Did I mention...

I started graduate school this week. I still find that all a little surreal. I never really imagined myself going to graduate school. It was something I spoke of in a real abstract sense and didn't really think was where my life would take me.

Having said that, I am so excited to be back in school. I love learning new things about education and so I suspect that the next 18 months will not only be extremely challenging but really interesting. My first class is Ethical and Legal Issues in Education and I've already enjoyed the material for this first week. I don't know if that is because it was really that interesting or if was just interesting in comparison to Dora the Explorer.

We're struggling a little bit with the financial side to graduate school. Luckily the program I am in is pretty reasonable but even coming up with a reasonable amount of money can be challenging. We decided against taking out a student loan and we decided against using generous family to help foot the bill, which would have been the easiest solution. Luckily, I'm allowed to pay my bill monthly (interest free) instead of paying up front each semester, which has given us a little bit of wiggle room. But not a lot of wiggle room. Basically we are just tightening up on the finances and saying a little prayer that it works out in the end. That is often how we manage our finances. Not the most intelligent option, but its all we got at this moment. Being an adult can be really hard, especially when it comes to money. So, friends: we love you but going out to eat or anything frivolous is off the agenda for the moment (except for special occasions, like a certain birthday that arrives at the end of the month). But you are always welcome to stop by and enjoy a homecooked meal with the Nelsons.

A lot of our trying to tighten up the budget will come from me working on trimming the household budget. I'm doing a lot of this by researching how other mom's run a frugal household. There are lots of blogs and I feel a little like sharing those blogs with you. One of my favorite mom blogs is "Simple Mom". Visit. It really has lots of wonderful tips for organizing your household.

Today I let Max play with his Christmas gift from Resa. He loves his clickstart computer and was very sad when I told him his 30 minutes of computer time was up and the computer would come back out tomorrow. Thank goodness I don't have a time limit on the computer. Its good to be the adult. At least sometimes.