Mad Craziness

I haven't blogged in weeks because I don't feel like I have much to blog about. School is absolutely crazy. I regularly get up at 5:45AM, am out the door by 7:30AM or so, and I don't get home until 5PM on a good day, and more normally after 6PM. It is insane.

I just love my classes and I love being back in school and learning so many new things, but I am going a little bit crazy with the schedule. Bill and I just don't see each other very often and when we are together, we're usually doing homework. All of the fun things we love to do together aren't happening at the moment because we both have so much homework and go to bed so late at night that we're just dead all the time. It's a good thing we ran our marathon a week into the semester before it got crazy because I haven't been running in probably a month. I hate it! Don't worry though. Bill is getting me to do pullups and pushups and situps at night now and that feels great. I have this crazy desire to start doing triathlons, but I think about the time that will take and it makes my head spin.

So yeah, life is crazy at the moment. I'm trying to hang on and when I start to have crazy reactions to things, I try to remember that I'm ridiculously tired and if people are bugging me like crazy, I try and step back and blame it on that. :)

In other news, Bill got 100% on his surveying midterm. Woot! He's amazing! My group and I just had a 9-minute conversation with the Utah House of Representatives. It was awesome! It's so hard to get time with him, and it was freely offered to us through a contact at the state capital that my teammate Ryan knows from his work there before he started the program. So there's definitely good things going on in my life at the moment, it's just a little more crazy in ways that I can't control at the moment then I would like. I like being busy, but I also like it including things I love to do, like hiking and rock climbing and running and stuff like that. The balance is rather off at the moment.

Mom's Rocking Chair

The finished chair. The detail on the top is so beautiful.

I don't exactly remember when it happened, but somewhere in the last couple years I had this idea to refinish a rocking chair my mom has had in the basement for as many years as I can remember. It was my great-Grandma's, and looked like it could be really pretty if it was cleaned up. Probably 6 months ago, I posed the idea to my dad and more recently to my siblings as a gift to my mom for her birthday in September. Everyone thought it was a great idea, so I started the process.

I got it cleaned up and refinished and had a new seat put on it. It sounds like a pretty simple process, but I tell you, it took a long time and figuring out if we could afford it and that kind of thing. It was finished just in time. I picked it up on the 24th, which is my mom's actual birthday, and had it in my living room until Sunday when we celebrated her birthday.

Mom LOVED it! She had the best reaction I could have imagined when we let her open her eyes and turn to see it. She was completely surprised and touched and happy and it was just awesome. Here's a few pictures from the party.

Mom blowing out her one candle.

Mom's reaction. The picture doesn't do justice, but she gave her trademark squeal of approval that I imagine all my siblings remember well.
Mom enjoying her chair. She was so happy and it was awesome.