the house (family room, dining room, kitchen, 1/2 bath, master bedroom, and kid's bath) in addition I added the new stuff and CLEANED everything. I took before and after pictures for reference. You can view the set on Flickr if you follow this link.

My Family
My family is doing awesome. Sorry I didn't get Luke's 10 month update done. I'll do an 11 month one next week. Just a short re-cap, he's gotten really good at crawling. He now is 100% hands and knees rather than the belly crawl. He loves standing all the time and will pull up on anything. He's really coordinated at getting back down too and will even hold on with one hand and lean down to pick something up off the floor. He seems much more coordinated than Grace (unfortunately Grace inherited my clumbsiness). Still no walking, but I have caught him not holding on a couple times, but he hasn't noticed. This weekend at church I was holding him up by his hands and let go and he stood by himself for 3 or 4 seconds before freaking out and sitting down.

Grace is exceptionally smart and hilarious. She's getting really good at writing all her letters and while we haven't spent a ton of time working on "reading" I think she's picking up a little about how letters go together to make words. She seems to get simple math too, although we haven't formally worked on it. Although she still skips 15 and 17 everytime she counts to 20. She can't tell you what 2 plus 2 is, but can't count to 20, don't ask me! (Just tried out 5 minus 2 and she got that one right too). She is really good at reasoning. You can almost see her putting things together in her head. Eric and I have to really watch what we talk about in front of her, because she'll start asking questions or remember if for later. That explains why, it's likely that she'll make Eric help her plant flower seeds tomorrow. We got a seed packet in the mail a couple of weeks ago and I told her we had to wait until April when it was warmer to plant them. She keeps asking if it's April yet, and on Sunday, I told her 3 more days. This morning, she said, "Just one more day until April and we can plant our seeds!"

Eric is doing alright. He still doesn't have any really good leads on a job. He kind of prescreens them, because our financial situation at the moment including his unemployment, the extra money from his night job, and the money we're saving on childcare from keeping Grace at home, is pretty much exactly the same as what he was bringing home while working full time. He doesn't want to take a job at this point that pays less than he made before because we'd end up coming out further behind than we are at the moment. His first set of unemployment did run out, but he was approved for a 33 week extension. Considering he doesn't take the full benefit (because of the night job), I calculate that we have probably 9 to 10 more months of unemployment. I would hope that in that amount of time, he'll find something appropriate, or he'll have to accept something paying less than before. But, at least for now, we're in good shape. Also got a nice tax refund and some other money, so we're fully funded for my school for the year, Christmas, the annual trip to visit my parents, clothes for the kids for the year, plus have an emergency fund of about $4,000 that isn't allocated to anything and we haven't been using the credit cards at all since Eric's been getting his unemployment. We feel so lucky and blessed that God has provided over the last 8 months that we've been on "one" income.

April Plans
As previously mentioned, school starts again on Friday 4/3. We don't really have any plans for Easter, but I may see if my coworker and her fiance want to come have dinner on Sunday night, since they aren't traveling to visit family either (Will and Samara are going to NY and we're not going anywhere). Mom is coming to visit the weekend of 4/17, and I have my Chicago GWO to meet the new baby on 4/25. I think Samara can come this time too and we're considering flying over together. This month will fly by! May is busy too with Luke's 1st birthday, Ava's birthday party, a bachelorette party for my friend Tara, my 8th anniversary, Memorial Day, and possibly Samara's new baby (or early June).

That's all for now. Next week, I'll try to post some new Luke pictures and do a proper update on his 11 month milestones.