Its a New Year

So its a new year, and about to be the start of a new life for me and the children. In just about 9 weeks I will be getting married. I can't believe it, I can count the weeks on my fingers. It is coming up so fast.

We are also preparing to buy a house, and figuring out where to buy that house has been a huge discussion in our house. I really did not want to move from Good Shepherd Catholic School and Church but it is turning out that that really might be the best choice for the whole family. After all we have a child entering high school in less than 4 years and no Catholic, or even decent, high school near where we were thinking of buying a house. However, if we move to Brevard county we then have to think about college..and if we stayed in Orlando they could go to UCF and stay home, but if we move to Brevard they would most likely have to dorm. Oh so many things to consider!!

I am in my second to last semester of midwifery school too (God willing). I will be so excited to be finished. Especially if we have to move to Brevard.

Anyway, there is a small update about me!

STRESSED!!

I am finding myself so stressed out these days. I have had a lot of stuff going on in my family life that has been trying the limits of my abilities to cope. Mix that with planning a wedding, raising three children, the final year of midwifery school, being on call, working clinic, and my own personal roller coaster ensues, both emotionally and physically.

I'm beginning to feel it. The exhaustion that sets in from too much stress. I'm trying to find moments to remind myself it will all be worth it in the end, and that God's plans are sometimes quite different than our own. Spending a lot of time in prayer lately.

On a brighter note, we are taking the kids camping this weekend to an awesome part of a national forest. I can't wait to just relax and soak in the days for a few days. It's like our own mini staycation. Jereme and I really need this time to just chill and get back to the basics with the family. We're both about at our peak of frustrations these days.

Speaking of Jereme....he found a kitten in our back yard. The kitten is all black with yellow green eyes and has since been named "bipity bopity boo" or "boo" for short. He's about 6 months old. At first he was way skittish of us, but my daughter tricked him into coming in the house and now all he does is sit in our laps and purr. God knew I needed a baby in the house to love on I guess :)

well that's it for now, off to do some more organizing for the trip!!!

The Home Stretch!!

I feel like there are so many things coming to culmination within the next year. I'm in the home stretch in so many things!

My wedding is only 6 months away! I can't believe it. In just six more months I will once again be a wife. What a huge life change this is.

I should graduate from midwifery school and finally have my Florida license in just 10 more months! I can't believe it. It's been such a long road, frustrating and lovely and frustrating and perfectly done just the way it was supposed to be.

My birthday just came around again, though I was still combating the flu, it still ended up being an alright birthday anyway. I have such an amazing family and my mom, brother, children and Jereme all celebrated with me and made sure it was a good birthday.

Clinic has been busy as always!! Gotta love my life!

Will update again soon!

Wedding Planning!!

Yup, instead of working on my paper (at least it isn't due for a few more weeks....) I am surfing the web and doing some wedding planning.

So, though not all the bridesmaids are chosen yet, the dress is!!

So yup, there it is, the official choice for the bridesmaids dress. Now to figure out who that final bridesmaid will be....LOL!

Also in discussions around here lately have been the need to choose a DJ here pretty soon, figure out a photographer...and choosing the flatware. Yup the flatware has been quite the discussion for us.

First, Jereme had offered that we use paper plates. I scoffed at this idea!! The pure upset it caused for a full day in this house...not fun!! However I understood his point. Who wants to wash dishes for 200 people? Certainly not us!! So I did what I do best, and went on an internet search for a compromise.

And I found one!! So we are either going with disposable, compostable, renewable, fair trade palm plates ,














or disposable, compostable, renewable, fair trade bamboo plates.

Which ones we choose is yet up for discussion. I would love to also go with the birchwood forks and knives to go with it, but I'm nervous about the wood texture. I can't even stand the feeling of popsicle sticks in my mouth, I'm not sure how I can ask all of my guests to be happy eating off of a fork that is popsicle stick textured. We may have to come up with a different option for forks and knives...I'm thinking maybe biodegradable forks and knives made from sugar cane.

More later!!

We Got the Hall!

So we reserved the hall for the wedding reception on Monday. After a weekend long dialogue between Jereme and I, trying to decide if we should cut the guest list or just get the bigger hall, we opted for the bigger hall. So, we decided to rent the Winter Park Garden Club building that is in Mead Gardens. The hall is actually beautiful and it overlooks the gardens. I love it. So I am secretly happy that Jereme won the dialogue and we're just ending up over budget for the hall.

So, the main part of the hall has a stage, and a white sash that stays on the ceiling at all times. It has long windows but they have shutters that close from the inside to block out sun if you want. the lights are dimmable, and globe shaped. They include tables in the rental, and chairs as well, which is cool, but it does not include linens or plates or anything (which the smaller hall did).

The hall also comes with a smaller room which is going to be used as the "buffet" room. It is a fairly good sized room with a kitchen off of it, and a place for the bar to be set up. The kitchen is small, but plenty big enough for our mother's to get to work in it for the food! LOL!

We have six hours with our rental fee, and just over $70/hr for any additional time that we need. The cost has me a bit on edge about the budget, but I'm going to have faith that it will work itself all out. Jereme and I will be paying for this wedding all on our own, since my family has no money to put into a second wedding for me.

now that the question of the hall is all squared away we can get to more fun little things. Of course there are still a few big things we need to get (photographer anyone?) but most of the rest of the things we have to plan can be done over time instead of needing an earlier reservation time.

School is winding down, and we only have two weeks left. I'm so excited to have yet another semester behind me, and I am doing so great! I can't wait to be a junior and have to be in Gainesville less often.

More updates to follow!

Finally, A School Day!

My kids have been out of school and were "blessed" with a four day weekend this past weekend, due to weather. Though I know they thought it was super cool, their mommy, on the other hand, has become behind on her work as a result! Oh what I wouldn't do for high speed internet at my house so that I could work while home with the kids!

So today they are all finally back in school (yay!) and their mommy is back to work here at the clinic. Today we have the final ultrasound for our twins mommy before she has her babies (which should be some time this month!) and then just cleaning and organizing around the clinic. I should be working on MTB MOODLE today, but I just feel swamped with things here to do, so I am going to put it off for a few more days. Once I get working on it, I will probably finish getting it all live within a day.

Tomorrow I believe Andrea is going to come to the clinic so we can practice our skills for the skills assessment that we will have to take later this year. It is day one of practicing, we'll see how it goes! I will probably look through the book today and see which skills we will practice tomorrow, I am super organized and it works out for both of us that I am, because we can be very efficient with our time. We don't have any clients to see tomorrow, but we do have another *very* busy Thursday, as we have so many people do in the next few months and it is filling our clinic days very fast.

I think I am going to suggest to Linda that we offer an alternative clinic day to, at least during this busy part of the year, as we are booking up every week pretty much with clients, and it seems that we may end up with overflow here in another week or two!

I am watching the clients keep coming in, and hoping that we manage to get all of our numbers in time to sit for our exam in February of next year, but I would appreciate prayers, and referrals to the clinic! LOL!!

My baby's birthday is coming up. He was born on Valentine's day of 2005. And no, I was not induced! I am going to post his birth story on here in a few days, when I manage to track it down online. I'll have to ask the mothers from the parenting group in Florida that I founded to see if one of them will look it up in the group archives.

We are still waiting on a baby, who is due this Thursday, and I expect the baby will come Saturday or Sunday. We also have one mom who is teetering on the edge of labor but we're all praying she keeps the baby in for another 13 days, so she will be 37 weeks. Prayers for her would be appreciated.

Improvements

I have a great deal of respect for Lisa Aman, creator of the Midwife-To-Be course curriculum and director of the school. She has put together a rocking program that is affordable and thorough. I just realized, however, that not everyone enrolled in the school appreciates her as much as many of us do. I heard that some people were just registering and paying the start up fee (a minimal $25!) and Lisa, being the trusting and good faith person she is, would mail you the *entire* curriculum and lesson plans. As you finish each unit, you were to send the unit in to her along with an additional $25 per unit. However, some people were not sending in units ever, and were continuing to work through the curriculum without ever paying Lisa anymore money. I went to Lisa with my new found realization that people were basically stealing her curriculum, and offered the suggestion that she start only mailing one unit at a time. This conversation quickly went from mailing one unit at a time, to brainstorming ways that we can make the whole program online completely, for those interested in saving the paper etc from mail correspondence courses. I, being the kind of person I am, offered to set up a moodle for the program, and do the work involved with transferring it online, in exchange for the rest of tuition due, or possible part of the remainder due, depending on how much work is involved. Lisa thought this was a great idea, and so now here I am, working on setting up moodle locally, to give her a demo of what the school might look like online. So that, my friends, is what *this* midwife student will be doing for a few weeks!