How I Spent My Summer Vacation

This has been one WILD and CRAZY summer, y'all!!  We made (we think) 4 or 5 round trips between South Carolina and Ohio, trying to clean out, pack up and sell our house.  We thought we had buyers for it once... we rushed back to show it to them, after less than a week back home in SC... it fell through, so we called a realtor and have it officially listed.  And someone else gets to mess with showing the darn thing, haha!  

During one of our trips back to OH, one of my best friends got married!  She was one of my bridesmaids AND caught my bouquet.  And WAS the next to get married.  How cool is that?  I'm soooo excited for her!  She was a beautiful bride, and is going to be an amazing, Godly wife.

I also finished two grad classes... one required for my degree (Career Counseling) and the other because it's an interest and passion of mine (Crisis Counseling).  Turns out, the required one was easier and the "fun" one was super-stressful.  And I get a whole NIGHT off before fall semester starts in the morning!  I have enough credits to get the degree, but I'm still needing a couple more classes and an internship.  Still, I can't believe I have over 50 hours of graduate work completed.  To think I swore up and down in May 2009 that I would NEVER set foot in a classroom again!

I had a birthday... I'm now 25.  Which is weird, because I never quite got used to saying I'm 24.  But I was spoiled, and loved, and it was wonderful.

I did a BUNCH of teaching, which I'm super-excited about.  My job is ridiculously awesome, as are my students.  So fun to be in such a creative environment, and to see the really pretty ideas my students come up with... I love that the skills I teach can make such wildly different jewelry, depending on the personality and tastes of the artist!  It keeps me inspired and humbled.

We've had some big emotional ups and downs, with the house and our continued battle with infertility and diabetes.  My blood sugars have been pretty good - FABULOUS for me, actually - but my endocrinologist is very discouraging and demanding.  No amount of improvement is perfect, so it's not good enough.  But, I'm still hovering within a reasonable range to attempt advanced reproductive technology (ART).  For us, this means in vitro fertilization (IVF).  Our infertility specialist has told us that this is the only way I will be able to carry our baby, so we're in a holding pattern until we are ready to start the lovely hormone and medication cocktails.  We are looking at ways of financing these efforts right now, but that's another blog post :-) 

Now that the house is on the market, and we're planning on staying put for a few months, I will hopefully be able to post a few pieces of jewelry and some "Nailed It" Pinterest posts from time-to-time.  I stole any chance I got to try new things this summer, so I have some interesting stuff just waiting to be written about!!

Always,

Katie