Thank God for scholarships!

So….yesterday was the official announcement of the scholarship awards from Joe's college. He walked away with almost enough to cover his senior year tuition after his discount for working at the hospital system was applied. Phew. The bread winner of the house wipes her brow. That much less in student loan debt so that when Joe is finally working his entire salary won't be going to pay off the debts! So we'll have made it through 4 years of nursing school with 17,100 in student loans. Not bad for a school that costs $19,000 in tuition each year. Now grad school… who knows if we'll come out as unscathed but we'll certainly do our best. Joe's 2nd job the last few summers has been to apply for scholarships so he's got the drill down pat.

Little One starts 2nd grade tomorrow. We went to an ice cream social at the school last night to meet the teacher and drop off her school supplies. Even though Little One didn't get the teacher she was hoping for she seemed excited after getting a chance to talk to her teacher. She's young, fairly perky and seemed really good with the kids. Got right down on their level, good eye contact, good questions. Also, a buddy of Little One's from the after school program last year is sitting at the same table as her so she was pleased as punch about that. I have an insane desire to volunteer in the classroom, I may need to be talked out of this at a later date. I haven't really been involved in Little One's classroom since she was in Pre-K. I started a new job (my current job) when Little One was in Kindergarten and I just didn't have the flexibility in my schedule to be out of the office when I was trying to learn a new job. But now that I finally feel like I know what I'm doing, and I have a staff that can handle things fairly independently, I think it's time to get involved.

I still have to finalize Little One's activities for the year, looks like she'll be doing a gymnastics class once a week and piano lessons once a week. 2 days a week is the max extra-curriculars I like to get her signed up for. With Joe's classes, clinicals and work schedule this semester he is only home one weekend night before 9pm, so I'm doing most of shuttling to activities. Plus church school on Sunday. And this year is First Communion which means more meetings and rehearsals than usual. Whew.

High Five for Scholarships and Yay to the first day of school tomorrow!