Yeah, I know: I said my baby had graduated from college. But just in time to save me from some serious "empty nest" blues, Daughter decided to go back for a teaching certificate.
Actually, the nest is still "empty" since she doesn't live here any more. But Carole is pretty excited about being accepted to and beginning an intensive 5-quarter program at Western Washington University in Bellingham to add a teaching certificate to her BS in psychology from Carrol College in Helena, Montana (class of 2001). She says that so far the classes are great ~ except for a technology course that "is pretty boring so far but hopefully will move fast."
Other back-to-school accomplishments: She got up at 6:00 am three days ~ learned there is a "new" math ~ and so far, she says, she's read every word of the assigned readings for every class. (She also said she expects that to last about 2 more days).
Rob has been gone most of the past week for work ~ Boulder, Ft. Collins, Denver; he is on a wildfire behavior research team at the Fire Lab of the Rocky Mountain Research Station in Missoula, Montana. The job requires a lot of travel during "fire season." Following the "First Law of the Forest Service Wives' Handbook," just about anything that could go wrong when he left, did ~ but after (too many?) years' experience, I handled it all with great aplomb ;-) Found someone to help with some emergency fence repair after the horses got out Wednesday morning (Thanks a BUNCH, Ron), retrieved said horses from their wandering adventures, and got them back into the corral.
AND, while heading down to feed those horses that evening, avoided being trampled by a very aggressive doe who was hiding her fawn somewhere between the house and the barn: she charged me and our two Labs ~ never did figure out exactly where the fawn was hiding. . . even the dogs ran from her!
I'll be leaving in a couple weeks for a trip to see my family in NC to celebrate and attend my sisters' wedding in NC. It will be good to be back in the South again for some seriously warm weather. It's been pretty nice here off and on in Plains, but they just don't do summer here like they do "back home"! (Yeah, some of you are groaning about how I must be nuts. What can I say ~ I love the summers I grew up in!). Hurray: two weeks of lovely NC summer! Too bad I can't make it out to the coast . . .
The boys seem to be doing fine. Just talked to Connor, and we're probably going to see him later this week. As Rob says, he has to be in Portland a couple of days to continue his "world tour" for work. ConMan said he'd be around and we could catch up one night fo dinner with him. Kendall is enjoying his BOLC at Ft. Sill, OK. They got pulled in from field training a couple days early because of the flooding there, but will head out again to complete the exercise next week, with a break for July 4th.
