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Valentine's Day and other fun

Things have been busy around here. I have been doing my comprehensive/qualifying exams so I can advance to doctoral candidacy. I scheduled with my mentor to do this during a particular week and she went the questions a week early. So I just kept them and wrote my responses. It was a hard week because I had crammed stuff into in thinking the next week would be the exam. But I went to the workshop I signed up for and did my visiting teaching for church and taught my Sunday school lesson, and did my exam. Basically your committee gives you questions and you write long papers responding. In two weeks, I have the oral part where my full committee gets to grill me about what I wrote.

I was right in the middle of my exams during Valentines' Day.  We went to the Boy Scout Fundraising dinner like we usually do. I gave Brian chocolates and an Obi Wan action figure. He gave me Downton Abbey season 5. I ordered Hannah a cash register and it came in time but I forgot to give it to her on V-Day. I gave it her on Sunday instead. She did get a box of presents from my parents and so she didn't totally go without. Hannah really likes her cash register. I told her Grandpa Aldred had a store and she asked what he sold. I said TVs. She said, "wow, he must have needed big shopping carts!" She calls herself a shopkeeper and "charges" me for books and necklaces and things. Sometimes I talk her into a discount.

I had also bought red velvet pancake mix for a V-Day breakfast but alas I forgot to make those as well so we had then on Sunday for dinner. Hannah liked helping me make red velvet Hello Kitty waffles. On Monday we finally got around to eating the chocolate cake with the red hearts that I bought. It was a really good cake.



On Saturday we got a notice that there was a package at the post office for us. We have a box for receiving packages so I don't know why that was there. We tried to pick it up on Monday, but it was President's Day so we couldn't. On Tuesday we went back and got it. It was a Wonder Woman T-shirt and Valentines' from my sister's boys. The Valentines were so cute.




Right now I am being lazy in the aftermath of my tests. I averaged 50 pages every three days during my tests. I had to go write yesterday with my research partner and I got tired and he had to finish by himself. Hannah had little bit of flu earlier in the week and then I might have got it. My goal for the weekend is to get my household back in order and then go back to my academic work that has been on hold for comps.



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