Hallelujah! Let Heaven and Angels Sing!

We are FINALLY finished with fall semester. Along with my last post, I absolutely HATE finals week. Brett has been so absolutely focused on school he has been quite a bear to be around. I’m just thankful he is not really that bad to be around when he’s cranky. There was a LOT riding on one of the finals that he was taking this year and so finals were extra stressful this year. However, I am so relieved and happy to report that he got the points that he needed and the dark black cloud that has been hovering over our house for the past couple weeks has finally lifted. Thanks for all of your prayers in our time of need. We just need your prayers that someone will like Brett and will accept him into their PT program. Keep your fingers crossed.
With the darkness lifting and the heaven and angels singing at our house we were finally able to celebrate our 3rd anniversary (a few days late). Our anniversary was on Wednesday, December 15th but because of school, and doing therapy, we were unable to celebrate on the actual anniversary. Brett surprised me after work on Friday by taking me night skiing at the Beav! We haven’t been skiing at the Beav in a few years, because we’ve usually headed down to Deer Valley to ski with Brett’s brother and sister-in-law, Brain and Sher. We have thoroughly enjoyed going down there but it was fun to go up to the Beav again. Brett had also arranged to have Dustin and his girlfriend, Kate, to go with us. It was a blast to be able to ski with them. I always love hearing the boy’s stories about ‘the good ‘ol days’. They are always a good for a laugh. Unfortunately, no pictures of the glorious event but maybe next time.
Saturday we were able to spend a good portion of the day doing absolutely nothing! It was a much much needed break. Then we headed to Logan Lanes for the Petersen Family Christmas Party. We usually have it at the church but this year, because of a few people not being able to attend, we headed to the bowling ally. Brett’s cousin-in-law owns the bowling ally and got things all set up for us to hang out there for a few hours. It sure was fun! I completely forgot about taking pictures at the wonderful event so you;ll just have to take my word about how much fun we had.
After a few hours at the bowling ally we headed to an ugly sweater Christmas party with my sister’s in-laws (hope you can catch the connection). We met at Village Inn for dinner and then headed to Alene and Chris’s house to play some games. It was a fun evening, full of LOTS of laughs. Here are a few pictures to document our awesome sweaters. I do have to give kudos to my mother-in-law for the awesome sweater I got to wear. She’s a 3rd grade school teacher and has been for years so she has quite the collection of sweet sweaters. I stole the bow in my hair off my parent’s Christmas tree. It matched quite well with the bows on my sweater. Oh what a night!
This is just the beginning of the joy and laughter that is and will be happening around our house this Christmas break. Coming up is our niece’s birthday party at Chuckie Cheese, Christmas, more skiing, more games nights and probably more ugly sweaters.  I sure do LOVE Christmas time and the excuse to eat and sleep and hang out with good friends and family.

Hatred

I know this is the time of year that you are supposed to be grateful for what you have and boy, are we ever! However, I just need to vent about how much I absolutely HATE applying to grad school. It consists of so much time, effort, and money that it is emotionally and physically exhausting! I am one who likes to be in control of things (thanks Mom) and not being able to control all of the if's, when's, how's, and such of graduate school is NOT my idea of fun.
It breaks my heart to see Brett working so hard to get into grad school and just because he doesn't have stellar grades he might not get in. There are so many variables that come with applying to a graduate program and we have done our very best to pick the schools that are a good fit for him and us but what if we picked all the wrong schools? What if we spend $1,000s just to apply to all of these blasted schools and then we don't get in? Then what? Where do we go from there? Do we do it all over again next year or do we look for opportunities elsewhere? There are so many things resting on whether or not we get in that i can't even begin to list them or I just might start to cry. We HAVE to get in this year - we NEED to get in this year.
If only....
I know many of you who read our blog have been through this same process and can attest that it is NOT fun. Today I'm just being a my worry-wart self and needed to vent then I thought "why not do it on the blog since you haven't updated in over a month...." So this is me, venting on the blog, and putting all of these lame questions down in writing so I can let go of them and STOP worrying about them. Can I just run away to the hills and trap for beaver pelts and never have to be worried about money or jobs or anything! Who's with me?