Back in the groove...sort of.

Well, we made it back home from New York yesterday (our second out of town trip this holiday break), and we are getting back to normal...sort of.  I say "sort of" because we are going through some changes that will hopefully make this semester much more sane and purposeful than last semester.  Before letting you in on some of these, let me talk a little about our NY trip.

My mom came from Georgia to see us on New Year's, and we all (me, my mom, Clint, and Carter) headed out on Tuesday the fourth on a 10.5-hour drive to my grandmother's house on Long Island, NY.  I'm honestly surprised we made it because all four of us were traveling in my mom's truck with a small access cab feeling squished like sardines.  The drive wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, but it would have been nice to have known about the GPS feature that allows you to bypass tolls.  (I think we went through five.)  All of the discomfort was forgotten when we got to see my Gram and how happy she was to see us.

Clint and I had only a little bit of time to go into the city, and of course, we managed to waste as much time as possible.  We just missed the Long Island Rail Road train to the city by a couple of minutes, so we had to wait 45 minutes for the next one.  When we got into Penn Station, we had plans to go to the American Museum of Natural History.  Well, how convenient was it that a short subway ride from Penn to the museum would get us there in no time, right?  Well, we still managed to take the wrong train and passed by that stop and then another and another (local vs. express--who knew?).  We got off at 125th St. and walked to the museum on 81st.  My goodness, it was cold!  If you know me, you know that I could have died and the fact that I had gloves and a scarf on saved my life.  Clint and I kept our spirits high and positive as we passed by mountains of trash on the Upper West Side and drank overpriced hot chocolate and ate Asiago bagels on our jaywalking journey to Central Park.  The museum was really neat; I wish we had more time to go through its four floors.  If you know us, we're the biggest geeks and always fit in a museum visit whenever we're on vacation.  Anyway, after going through the museum and making a stop in its store (this is what Clint got), we rushed back on the subway to get back to Penn to beat the peak rush hour traffic.  The cold and walking really hit me because I went to sleep at like 8:30 that evening.

It was really nice to see Gram light up and just take in Carter's rambunctious and quirky self.  Before we knew it, it was Saturday and time to head to the airport.  Carter did well on the plane aside from endlessly kicking the seat in front of him no matter how much we threatened or bribed him.  When we got home, I, as usual, started feeling sentimental about the trip and was thinking about my mom being farther away and my Gram getting older and the grandfather clock in the foyer that loudly notifies you every 15 minutes and the amazing amount of yogurt in the fridge and the numerous bags of expired food that my mom and I threw out, etc., etc., etc.  Even though we really couldn't afford to go on this trip, I'm really happy we went ahead and just did it.

Now as I mentioned above, we are back to normal but with some changes.  Clint and I will be going down to part-time this semester.  Clint's doing that for financial reasons, and I'm doing it for sanity reasons.  This semester I will also consider changing my major AND degree (more details later) which would require me to be in school longer.  I'm not doing Teen MOPS anymore.  After some consideration and insight, we decided to go to The Summit at Brier Creek this morning, and we really liked it.  We're looking for second jobs...and that's all I'm saying about that.  Finally, I want to read more, learn more, and be more for Christ.  I've prayed for God to prepare and challenge me for a couple of months now.  I have no idea what that will include, but I know that it will redefine "comfort" for my life.  Let's do this.