Well it’s official, I’m a student…again!

For the past few months Geno and I have been contemplating me going back to school. The job market for administrative assistants/secretaries isn’t all that great, especially with only an Associate’s degree. So after much discussion and research into a career that I would be happy in, I’ve decided to go for dental hygiene.  Now the process for this degree is pretty competitive. I won’t go into to much detail but it boils down to me taking 8 classes (26 credit hours) in 2 semesters - AND THAT IS ONLY TO BE CONSIDERED FOR THE PROGRAM. I have to pretty much carry all A’s and a few B’s for those 9 classes.  Today I met with my academic advisor. She was able to get me registered for classes early (new student registration isn’t until the 12th). I paid for classes, bought books (and returned books that I was able to find at the used book store in town)…and tomorrow, I get to go shopping for school supplies!!!!  So there you have it…if all goes well and I get in I will be graduating in 2011!

For the rest of this week I’m going to be cleaning the house and getting things ready for eight weeks of school. Saturday I’ve asked Geno and the boys that for my Mother’s Day present that they just help me “clean sweep” the house - from top to bottom.  We are actually going to start tomorrow with me doing laundry so that, hopefully, we get done early enough on Saturday to take the boys to see Iron Man and POSSIBLY head over to the Fort Bragg Fair going on. 

For Mother’s Day I told Geno I wanted to NOT make breakfast, go to church (my church), NOT make lunch, watch PS I Love You & Spaceballs and NOT make dinner. Pretty reasonable, right?

Geno and I are doing the 5k race at the Biltmore Estates next weekend. My mother is flying down from Cleveland to watch the kids. I haven’t really been preparing myself for this race.  With the winter, my bronchitis and small back strain (that lasted three weeks). I’m still going to do my best and see where it takes me. We have, I believe 4-5 more races scheduled through Aug. with more probably on the horizon, mainly AFTER school lets out for me on July 10th.  The longest one so far is the Red Cross 10k. I did it last year and I hope to beat my time…even if it’s by 1 second! I was thinking about doing a half marathon before winter but I’m going to play it by ear, especially with school taking up quite a bit of my time over the next few months.

Well, there are storms headed this way and everyone is asleep - including my husband knocked out cold beside me - that is the joy of wireless internet, I can type from anywhere!

Goodnight!

This morning I started it out right by taking a run. I’ve been building myself back up since not being able to run very much with the cold, broncitis, back pain…etc.  Derrick had a soccer game. He ended up scoring the goal to tie the game.  Afterwards, after Derrick changed out of his uniform, and we headed to Gross Farms to pick strawberries. We had a great time and this time GENO took the pictures - he actually did quite a good job… Geno even found time to pick a strawberry -it may be a tad deformed.

Xavier had a really good time. It took a few times showing him how to pick without bruising them. In the end we had about 2 buckets full of ripe strawberries. It actually didn’t take us long either. I think we were driving more then we were picking.

Derrick, on the other hand, wasn’t as excited to be taken away from playing basketball or video games to spend time with the family. He did end up picking ONE strawberry…

I had plans on making strawberry preserves, popsicles and freeze the rest. It had been a year sicne I made any and I should have read the directions because I wasted about 3/4 of my seven pounds of fresh strawberries….GRRRRRRRR…. I think we might go back tomorrow but it all depends on how the family feels after church. Tomorrow is Geno’s church… I get my church for Mother’s Day!!!

Well that was today…maybe more tomorrow…

Wow, I am soooo glad it’s May. May to me is PRE-summer. This week has been going pretty well. Xavier’s birthday went well. He did a terrific job at Sears getting his 3 year old portraits done. The only thing I didn’t like about the girl taking the pictures was all she wanted him to do is smile.  Don’t get me wrong I LOVE his smile but he has some of the BEST expressions and I was hoping to capture a few of them.  She was able to get a couple “in the moment” shots and those are my favorite poses. We ended up not getting back from Sears until close to 8pm so we held off on giving him his birthday cupcakes until the next day.

So yesterday after daycare we cooked out on the grill. Needless to say Geno probably won’t let me grill hotdogs for a looooooong time. Seems I forgot to turn down the grill and they were REALLY done!  I guess my plan worked…burn hotdogs, get banned from using the grill. Afterwards we gave Xavier his cupcake and let him try to blow out the trick candles. 


Before going inside we let Xavier play with the waterhose.  I, of course, was able to gain control of it and sprayed Geno a few times…

Yeah, he got soaked!

This weekend we are planning on trying the potty training again. The daycare suggested that every couple weeks we take a weekend aside and try. So this is the weekend. We have a soccer game early Saturday morning and we are planning to go to go to Gross Farms and pick some strawberries.

Well there you have it… another update on the Lolli’s from the south…and boy is it getting hot here!!!

Here are a few pictures from Derrick’s soccer game on April 26, 2008. They lost 3-0 but they played well.

I still can’t believe how far up he got his leg up…

Geno and I have been trying to sell the truck for the past 2-3 years, since he was in Iraq the first time.  It hasn’t been a continuous effort but with gas prices skyrocketing and spending about $100 a week in gas we decided it HAD to be done. Well we finally did it! We decided Friday night to go look at cars.  Geno didn’t get off until late so we just checked out a few dealerships but didn’t see anything.  We weren’t looking for anything expensive just something to save on gas and get Geno to/from work.  With Friday night being a bust we decided the next morning after Derrick’s game we would go looking.  After Derrick’s game we headed to the Nissan dealership (Geno really wanted a Nissan for some reason) we didn’t really see anything that caught our eye and on the way out we overheard two salemen talking about Deacon-Jones. Apparently another couple before us left claiming they could get a better deal at Deacon-Jones.  So off we were to Goldsboro (an hour and a half away).  They gave us SUPER TOP deal on our truck - all to make a sale. They paid it off PLUS some!  Normally I’m not for saleswomen but this lady was on the ball.  The first car she showed us was a no-go. Then she brought out the “old man” car. I call it that because it’s a luxury sedan.  It looks like what an older couple would be driving.  The previous owner was an elderly man who traded it in for a Cadillac CTS.  It’s a 2004 Chrysler Concorde. It only had a little over 31,000 miles and he kept it in such good mechanical condition it’s unbelievable, getting maintenance and the oil change every 3,000 miles. He even left a folder with all the work orders ever done on the car.  Anyway, so no more $100 a week gas bill. This car gets 28mpg on the highway and slightly lower city.  WOOHOO!!!!!