Angels For Christmas

Our Angels for Christmas project is now in full swing.
This is what I did for our student government this week...set up the AngelTrees on campus so that our students and faculty can get involved in buying gifts for our angel children. Each angel on the tree represents one gift.
As of this week we have 188 families in our data base. There are probably another 20 or so to enter in, and there is still over a month before Christmas. That translates into about 580 children, or at 5 gifts for each child about 2800 gifts. These gifts will include four items the child needs such as clothing, coat, shoes, etc. The fifth item is the child's "wish."
As I sit and enter this information I feel so blessed that I am in a position to help and buy gifts for some of them, and that I have the means to provide not only the necessities, but so many luxuries of life for my kids. Sometimes reading these applications just about breaks your heart when you see children who need basic necessities of life.
I also appreciated all of the wonderful people who live in my community and are willing to help us. There are companies who buy and wrap gifts for dozens of children, others who donate money, put up an angel tree or a drop box to collect gifts for us. There are also many families and individuals who adopt a child or a family of children and provide the gifts for them. This reminds me what a great community I live in. This project would not be possible without so many generous people who are willing to help. If you would like to help your family get in the Christmas spirit, consider getting involved with "Angels." There are many ways that you could help, and there is a lot of need in our county this year.

New Pup

As you know if you've been following my blog, my youngest daughter lost her beloved pet Lilly the mini schnauzer a couple of months ago. Well, although Lilly could not truly be replaced, we are getting a new puppy. I know there is a certain amount of insanity here. After all I'm very busy and puppies take a lot of time and attention. Needless to say, my children have all promised to help train the new pup and I have found that bringing a new member into your family just means more love. My wonderful sister in law has two litters of pure-bred mini schnauzers that are 3-4 weeks old right now and has very kindly offered one of them to my daughter, so we went to visit the pup on Sunday afternoon to try and pick one out. With 7 soft, snuggly little pups to pick from it's hard to pick one.

This little girl is my daughters first choice. She's solid black except for the white spot on her chest. I think the deal was sealed when the pup nuzzled her neck and licked her. The rest of the family was impressed with a little boy pup who is called a "phantom" because of his markings (he's the one with the light beard in the first picture above) so watch in December and see which pup we end up with!


I told my sis-in-law that I'd help her try to sell the other 6 pups, so if you know anyone who wants a pup just shoot me an email and I'll send you more pics. I'll even deliver the pup to you when it's old enough if you don't live too far away.

Registration

From where I stand I can see the end of the semester.
My how time flies when you're having fun!
I have 4 more exams, one research paper and one project/presentation still to go.
I have been anticipating registration for a while now and the moment of truth came this week. I always get excited registering for the next semester but I often have some tricky decisions to make. The predicament I face is not only if I can get the classes I want but also how many evenings will they take me away from my family and can I rearrange my kids schedules to get it all to work? I'm very lucky because my parents live about 7 minutes from my house and are very helpful and supportive. It would either be a lot more difficult or I would have to take twice as long to get my degree if I didn't have the support of my parents, hubby, and kids. So, Ive ended up with 16 credits next semester. I will have classes 3 nights of the week that start at 8:00 and end at 10:30....its a good thing I'm a night person! I will also be going to the Main campus in Logan twice a week during the day.
FYI, I actually counted and the Brigham City Campus is offering over 300 classes next semester, and not only that, but we will have new classrooms, and labs finished for the new semester also. It's cool to see the campus growing and being able to offer more to the local students and the community

Still Having Fun

Have I mentioned lately how much fun I'm having?
Do you know that feeling you get when you are really excited about something...it starts in your stomach and works its way up, it feels kind of like going down a big hill on a roller coaster except not quite as strong (and it happens when your feet are planted firmly on solid ground)
Think back to Christmas morning when you were a kid, or the day before you are leaving on a fabulous vacation.
Do you know the feeling I'm talking about?
Well, I keep getting that feeling and its because I love what I'm doing. I am excited every day to go to school, I love my classes, and I love all of the cool stuff I get to do with student government and all of the people I get to interact with.

Does anyone remember that game shop back in the 70's where they would put a person in a glass room with money blowing all over and they had a certain amount of time to grab all they could? Well I feel like I'm in that kind of situation. I'm here for a certain amount of time and I am trying to stuff all of the knowledge I can into my head. Sometimes I think I hurry so fast that some of it falls back out while I'm busy collecting more. I don't just mean my classes either, they're great, but also just the people I'm around. I love to watch people, ( sorry if that weirds you out or makes you nervous) I spend a lot of time thinking about why they do the things they do and act the way the do. I am learning ways to improve myself by watching others around me.
I think it is especially fascinating, and enlightening to watch people who are very different from me. If I have a particular weakness, I observe people who are strong in that area and try to learn from them.

As far as things go with my classes, the geology exam turned out great. Thanks to the wonderful world of extra credit I actually got higher than 100% even though I missed several questions...I love it when that happens. I'm happy with the outcomes of both of the exams I took this week also. AND....guess what?! I don't have any exams this week...YEA!!! This means I might have time to work on my research paper for my FCHD class.

Friday morning I went up to the Logan campus. I went to a lunch put on by Psi Chi which is the honor society for psych majors.
http://www.usu.edu/psychology/psichi/
They have agreed to let me be one of them. (I actually did apply to join.) I'd like to know what anyone else out there in cyber-world thinks about honor societies in general. Are they useful or just a waste of time and money? I had one (that will remain un-named) that pursued me so ambitiously that it felt more like I was being chased by a multi-level-marketing maniac. I figured that if they wanted me more than I wanted them that it was probably not worth my time, oh, and they also wanted $75. I joined Psi Chi because they did NOT actively recruit me and I heard membership looks nice on a resume. What do you think?