Baby Name of the Day

I forgot my Baby Name of the Day. Lately I have been hooked on Levi. Love it. Levi Something Furgison. Jason insists our first boy should have the middle name Raymond because it is his middle name but I say over my dead body. I REFUSE to push out a baby with the mn Raymond so he'll have to find some other woman who will do it for him. Our kids will already get his last name, and I want to keep my family in their somewhere, so it has to be with the middle name. We might go with Levi Gordon, as that was my grandfather's name.

I'm Ba-aack!

So, I have been hibernating for approximately a year. Grad school has pretty much taken up all of my time, but now that I see the light at the end of the tunnel, I thought I would tentatively try blogging again and see if I can keep it up. Not that my life is interesting, but as I have always been a journal writer, I figured that this was a natural progression. I do have a teaching website, though, that can be found, here: http://fg.ed.pacificu.edu/sweb/furgison/Site/Welcome.html

Hopefully our life will pick up more this summer. We have a million weddings to go to, and one that I am in, for my longtime friend Kelly Huston. My friend Erik is coming to town to officiate the wedding, and we were best friends for so long but have lost touch over the years. He is in his PhD program at Cornell, so it is going to be good to actually get to see him face to face for the first time in a very long time!

We also are going to start trying for a baby in August, which I am very excited about. It doesn't fit the med school 1,000 year plan, but we don't want to wait much longer. My uterus is shriveling and my clock is ticking, so it is time. So that will make the Furgison household a large one, with Duke, Madison, Alice, Hazel, Jason and I! That is alot of car seats (for Duke, Maddie and the new baby, the rats don't have a carseat!) but should be quite the adventure. As most of my cousins have babies by now, multiple babies, and they are getting older, we figured that it is about time! Hence the baby name of the day addendum that you will see on some posts. I am obsessed with baby names and have been for a long time, so I will throw some out in the universe. Feel free to comment on the ones you like best!

Teaching is going superbly well and I am absolutely IN LOVE with my student teaching, but job hunting is not promising given the economy. I can't relocate seeing that it is my hubby that makes the big bucks so I am relatively stuck. Hopefully I won't be barefoot and pregnant the next year with nothing to do but decorate and garden, seeing that we just spent 30 k on my graduate education. When I do stay home, I plan to decorate and garden, but I do love teaching and would actually like to use my degree to some extent before raising muchkins.

One thing I have learned this year is that "to every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven" (Ecc 3:1). What I have been struggling most with this year is feeling very unbalanced. My tri training has gone down the drain, and I never have time to read, which is one of my greatest passions. My house is hardly ever up to my standards, and though I was once an avid meal planner, that has slipped as well. I never volunteer, which is so important to me, and I am lucky if I make it to church twice in a month. All I have had time for since last June is school and teaching. We figured out how much time I spend on grad school related activities (class, homework, teaching, lesson planning) and it averages out to 60 hours a week. Focusing so disporportionately on one thing has really eaten me up all year, and for quite a long time I felt as if grad school had taken so much from me and destroyed so much of who I was. After almost a year of prayer, I am slowely realizing that I have to have a different perspective on this whole program and my crazy life. I am realizing that this is my season for schooling, and it is only temporary. The season that I am in requires total dedication to teaching at the expense of many other things I enjoy and love but it is not forever, it will eventually end (soon!) and I will be able to resume my regualar routine and once again find balance. This season has not been without purpose. As a result, I have become an excellent teacher, top of my class, and am getting so much encouragement from my advisors and mentors. Because of this last year, I have finally found something that I absolutely love doing and I feel like I am making a difference to kids who really would be lost without the attention and care they get from their teachers. This year hasn't destroyed me, it has just changed me, and it is not better or worse, just different. I will change again with the next season... As a result of this revelation, I have stopped beating myself up about letting my workouts slip along with everything else. I know that it is only temporary, and my season to compete in triathlons and keep my house spotless and read a book a week and volunteer and go to church will come again. Because I know this, I have suffered with alot less guilt these past few weeks over not being able to do it all. I just wish I would have reached peace with this season of my life earlier in the year, but at least I have a lifetime to remember my newfound lesson!