Back to Reality

I returned from my epic adventure Sunday night and am just now getting things back in order. Glacier National Park was absolutely breathtaking, along with all the other places I saw on the way. That was an excellent way to spend $390! I went super cheap on souvenirs (postcards and magnets for my fridge collection) and did my best to order off the value menu or eat food that I had carried with me. Grand total for my spending money on the trip was right over $200. I feel like roughly $600 for an eleven day vacation including ten states, two national monuments, two national parks, and several new friends was a heck of a deal! Cody did a great job taking care of things while I was away. However, that was probably my first and last long trip without him. I missed my husband terribly, especially on the three day van ride back home.

So far, we are keeping well within our new budget. We will be paying cash for a new set of tires next week and will have our only loan paid off by the end of August. The financial aid fiasco is still playing out. Sadly, I wound up having to take out another small student loan. On the bright side, my recent advisng appointment revealed that, yes, I will in fact be graduating in the Spring. The class I am taking this semester is the last one ever! Well...for this degree anyways.

I've started working at a lawyer's office part-time-ish. I am going to attempt to substitute a little this semester also, as well as work at my job in retail occasionally (plus complete fifty observation hours for my class, yeah right). These nice paychecks are going to be difficult to give up after Christmas when I am student teaching for four months! But by then we will have plenty put back to provide gas and grocery money while I am virtually unemployed.