So What Happened This Past Semester?

This past semester was definitely interesting for my family and me! At any moment, we could have sold our house and needed to move within a month. So we honestly lived on a week-to-week—and sometimes day-to-day—basis.

In January, Jessie was home from school for several weeks. I didn’t get a whole lot of school work done during that time. :-P Instead, we spent a lot of time together. We went on a fun photo shoot with a couple of our siblings, had a special lunch at a local café to celebrate 6 months together, visited a new pie company in town, and spent lots of time at each other’s houses with each other’s families.

In February, I sat down and had a talk with Mom about finding motivation for school. I had failed a Natural Sciences test in the fall, and then spent two months studying for a Substance Abuse exam that I discovered was just too hard for me to pass. Mom and I came up with a reward: when I passed 3 more exams (and earned 9 more credits) she would go with me for a weekend to visit Jessie at college! So I plowed ahead with my work. ;-) I passed Fundamentals of Counseling in February, and then Environment & Humanity and Technical Writing in March. Thus I earned my trip! :-D

Hanging out at the lake!

It was a very fun weekend! Mom and I drove down on a Friday morning and arrived in the late afternoon. We went out to Torchy’s for dinner with Jessie and a group of his friends (they are all going to be counselors at the school’s Christian orientation camp later this summer.) After dinner we all went out to the lake for some Frisbee, a campfire, and worship time together.

On Saturday, we went out for coffee and then explored a new park and tested out Jessie’s ENO hammock. At lunchtime, we went to Fazoli’s and then went back to the dorms. Mom stayed there and worked on a few projects while Jessie and I went out and bought a DVD player. After discovering we had no HDMI cable, we all went to Barnes and Noble for awhile. :-P Afterwards, we picked up dinner at Panera, borrowed an HDMI cable, and watched “Interstellar” in one of the lounges.

On Sunday morning, we went to Jessie’s church :-) (which happens to be a lot like the one we attended together back home!) Mom then took us out for a nicer lunch at Red Lobster to celebrate 9 months of being together (yes, we celebrate a lot. ;-P) Then it was time to head home!

The rest of the semester wound down fairly quickly. I took a Nutrition course in April, and then a Criminal Justice exam at the beginning of June. So at the moment, my total number of credits earned sits at 57! I almost caught up to where I had hoped to be by this point. My goal over the summer is to knock out Spanish and College Math and earn 12 more credits before getting back into my full school load in the fall.

And then there’s Tex . . . he’s proved to be a big handful over the past 6 months. :-P He has gotten himself skunked on an average of once a month. I did 6 weeks of training classes with him and he knows how to sit really well. We’re still working on the other commands. :-P He loves to roll in smelly things, stay out later than his “curfew,” kill and eat turtles, and chase cars and trucks.

I’ve been busy here and there working on some Pinterest projects since I got an account in February. I never considered myself to be much of a crafts person, but I’ve really enjoyed expanding my horizons. I will probably do a future post on some of the little projects I’ve done this past year!

One of my first Pinterest projects. :-)

I have also been on three mission trips in 2015! :-O In March, I went as a leader on a mission trip with our student ministry at church. That trip was local to three major cities in Texas. Then in May, I joined the first College Plus mission trip! We spent 10 days in Ecuador. And recently, my family and I returned from a mission trip to Guatemala. I will definitely try to blog about those trips in a future post as well!

There’s a four-letter word to describe the weather in Texas for the past several months: rain. If you’ve watched the news lately, you already know that there has been significant amount of rainfall and some severe flash flooding all over Texas (and other parts of the south.) Thankfully, we haven’t had any damage to our home. But our pond has flooded the yard several times and washed away a big portion of the driveway. All of our plans hinge on the weather which is very strange to Texans. :-P

So there’s a fairly brief overview of what my semester looked like! Tune in next week for a new post!