Blessings from Heaven

This week has been a stressful one so far. Boyd started school again, and JB's finally almost over his cold. Not to mention all the snow has kept me pretty cooped up around here thanks to the "lovely" construction outside. But the closer Saturday is, the better things are looking.

Last semester was Boyd's semester from "non-heaven", as I like to call it. He was extremely busy and had some hard classes. He was blessed for his efforts though, and came out on top! It ended up being one of his best semesters ever. This semester is supposed to be his reward for getting through last semester - an easy last semester of his undergrad. The first day of classes he realized that one of his electives was harder than he wanted to get into (they were going to have to write a sentance for every assigned paragraph of reading, which they would have to report on in class each day, and design a gas turbine engine) so he's worked things out so he can get out of it and do a research class instead. With this change he has no classes that require any homework, and the only class with any real tests is his geology class.

A couple days ago Boyd realized that somehow BYU had taken away his grant money for last semester and this semester. After talking to someone about it, we are getting last semester's money back, but he has to petition to get this semester's tuition money because he has 179.5 credits and the cut off for aid is 180. Hopefully he can get it.

On that same day, Boyd got the car stuck in the snow twice. Once it was on a residential street around campus (why doesn't Provo clear their streets better? I mean, it's not like snow is a new thing around here.) and the other time was in the parking lot at work. This time he got out and pushed, and in the processes, locked our one and only key in the car. Luckily a guy at work had a friend that was a locksmith. Thank goodness for little blessings...

For those of you that know about Boyd's capstone project....well, after coming up with various solutions and having them all shot down because of lack of materials in Mozambique, they decided to turn to the only solution they could think of. In fact, there's at least one guy in Mozambique who uses it already.....termite hills. I guess the waste termites leave behind is a good cement, especially when fired minimally. So the next step is to make some termite mud bricks. Seems simple, right? It would be if they could get it across the border. They put in an order to have some shipped over, but customs turned it down.

I won't even get started on the construction that continues to happen ouside our door.....or the constant sheet of ice that's there because of it.

But despite all the seemingly rotten days we've had, there is always light at the end of the tunnel. JB's feeling tons better, and yesterday finally got his old appetite back. And even better - he slept for 7, that's right, 7 hours straight last night!!! What a wonderful surprise!
I'm a firm believer that anything can be tackled on a good night's sleep.

First thing on the list....the kitchen sink!