Almost done

After months of slowly shipping away at my internship hours and feeling like it was never going to end, I'm almost there. I have 10.5 hours to finish, meaning I'll be done on Wednesday. Already I feel a sense of relief and simultaneously the occasional panic that I added my hours wrong and I won't graduate. It's ironic that my counseling internship is bringing out some OCD tendencies, but I have checked and rechecked, added and re-added those numbers so many times. I have gotten up in the middle of doing something else to check them. I haven't had any nightmares yet or gotten out to bed to double check, but I still have a few days left.

In other news, Amelia is walking more and more and becoming more confident. She even stood up in the middle of the kitchen (twice!) and started walking. (Just to explain, our kitchen floor is very slippery depending on what type of socks you're wearing. I almost bit it yesterday stepping over the gate. So it took a lot of confidence and balance for Amelia to successfully stand up and walk out there.) She turns one next week and we're planning her party. Since we don't know any other little kids and the party will only be family, we keep it simple and small - well as simple and small as it can be with 20 adults and 3 kids under the age of 3.

Ella hasn't really learned anything new lately, but her vocabulary is growing continuously and she can carry on a conversation now. Two of her favorite things this week are coloring and playing dress up with our shoes and hats. It's pretty comical to see her slip her feet into Steve's dress shoes, which are almost as long as her legs and weigh about 1/4 of what she does, and clomp around the house in them. The other day she wore them for over an hour. I, of course, have lots of pictures of this.

We've had a lot of time with extended family lately. My parents have come down to visit a few times and Reid came over too. Leslie comes when they're here too, but she comes over at least once a week anyhow. We haven't seen Tracy, Donovan, and Chloe for a while but will see them about once a month soon (Amelia's birthday party, my graduation, the birth of the new niece, Atherton family reunion, etc.). We've seen Steve's family about every other weekend lately and Linda has been here usually two or three times a week to babysit. Isaac and Julia had spring break last week, so they came with her. Annie also babysat last week and Sarah babysat the weekend before that. We've seen the remaining siblings and spouses (Jonathan, Becky and Zech, and Thomas) over the weekends at family dinners. It's been so wonderful having family close by and having the rest of the family close enough to visit for the weekend. I am honestly not sure how we would have survived my masters without them all.

Overall, I am just very aware of how blessed I am right now. I have a wonderful husband and two amazing little girls. Our extended family is supportive and helpful. We're all healthy and are able-bodied. We have a home and more of anything than we actually need. We have two running cars. I was able to continue my education and am almost done with my masters. We were able to do that on one income so (most of the time) one of us was able to be home with our girls. We are very blessed indeed.