Busy, busy...

Well it's been quite a busy week here at the Simpson house! We haven't really been out of the house much, but there has been lots to keep me busy. Let me share a few tidbits on what's been keeping me occupied (and sometimes frazzled if I wanted to be honest)...

One major thing that has been going on since my hubby came home from the field is the extra occupant in our bedroom. See, Joey was sleeping with me while hubby was away (a bad habit I know but I hate sleeping alone) and even though we put him in his room at bedtime, we would wake up in the morning to see he had brought his pillow and blanket to the foot of our bed to sleep. Apparently he was waking sometime in the night and coming into our room. So it started with him sleeping on his mattress on the floor and ended several weeks ago with his bed in our room. I know, call me a lazy parent if you want, but after a long day the last thing I wanted to be doing was spending my down time dragging him back to his own room repetitively. So, we caved. That said, we really didn't have space for his bed in our room. Sooo I decided one day last week to move my office area into the dining room to free up some space. It made sense to do even without his bed in our room just because my desk rarely gets used because I can never seem to sneak away. Now ALL of our homeschool stuff is in ONE AREA and I can sit at my desk and work (with headphones in listening to classical to block out noise) on my school work, grading or whatever! Naturally, I had to do all the moving, rearranging and organizing myself since hubby couldn't help. I got it all done and both rooms squared away in about 6-7 hours one afternoon. I even took apart, moved, and reassembled furniture. Here is the desk/bookcase I moved out of the bedroom:

My IKEA desk

And here is where it is now (sorry I don't have a photo of the desk actually in the space yet). It's now in the left corner, with the shelf against the back wall and the desktop running parallel to the sliding glass door:

It really does look pretty good, even though now the living area doesn't seem quite as roomy as it once did. Also, I spent all last week writing and tweaking a paper for my class. The class is the required intro class all new students are required to take and is called Personal Dimensions in Education. I have actually learned several things that I think are going to help me tremendously in my core classes. We have covered study skills, learning styles, several theories about learning and development, researching and finding credible sources, and the writing process among other things. Anyhow, my first paper that I wrote for the second week in the class didn't get as good a grade as I had hoped it would, so I worked super hard on this one. I communicated back and forth with my TA for the class and she has helped tremendously. I think this paper might just get an A! Of course, the week isn't officially over til Monday evening and I'm sure the TA will take a few days to grade the papers, so I will be on pins and needles waiting to see how I did. My paper was about Howard Gardner's theory of Multiple Intelligences and how it applies to my own learning experiences. It was a very interesting research process and I learned a lot about myself in writing it. Anyhow, as of right now, after 3 weeks of classwork has been graded, I have a 94 A average, so I'm happy. My next class is PSY 202: Adult Growth and Development. Should be interesting! I start November 1st.

Also, speaking of school, my financial aid was disbursed this week (sigh of relief)! I had been seeing a lot of comments on the AU facebook page from students who weren't getting their funds in their accounts on time, so I was slightly worried. No, I am not attending school just for the loan money, but I am not going to lie, we need the extra and we have a huge amount of things that have gone by the wayside since our pay has been short since we arrived here in April. So I called the financial aid department in Thursday (my disbursement was scheduled for Tuesday) to check on it. I found out that yes, they were behind on processing disbursements because of some glitch in their system, so they were processing each account manually. The woman I spoke to told me to keep checking my account and that they would get it processed as soon as possible. I also double checked to make sure all my paperwork was in order and that there was nothing on my end that might cause a delay. Lo and behold, Friday afternoon I got an email saying my funds had posted to mt student account. They have 14 days now to send my excess funds to Sallie Mae to be direct deposited, but it is usually done by the following week. So this time next week, I should have my money! It's a good thing too because 2 kids need coats, 2 need shoes, all the boys need winter clothes, we all need to go to the dentist and I need to go see the optometrist, among other things.

Homeschooling is moving right along, although we didn't do much formal learning last week. Two mornings I woke up to find Drew and Isaiah curled up with Wimpy Kid books on the couch, so I left them be. It's a rare thing, especially for Isaiah so I was tickled to see them doing it on their own! That's what homeschooling is all about. Next week, we do need to get back to the books, however. That's what I will be doing all day tomorrow - prepping their assignment binders for the coming week.

Well this turned into quite a LONG post, sorry about that! Hoping everyone has a great week :)

Blessings,

Cassie