"All great changes are preceded by chaos"–Deepak Chopra

“All great changes are preceded by chaos”… This is our new motto of late. And it’s totally true!

In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been a little absent these days from from the social networking world. I just don’t have time for ANYTHING these days! Why you ask? Over the Christmas/New Years break, as we pondered our goals on that fabulous beach trip, Aaron and I came to the realization that if we fast-forwarded 5-10 years, we’d probably be in the same, exact, “stuck” place in life. No that our life is completely terrible, but we just have so many goals, aspirations, and dreams, that for us, this just isn’t good enough. To be honest, we’ve had an itch for change for a good year now. Sometimes new change comes to you, sometimes you have to go out and turn things upside down yourself! And that’s just exactly what we did.

I’m back in school.

Yup… I’ve already got an AA, an AAS, and 6years of an established career as a dental hygienist on my belt. I LOVE my job. I simply cannot complain about one thing… except that I think I am capable of more! This girl wants to go to dental school. I’m going to be a Dentist.

The first week after break, before classes started, was absolutely crazy as we tried to figure out how all of this was going to work. First of all, the cost for just one class at WSU was over $2,000!!! But, I suppose our tax return could go to that. I wasn’t even able to get an appointment with an advisor until the Friday before classes. But that was ok because it gave me time to look at several dental schools, get an idea of requirements, and kind of understand and see where I was at, and where I needed to be. I decided to go to both Clark College and WSU (I’m a Coug-uin) to start with Biology and Inorganic chemistry. (I need a few upper-level core classes to meet the requirements for Dental school.) It’s actually a miracle I even started classes with how late I applied to school and registered, but it feels like everything has been falling into place in a way that makes it hard to not press forward. We truly feel blessed and directed. I just completed my first exam in Chemistry (which was no problem at all) and have my first in Biology next week. I actually enjoy being in school, and though the thought of dental school scares me, the light at the end, and the thought of where our life could be headed is super exciting!!!

Aaron has been so supportive and a great husband and father. Our agreement was that if I was back in school, he would have to pick up a lot of the responsibilities that I would no longer have time for (i.e. meals, dishes, laundry, grocery shopping, kid stuff, etc.) Finding the time for things has definitely been difficult. I thought being a working mom was hard enough!!! I squeeze Biology in during an extended lunch break on M/W that leaves me rushing back and forth to work. I have 3-hour labs Tuesday nights and Saturday mornings, and I have Chemistry Wednesday nights right after work till 7:30pm. (Which means when I work on Wed I work 7:30am-1pm, class 1:25pm-2:40pm, work 3pm-5pm, class 5:30pm-7:30pm.) Every morning Aaron and I are up at 5am so that I can get some HW done before work, (and so that he can get his overtime in early without having to stay late), and we usually aren’t back in bed until after 11pm after some more studying. Mon nights are free, but I’m gone Tue and Wed nights. Oh, and lets not forget about Thursday nights… I just started soccer. Crazy right? Fridays are open for lots of studying, but Saturdays/Sundays I am trying to spend time with my family AND get stuff done. Wow… what a crazy busy life right? Aaron is doing a great job picking up where I fall short now and our kids are doing so great with all of the new changes too. However, Malia did tell Aaron the other day that she didn’t like that I was in school. Concerned, Aaron asked her why? Malia said “Because I want mommy to go to school to be a cheerleader! Not a dentist!” Cute  

There is no way we could accomplish this without Amy and Christa (two wonderful ladies in our neighborhood), and Allison and Katie (and several other gals who have helped watch our kids), who are all super wonderful with our girls. (I think our girls go somewhere new nearly every day of the week!) But Malia and Allie seem to have fun, and so far we are still super grateful not to have to put them in daycare!

We are taking things day by day. Although the future looks promising (I am hoping for a scholarship that pays full tuition to dental school, but requires working in Hawaii for 4 years following… awesome right?), we have to just take things as they come. (We’ve even talked about re-entering the student world as a family, so that Aaron can earn his Master’s Degree.) Being in the moment, and thinking about the future is easy… it’s the getting there that is going to be hard. But, we just figure that as long we try our hardest, and as long as our Heavenly Father provides a way, we can keep chugging along! Our plan is to apply to dental school (somewhere other than here) this summer, for entry Fall 2013, which means I need to take this huge test called a DAT by June, and need to get good grades this semester and next year Fall 2012-2013 all while still trying to work, and doing my job as a wife and mother.

We’ll see. Who knows? So far things are such that if all of this doesn’t work out quite like we were hoping, we haven’t messed up too much stuff yet to not be able to return to what life once was. But… this new challenge is kind of exciting isn’t it?

“All GREAT changes are preceded by CHAOS.”

Oh, and here are a couple pictures of what happened in January… close to nothing. Besides school, we celebrated Aaron’s 30th birthday (which sadly was quite uneventful since it was the day after our beach trip and Aaron got sick again… but we usually celebrate some sort of 1/2 birthday in the summer anyways), and we enjoyed a little bit of snow!