It's been a while. A long while. And to no other's fault but my own. Since I last posted so much has gone on. Jackson turned five months, I finished school, we celebrated Christmas, we celebrated the New Year, Jackson got his first tooth, he met Haloti Ngata... okay, so that last one only happened last night, but still. There's a LOT that I haven't blogged about. But here we go...
So I finally Finally FINALLY finished my last semester of nursing school, and quite successfully I might add. After much stress, a ridiculous amount of papers, and a number of annoying exams, I came out with an A, an A- and a B. I was very very proud of myself.
I may have mentioned this before, but at some point we thought Jackson was getting a tooth way back in his mouth. It turns out it wasn't a tooth at all. My mom calls it grissle, but I guess it was a tiny bone fragment that poked through. But, just recently Jackson's first tooth did decide to pop through in the front. And he has another one coming in at a close second.
Shortly after finishing school, Christmas crept up on us. We weren't planning on getting a whole lot for Jackson since he won't really remember anyway, but that definitely went out the window. Not only did we get a lot for him, but so did both sets of his grandparents and his aunts and uncles. He was one spoiled kid this Christmas. All gifts aside, this was truly the BEST Christmas ever. We celebrated Christmas Eve at church, which was my first time, and it was great. I LOVED it and I can't wait for next year. We then went to my parents. On Christmas day we opened gifts at home, traveled to my parents again for more gifts, visited my grandmother as we do every Christmas, then made the trek to Justin's aunt's house to have dinner with his family, open more gifts, exchange gag gifts, and play games. It was definitely a holiday to remember. (In between school ending and Christmas Jackson also got to see 3 different Santa's: Mall santa, Daddy as Santa, and Mom Mom as Santa). A few days after Christmas, we celebrated yet again with my oldest sister and her family.
Somewhere in between this all, Jackson also got to experience his first snow storm. What an event. It was really nice to finally see snow on the ground on Christmas and to finally have snow to go with the cold weather. And of course it was exciting to see Jackson's response to it all. At first he seemed kind of confused. Then he seemed kind of indifferent to it all. I Know that will change when he gets older, especially when snow means school closings and delays, ha ha.
After Christmas came and went and the toys piled up, Justin and I celebrated New Years Eve as we do every year, by working at Ramshead together. So, that meant this was Jackson's first ever 2 day sleepover (since we both worked the next night also) and Jackson's first night at MomMom and PopPop Smith's house. While we weren't there, we can tell from the pictures that he had a blast, and he even came home with a new rainforest bouncer that he LOVES. It's soooo funny to watch him jump in that thing. And we have a feeling that MomMom and PopPop enjoyed it just as much as Jackson did. I got an I-Flip from my wonderful husband and baby boy for Christmas and I've been doing a lot of recording of Jackson jumping. As soon as I figure it all out, I'll put the videos up.
Since New Year's, we've still kept busy. I've started my review classes for my NCLEX exam, with Kaplan starting on Monday, Justin's been working, and Jackson has renewed his schedule at Grandmom Porter's two days a week and Oma's two days a week. I've also been busy busy busy applying for nursing jobs. I've already had one interview (today) and I hope to hear back from a couple more jobs soon. I would love to hold out for an L&D spot at St. Joe's but financially that's just not possible.
Last night, as I mentioned earlier, we took Jackson to meet Haloti Ngata and to get Justin's football signed. He was a really nice guy and we found out that he also has a six month old son. We also recently took Jax to meet Ray Rice and get Justin's jersey signed. He was also a nice guy but MUCH MUCh smaller than Ngata. h aha.
As for my new challenge! A friend and photographer, Mandy Sroka, has decided to do a 365 day blog post with an image captured from each day. I've decided taht I've slacked so much, this would be the perfect challenge to get me back on top of my blogging game. So, from here on out, my challenge is to blog everyday with at least one picture from that day ( or one recent picture). Rather than posting a picture in the blog tonight, I will be posting a seperate blog with a bunch of pictures to get me up to date.
So here's to a happy wonderful new year and an exciting new challenge!!!!
