What a day to come back to this!

So, September happened. Then October was somewhere in there. November started the end of all sanity for me. December didn't exist. January was a blur. February consisted of recouping. And then there was March 2020......  Oh boy.

I am certain no one really needs me to explain March of 2020 (as I sit here on the 14th of the month about 2 hours after my state governor has decided to mandate school closings for 2 weeks), but I will need to explain all those other months.

October and November were supposed to be my final months of school! I was mere seconds from graduating with my Master's in Business Administration in Information Technology. After which I was going to study and sit for a PMI certification. 

My life for 18 months

yeah......

So in October, I began the previously dreaded group project with Capsim. I ended up with the greatest group. They were my angels in the midst of chaos. Liz, Gail, Mel, and I made the team Atomic Inc. At first, we way overthought the project, put off tasks due to fear, and just had major senioritis, but we muddled through all of that. Then came the pain.

In November I ended up with a tooth and gum infection that resulted in:

• 70+ hours in a dental chair 
• 4 root canals 
• constant pain
• a significant case of lockjaw
• a soft foods diet
• a necessary change in dental providers to fix a new bite problem. 

But in the end, I made it through all of that. The worst part, I couldn't eat Thanksgiving dinner. 

Atomic Inc. came through for me. They were awesome and we finished the project on time. Unfortunately, I still had a presentation and two little papers to write. I needed to get everything done by the middle of January or request an extension. 

Somehow in the recovery period, girlie's birthday, Christmas holidays, and school being out I didn't get that done in December. We had a wonderful Christmas though!

 

And now we get to the big one: January.
So January 8th a pain I had in my stomach got bad enough I was finally willing to acknowledge that there was something wrong and I made a little visit to the Emergency Department of our local hospital. The wonderful staff there successfully diagnosed me with a reality of Gallstones, Sludge, and a herniated belly button. (that last one is related to being a mummy)

Now I am well acquainted with Sludge and Gallstones thanks to the wonderful podcast

A podcast about the broken and biased American healthcare system.
Hosted by Caitlin Durante and featuring Samee Junio.

which I will fully review later. But I contacted Caitlin Durante and she responded <squeeeee>

My January went like this:

- ED visit - Doctor visit - try to do school work - run fevers of 102 + - not get school work done to my level of approval - Doctor visit - feel like I'm less of a mom because I'm sleeping too much - a sub position here and there - more fevers - lots of night sweats - getting subpar school work done and somehow passing - having to rewrite one part of a paper - doing my graduation presentation while running a fever of 103 - celebrating Little Man's 5th birthday - Graduating as my request for an extension is submitted - two days later surgery.

As I went into surgery my family started the domino effect of the flu that would keep us down for the month of February. So that sucked. Even the hubs stayed home one day from work (it was like the apocalypse) but it prepared us for what was coming.

Now we have made it to March. I am back on my feet, sort of. I need to lose some weight (per my doc and honestly just to feel better in my own skin). And I really need to get moving again. I miss running and hiking. I crave to have the energy to be active again. I haven't gone back to work yet but I am approved to now. 

And Covid19 rears its ugly head. 

As I said I get to stay home with my three angels (aka gremlins someone kept up too late and let play with water balloons and eat candy). This will be an experiment in patience and perseverance.
I am going to have to keep everyone updated on our creativity of how to not go insane.

So much and so little to update

The months of July and August went somewhere. I'm not exactly sure how they went into the past so quickly, but they are gone. We are now well into the wonderful month of September! While normally this would be wonderful with cooling temperatures and some rainy weather sprinkled through, I live in the south where the weather is steady at a high of 99 F and humidity of over 50%. It is miserable.

But you are not here for us to talk about the weather. You want an update so here we go:

I am working on passing Econ in the next few days. Just have to stay on task. Then it is capstone and I'm outta here! Graduation here I come.  

 

While I'm working away at that we are desperately trying to find balance and routines in the family. There has been a lot of movement in this area and I'm looking forward to sharing all of it very soon. 

Kids are back in school and love their teachers.

Now that we are into week two of all the kiddos being in school and I am almost done with the last test of my grad school program I am getting ready to go with getting work in, cleaning our house, and developing Beam Creations.



Watch out for posts soon including

• Our Grand Summer Adventure!
• Finding Our Swing Step.
• Wait, You Are Doing What Now?

And a big announcement coming at the end of September!

Ghosts and Patronuses

Tonight we stayed up way too late.

Tomorrow we will be grumpy.

But it was worth it!

expecto patronum

Tonight the hubs and I kept the kids up late to have a fun surprise for them. We did sparklers and glow sticks outside with the camera.

I just want to say right now my camera and I are not all that well acquainted. We have a friendly relationship, so far, but we really need to work on our communication. 

You're a Wizard

Most of the time tonight:
"How do I convince you to do what I want?" I ask
My camera responds "I will do auto with flash."
"But I really don't want to do auto with flash at this moment" I respond.
"Subject is too dark"
"Subject is not too dark, this is what I want"
"Subject is too blurry!"
"That is the POINT!"


By this time the conversation has unraveled to the point where we are getting nowhere and we just cease communication in order to prevent a falling out.  We did have moments were things went alright and we were able to achieve our goal for the evening.

Unfortunately, this brings us to the sparklers.

When I was little I remember getting the greatest sparklers. They lit up right away, they shot of such pretty sparks, and most of all they lasted longer than 25 seconds.

The sparklers we had for tonight.  Not so much.   They refused to light. They had tiny sparks, and really they had a problem with premature extinguish-ation.  In the future, I will procure decent sparklers. Even if I have to border hop.  These were pitiful.  We didn't get any awesome sparkler shots but the glow sticks worked so well.

The kids had no idea what we were doing. They thought we were just taking pictures of them running around the yard.  Occasionally I would tell them where to run and to move their arms like crazy, but I didn't show them the results until I went inside and did a quick edit while they took showers. They loved the outcome with all the magic and ghost glory. 

I ended up with a bunch of fun images, even with the fight with the camera. And the kids had so much fun.  I know I may regret letting them be up so late when we have to be out of the house early in the morning, but I'll just have to look at these faces to remember why we do these things.

Expelliarmus