Updating is strangely hard

Ah, my admirers, here is a new blog post of joy, just for you.

I babysat for a family last week. It was the second time I have watched all of their children and it was definitely an adventure. The adventure really began when it was time to clean up. One of the children, we'll call her Azalea, stepped on a toy that was left on the floor. A piercing shriek. She then swaddled her foot in a blanket cast and hopped her way around. Until she stubbed her toes on the wall. More shrieking. She sat on the foot of the stairs so she could better focus her attention on screaming. She seemed to be calming down and then there was yet another sudden increase in volume. She claimed that it felt like someone had stepped on her hand and dug their shoe into her foot. I would have been more concerned except that no one was near enough to her to have actually stepped on her. Azalea then crawled up the stairs and laid on the couch with an ice pack for half an hour until it was time to go to bed. She insisted that she could only crawl to the bathroom to brush her teeth and then promptly forgot that she was supposed to be injured and spent the rest of her bedroom prep time walking normally. I love kids.

Hopefully I will soon be registering for classes. Professor Curran has informed me that I need to take Studies in Rhetoric and Composition Theory since I have an assistantship. The class sounds . . . thrilling. Seriously, though, I am very excited about heading back to school. There have been a couple of snags so I haven't yet been able to register, but that should happen soon.

This weekend the trustees will be pouring in and embarking on a weekend of meetings. I won't be involved in any of the actual meetings, but I will spend some time doing kitchen prep and possibly dishes. Then the next two weekends are co-labor weekends. Work groups and individuals come from all over to help Camp rake leaves and get the grounds ship-shape. I will be here for the first co-labor, and then I am heading south for a week. I will be speaking at my home church, reclaiming Lydia from the goat farm, and squeezing in some packing/planning for the fall.

Summer is almost here! Everyone is immersed in prep work. Ambushes are being created and refined, equipment is being ordered and set up, and Lee Brown gave his yearly nature talk during staff fellowship today. All West Side campers are in for a wonderful time as he is planning to teach about the Ruby-Throated Hummingbird. It was great to hear.

Educational Developments

Well, as some of you know, I have been applying to grad schools for the second time this year. I went into the process already a little discouraged after having been accepted to exactly zero schools last year. I reluctantly emptied my bank account of the money earned during my December break, revamped my personal statement, and waited.

Then I waited some more.

I got my first rejection of the year.

Then I waited some more.

I got my first acceptance! There was much rejoicing. And surprise.

The next month, I got another acceptance. Secure in the knowledge that I now had a choice of schools, Marquette University or Michigan State, I started quietly panicking about how I was going to pay for whichever school I chose. Marquette had indicated that, if they were going to offer me an assistantship, they would make the offer before April fifteenth.

On April twelfth, I still had not heard anything from either school about financials - other than MI state confirming that they would not be offering me any departmental aid. That's when I got my third acceptance letter - from Northeastern University. I began a frantic emailing of my professors asking for advice.Dithering happened. How would I ever choose between these schools?

April fourteenth. A Saturday. A day on which I normally do not come in and check my email. But I had been told by MI state that I would have my financial aid packet by the end of the week and I did want to see it, so I came into the program center. I read my email. I read one of them a few times.

Marquette University offered me an assistantship. This assistantship will cover my tuition, give me health insurance, and provide a stipend for the two years it will take to complete my Masters degree. I may have cried a little bit. With joy. Then I called my mother.

Wisconsin, here I come. There are still a lot of details to figure out, but I am amazed at the way God has led and provided through this process. I couldn't at first reconcile my acceptance rate last year with this year's, but as my mother pointed out, God must have wanted me to spend a year at Barakel.

And yes, these pictures are old. Remember, my camera is old and cranky. It didn't want to come out and play.

and another post finally appears

I'm sure at some point I will get back in the habit of regular posting. Good intentions abound, but good follow-through is still hiding in the woods.

The cleaning weeks are over. This does not mean an end to cleaning, as there are still a few more cleaning days scheduled. But it does give a chance to shift focus to other things. Summer prep is in full swing. Jeremy likes to pop his head out of his office and give us the official countdown to workshop. Yesterday he informed me that there were fifty days remaining - using my superior homeschooled counting skills and deductive reasoning, I would infer that this means there are forty-nine days left now. It's not a lot of time.

Last week my family surprised me by appearing on my doorstep in the middle of the night. Three of them spent the week with me. I say spent the week, I mean that they worked the week. They did amazing things like clear trash out of the rink areas (they found forty-two hockey pucks in the woods) and number wristbands.

In even more exciting news: today I got to ride in Camp's new Caddy which Kevin has tricked into running. Here are a couple of pictures which I have shamelessly stolen from Kevin's facebook.

You must look serious while driving the Caddy - it's a rule.