I know it’s been a while and I’m sure anyone reading this has been on edge waiting to hear more about my school experience, so here it is. School is going better than I thought it would be. My test scores weren’t near as bad as I thought they would be from my week of tests; some of them were actually really good. I still hate homework as much as I used to, but I am doing more of it than I ever have before.

As far as the SMART Program is going, I just talked to the coordinator the other day and things are looking very promising. I took the GRE this morning and scored well enough to qualify for the program. Now I just have to finish getting all of my application material in to them. If I am admitted to the program I start in June and will be very, very busy for the next 15 months.

Everything else is going well. Krissy and I will be in St. Louis this weekend, and I’ll be running the 5 mile St. Pat’s run downtown on Saturday with Matt, Will, Kat, and Yao. It should be lots of fun and if anyone wants to do something in St. Louis this weekend give us a call.

Okay, so I’m really terrible at this blogging thing. I missed two birthdays last week. And whilst I did make it known to both of these people that I wished them a happy birthday on their actual birthdays, I managed to leave it off the blog.

So, a very happy belated birthday to both Kenny and Jen. Jen’s birthday was Wednesday and Kenny’s was Thursday. Fun that two very important people in my life almost share the same special day!

For Kenny’s birthday, I was pretty sure we weren’t going to see each other. Now there are some tough things to deal with when you’re living apart from your husband and being apart on birthdays is definitely one of them. Even though Kenny doesn’t have classes on Thursday, he was unlucky enough to have a test scheduled for 6:30pm and a lab following right after that which wouldn’t end until 9:00pm. Since I had to work, we agreed it would be silly to drive up and only see each other after 9:30 or so. Well, turns out Kenny’s lab was canceled, so my boss let me out a little early and I headed home, packed up the dogs and was off to Columbia to surprise Kenny. Of course it wasn’t much of a surprise because he was actually just expecting me to be there. Seriously, it’s impossible to surprise him. Anyway, we went to dinner at a little jazz restaurant with Will & Kat called Murry’s and had a nice dinner with an awesome dessert of gooey butter cake. Yum. I was back in Osage Beach the next morning for work and Kenny came home Friday evening.

We had a great relaxing weekend catching up on lots (seriously, like 10 hours) of recorded TV, cleaning up a bit, and watching the Oscars.

Hopefully Jen and Kenny will both be able to forgive me for not posting this sooner, but HAPPY BIRTHDAY! I’m sure Kenny can forgive me, since I was in a bit of a rush to get to Columbia that I forgot to blog. And Jen, I have a gift for you, so I’m hoping you’ll forgive me!

Two tests down and I’m coming to a horrible realization…

I’m not very smart anymore. I think I’ve forgotten how to prepare for and take tests. As you can imagine, this is not good news for me. Hopefully, I’ll be able to figure it out real soon (like before Wednesday). Wish me luck.

After he finishes classes today, Kenny is going to load up his stuff and his dirty laundry and come home for the first time since January 25th! I am very excited to have him home and can’t wait to leave work today and see him in our house! And it will be nice to have him home for Valentine’s Day even though we don’t have any big plans.

Everyone send him good vibes right now because he’s taking his first test (as I’m typing) since starting back to school.

Okay, so yes it’s been a while since I’ve written anything, but what’s new?

As Kenny said, the master bathroom repairs are moving along. It looks like they should be done with in the next couple days. I have taken pictures each day of the changes, so when it’s all done I will post those so you guys can see what it looked like in the beginning and what it looks like now. It has been a very dusty process. Now, I do remodeling and construction for a living so I’m no stranger to dust, but what was in my house was way over the line. Don’t worry, I took pictures of that too!

Saltimbanco at the Family Arena was awesome. It’s the fifth Cirque show that I have seen and it was well worth it. We had seats in the fourth row off to the side so we were close but missed a couple things because of the angle. But it was still a great show. I’m always so amazed with what those people can do with their bodies!

In other news, (exciting for me at least) I finally got a new cell phone! So I don’t look like a member of the drug cartel circa 1994. It’s the Nextel Curve 8350i. It’s a little thicker than a regular Curve, but it doesn’t really look like it unless you’re holding it next to something else. I am still trying to work out the bugs with tech support, and after an hour on hold I’m hoping I have my messaging fixed. What’s the point of a BB if you can’t email or text, right? And I finally have a camera on my phone again! So beware that I will be needing photos of you all to save next to your numbers!

So now that I’m about two full weeks into the semester, I’m starting to remember how to do this whole school thing. The first two quizzes didn’t go great, but they were really stupid mistakes that I can avoid in the future. Four math classes at once is still no fun, but I gotta do what I gotta do. I have tests coming up in all four classes all within a week of each other. That should be fun.

In other life news, our master bathroom repair at home is moving along pretty much as scheduled. Hopefully, Krissy will be able to use it again after this weekend. We had a great time at Bob and Jen’s Super Bowl party. Congratulations to Bob on the big win. This coming weekend we’ll be back in St. Louis to see Saltimbanco, a Cirque du Soleil show, with my parents and Will and Kat. It should be a really good show. That’s all I got. Maybe someday you’ll hear from Krissy.

Well, not a full week but at least it’s underway. It’s pretty weird to be back in college. I’m definitely the old guy in all of my classes, but I don’t feel quite as old as I thought I would. It turns out that four math classes is a pain in the ass. Discrete will definitely be the worst. I don’t think the material is that tough (at least thus far) but it sounds so much more complicated under a Chinese accent.

Outside of the classes, it’s also pretty weird to live with my brother again and be away from Krissy. One of the nice things about being up there with Will is that I’ll probably be a little more fit at the end of this semester and through the summer. I’ve already gotten a chance to talk to the lacrosse coach, so I’ll be helping coach Monday through Thursday in the evening. All things considered, a good start to the semester. Hopefully, Scott’s experience at Florida is going this well.

I’ll always have an affinity for bulldogs (Truman State and USMC), but now I’ll have a team I can actually cheer for. As of yesterday I am officially enrolled as a grad student at the University of Missouri-Columbia. I am enrolled in 12 hours of math, so I’ll probably be pretty busy. Hopefully, after this semester I will be starting a post baccalaureate program through which I will earn a Master’s in Education in 15 months. If everything works out, I’ll be a middle school math teacher in about a year and half from now.

I’ll probably be spending most of my time in Columbia this semester and living with Will and Kat. I don’t think anybody would have ever guessed that Will and I would be doing post-bac work in Columbia, MO at the same time. I’m pretty excited about going back to school and becoming a teacher, so wish me luck.

On a side note, congratulations to Scott for getting on his way to an MBA this coming semester.

A lot has gone on since our last entry , so this could be a long one. But it won’t be that long because Krissy’s not writing it. She refuses to write entries for some reason, so here I go.

We were in St. Louis a lot before and over the holidays. We had a great Christmas. My big presents were video games, a rifle, and, apparently, an ipod nano yet to come. Krissy’s big ones were a nano, the usual Waterford ornaments with a giant Faberge 3-piece set thrown in, and the other half of the “Friends” seasons she didn’t have yet. We spent New Year’s eve at the Dittmeier lake house with Krissy’s mom. That whole weekend was spent decorating the middle level of their new house with her mom.

Through all of this we’ve managed to get our deck and entertainment center very nearly done and clean our basement up a little bit. We even got a little bit closer (very, very little) on our shower. We’ll have some more pictures up on Flickr pretty soon. Right now we’re looking forward to a fun-filled visit from the Sherrons. Hopefully, we’ll update a little more often.

Quick update on what we’ve been doing since the last post. My parents visited while Krissy was in St. Louis. The next weekend one of Krissy’s friends was moving to New York, so we went to St. Louis to see him and a bunch of Krissy’s college friends before he left. Then last weekend we went in town and I got to see Spencer play a rock show with Bob on Friday (Spencer’s a really talented guy btw) and we hung out with Scott and Sarah among others at Matt and Steph’s on Saturday. Good times.

And on a totally unrelated note, did anyone catch “A Colbert Christmas Special: The Greatest Gift of All!”? Hilarious. My two favorite segments were with Jon Stewart and John Legend. With lines like “I’m gonna go find a meg so I can nut it,” I feel really good about Krissy and my decision to dance to a John Legend song for our first dance as a married couple. I’ll end this with a great line from his song in the show: “No cocoa, no cloves, no vanilla, no mace. The only residue I want you wiping off your face is my nutmeg.”

Awesome!