Victory Is MINE!

Tonight I won a huge victory! I finished all my required papers for this semester. In fact, the only assignment I have left to complete is the final in one class. I can not describe the excitement I am feeling. What a joy to know that I can start spending time with my kids instead of reading non-stop and writing papers for hours on end.

We let the kids swim today. That was entertaining to say the least. Well, I sat on the bench and read Tuesday reading assignment while my wife watched the kids. I love my little ones so much. They are growing up WAY to fast.

After swimming, we finished the back patio. We have added all we can until our shed is built. It looks SO nice. It goes around the new deck and makes the entire project finally looks complete.

After helping a friend move a deep freezer I returned home and enjoyed a nice dinner with my little family. We had fruit pizza. The kids had never had it before and they LOVED it. That was fun. In fact, in order to get the pizza finished, I had to run to the store and I took my one-year old with me. He is so funny. I love that he has started talking. He was naming everything was saw: cars, dogs, pop cans, food items- you name it!

The rest of the evening was spent finishing up my papers. Tomorrow I will submit the final 2 and be done. Then I must await the grading of all three papers. I am also awaiting the grading of 3 assignments in my other class. All I know is that I need to get my grades in and my reimbursement from the district. We were upset that our credit card just informed us they were raising our interest rate by 3%. We have been members for over 8 years and NEVER had a late payment. I am very frustrated by the whole mess. When I called to ask why they are raising our rate, the customer service rep. informed me that it was due the the slump in the economy. Hello, everyone is struggling to make ends meet so let's raise everyone's interest rates. Make sense to me- NOT! Duh!

Anyways, our car will be paid off in the next couple months and then we will attack our credit card debt. With-in two years we plan to be debt free (ha, ha- since something ALWAYS goes wrong- but it is a nice goal!)

I guess that since it is now almost 1am and I have meetings early in the morning for church I best be heading to bed.

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day,

Later...

Deck AHOY!

Well, yesterday my father and I started building out 4' x 8' deck with 4' wide stairs and after 13 hours we almost completed the project. It turned out SO amazing. My wife is mucho pleased as she has been wanting that done for a long time. The scary part was a we went to disassemble the current stairs, the stair boards just lifted off. The stringer was also broken. I am so surprised that someone has not had a serious accident on those old stairs. The new stairs however are AWESOME! They have toe-kicks so your foot won't get stuck under a step causing you to fall, and the deck itself is big enough to feel spacious, but not so big as to overtake the patio below. I was so exhausted (it was well over 90 degrees yesterday) that I feel asleep when I was supposed to be watching a movie with my munchkins. Only thing left to do now if finish the patio out back. Now that the deck

Then at 2:30am this morning, I awoke (temp. still around 75 degrees- yuck) to thunder. We had left car windows down and our canopy up in the back yard so my wife and I jumped out of bed and got the windows up and the canopy off the frame. I never really slept well as it was so hot!

My father returned this morning at 7am and we finished the steps. So the deck is officially done! YIPPEEE! Now if I could just get my shed up and done we could move ALL the crap we have n storage into it and not have to drive to the storage shed every time my wife needs to get out the bigger kid clothes. (Love you dear!)

Tonight I am doing the 30 minute presentation with Ms. D and I will be glad when it is done. In fact as soon as I done typing this post I have to read over my part of the presentation and make notes so I know exactly what we were trying to say with each slide. Our teacher has already looked at the slides and commented that they looked nice. And shockingly enough, I also have over 50 pages still to read before 3pm today. We'll see. I can only do what I can do.

Guess that is about the extent. I have have also given a voice lesson this morning and now I need to sign off and get to work on my classwork. I have either a 3 or 4 page paper due Tuesday (I can choose which to do first) and NO PAPER Thursday! Tonight I will type my last reflective journal entry and e-mail that in. Next week is, I believe, the last week of classes! I am SO ready to have a summer :).

Well, best go. I will try to get a picture of the deck on here soon.

Later...

Two Hours and 1/3 Bigger!

School was school. The End!

After school, I was able to come home and FINALLY finish off my back patio that I had started last summer. We accidentally purchased twice the patio pavers we needed (So much for my math skills- LOL), so we decided to extended the patio out. We were able to enlarge it by 1/3 the size. It is HUGE now. Much more room for the family and/or friends that we have over for BBQ's and such. We were able to snuggle our fire pit in a corner and with the chair moved back the kids are in heaven. A place to ride their bike, trikes, and various other mobile toys.

The downside? MY KNEES are killing me. They are very tender from crawling on the sand for 2 hours. They will get better soon (I hope). I was even able to mow the lawn this evening. It was such a nice night. The sky was cloudy and a slight breeze was blowing. *sigh*. I REALLY wish it was summer. The kids are done, I am wanting to be done, and with testing over, the kids just don't want to do anything. But, let's not dwell on the negative. Moving on.

I am looking forward to the weekend. It is my wife and I's 10th wedding anniversary. More on that in a later post. I best get back to working on my school wiki. I hope we can convince the parents here to use the resource. (http://www.bce456.wikispaces.com/). We shall see.

Later...

Holy Sore Knees!

My knees are KILLING me! Put I did put in the patio we thought we were getting. Notice the "Thought we were getting part". We apparently have NO clue how to calculate amounts of needed materials as we are done and still have over 1/2 pallet of each color. So we spent about $400 more than we needed too! Funny...not really. But we have decided to take our mistake and just enlarge the patio. The pictures are included as promised- I didn't want to let my listeners (ok, mostly readers) down. I can say that I am happy and thankful that it is done.
Before I started and after it was done:


See it turned out REALLY nice. Once we get the sand wet down and the squares cleaned off, I will have to post another picture so you can really see the checkboard pattern in it. My son wants to go out and play mini-checkers. I think that would be alot of fun- tomorrow/ later. (Side note: The ugly steps you see by the backdoor are being replace with a small deck within the next few months. I will update you on that later.

Well, off to be with the family- just wanted to update you. We head for Orem on Monday and then to Richfield! YUCK! That is going to be a VERY long day!
Later...

P.S.
Oh, my dad came and helped me install the other AC unit today. Now our computer room stays nice and cool as well as my bedroom. With the days hitting in the 100 degress everyday, it's nice to be able to cool down.