life. faithful.

...and a beg for prayers, actually. First off, I make my first attempt at the PhD qualifying exam tomorrow. That's not a huge deal, though, because this first attempt is a freebie and doesn't count against me if (read as "when") I mess up on it. I'm still a bit nervous about it, though, so prayers for calmness tomorrow would be greatly appreciated. Along the same lines, I have my oral qualifier on Monday, so those prayers would be great then, too! What really has me asking for prayers, though, is what also has my hands shaking as I type (which, as you can imagine, makes things a bit difficult). I just took a huge leap of faith and sent off a query letter for my story. It will be a couple weeks before I hear anything and it is completely out of my hands now, I know, but that doesn't stop my nerves... This is a huge step on my path to chasing my dreams...I'm both hopeful and scared to death right now, I can assure you. Never in my life have I experi...

One of the blogs I follow is written by a guy named Jeff Goins (yes, for those of you who know me, I did originally read his blog because of his last name--but I keep reading for the writing). His latest post in which he writes a letter to his teenage self inspired my own, so here goes...   Dear teenage me, I know how stubborn you are and how you are convinced that you need to figure everything out for yourself, but I'm going to give you some advice anyways. See? That stubbornness thing doesn't go away any time soon... First off, it's okay that you don't always fit in. You have a great group of girls you do fit with, though, and you need to keep them close. Trust me, you'll regret it if you let those friendships slip away. Take the time to enjoy high school. I know you want to grow up and head off to college and just stop all this "kid stuff," but you need to realize that these days are good. You have been blessed in so many ways that...

"Turn from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it." ~Psalm 34:14 seek: to go in search of; to ask for; to try to acquire or gain pursue: to find or employ measures to obtain or accomplish; to chase turn from: to direct one's attention away from something Sometimes I want peace to just "come with the territory" of faith. I mean, if you know deep down that God is in control and that He will work for the good in everything that happens in your life, peace should just be a given, right? This verse, though, puts a bit of a different light on things. Peace isn't something we just get by default--it is something we are told to search out, to chase after. And the first thing we have to do? Make a 180-degree turn from evil, the thing that is stealing our peace. I imagine just about everybody has something that is stealing their peace. So in my life right now, the thing that is stealing my peace is worrying about grad school. Guess that means...

  This has been an eventful week for us... Tuesday, 4 September, was the first day of Kindergarten for Raiden. She was super excited Tuesday morning--she sat straight up in bed and asked me, "Is this the day we get to go to school?" They wear uniforms, which was a bit of an adjustment for me but doesn't seem to phase her... It was also the first official day of preschool for Conan, even though he's been at daycare for a couple of weeks. You can see by his face that he wasn't quite as excited as big sister! When I picked them up after school, I was all ready to hear what Raiden had to say. I expected something...I don't know, I guess just something. Raiden's answer? "It was great!" No other explanation needed, apparently, because she had nothing else to say. Guess I'll just be happy with the fact that she liked it, huh?   We also got new beds for the kids this week. They got lofts, which is working out pretty well so f...

I had a meltdown last night. When I picked the kids up from daycare yesterday I let them know that I had some homework I had to do and that I would need them to help me out by playing together and letting me have some time to work. Actually, I told them I had some really yucky homework to do. That prompted a discussion with Raiden on how no, homework isn't really yucky, but the work I had to do was really hard so I just used that word to describe it. Not the best way to talk about homework to your child who is just about to start school, I know. oops. So, when we got home what did the kids do? Basically, anything besides what I had asked them to do. They had dinner at daycare, but they asked for popcorn when we got home. Thinking that would keep them occupied for a bit, I made some. We don't do microwave popcorn anymore. No, I don't have anything against it. It's just that I can buy a bag of kernels for $1.50 that will last a lot longer than the b...

i know every parent thinks they have the best , most brilliant , incredibly insightful kids on the planet...and of course i'm no different. i'll temper it first by reassuring you that i know my kids aren't perfect: just this morning they somehow managed to turn opposite directions when we stepped out of the house and ran smack into each other--conan's hard head right into raiden's cheekbone. they are pretty amazing though, so today i have a quick story for you... just over a week ago, raiden came home from daycare (kindergarten doesn't start until the day after labor day, so we still have a few days to wait for her "first day of school" story that i'm sure will be...entertaining) talking about gravity. i don't know if that was something she had asked her teachers about that day or not, but when we got home our conversation went something like this: raiden: "mommy, gravity is what makes us stay on the earth, right? that keeps us fro...

...and i feel a bit like i'm drowning! i'll start with my schedule for the semester. 1) i have a seminar class, where basically we will meet and discuss journal articles. we'll be responsible for doing presentations on what we read at some point, but i haven't had that first class yet so i don't really know too much about it. 2) i have a colloquium class. i'm looking forward to that one because i'll get to listen to lectures by a bunch of different people. it will be interesting--the first one is tomorrow. 3) i'm taking modern physics, a class that we've been told will be taught at the undergraduate level. it is supposed to be a refresher, something to help me pass my phD qualifying exam next fall (i get a shot at the test this september, but it's considered the "0th attempt" and doesn't really count so i'm not too incredibly stressed about it at the moment). 4) i'm in quantum mechanics. at the moment, that one do...