Eric's 1st Easter

       Eric has an "egg-citing" (just for you Grandpa!) Easter this year!! He started out with a quite restful day full of church, naps, and lots of food. His day soon turned into an explosion of kids/aunt/uncles/grandparents with the Hennen side of the family. Eric got passed around the room so many times I lost track of him, only to find him happily playing with his cousins. He loved chasing them around and getting tickled every time he turned around.

       Eric then took a quick car ride over to see the Long side of his family, where LOTS of pictures were taken. I'll let them do the rest of the talking :) 

The following pictures were taken by Aunt Julianne (the Favorite Aunt ;})
     

Random thoughts/dreams...

     Since failing the NCLEX-RN for the 3rd time I've been having a lot of thoughts about my life. Is Nursing what I really want to do? If it is, what are my options going forward? If I go back to school and get my BSN, how will we pay for it? Is going back to school the right thing to do? Or do I just forget about my career and throw myself into being a Mom with an associates and no license? Should I just give up on Nursing, change my career, and start all over? Should I keep with the plan and just find something else I'm good at to do for a career? Or should I just start popping out babies like a rabbit and be the crazy lady with 30 kids and no time to get to know any of them? Should I just not worry about any of this until after we get back from OK? Or do I just live life day to day and throw all my dreams out the window and see what happens?

       Some of these questions I have answers to, and some I'm not sure I want to face yet. I know I don't want to give up on Nursing, but I also know I'm having a hard time dealing with my repeated failure (and all the emotional repercussions that go with it).  So for now nursing is on the back burner until I hear back from some schools telling me if I even can go back to school for my BSN. At which point I will start worrying about how to pay for it, textbooks, finding study time, tests, and all the other joys of school.

       So for now, I will be a happy working mom and find something to do to help me feel like more of a real person and less of a failure. Currently I'm filling that void by writing knitting patterns. Currently I've written 2 new patterns, one is being test knit as I write and the other I just finished writing. I've got several more ideas that I'm working on, still in the designing stage mostly but ideas none the less. Assuming everything goes as planned with the two finished patterns I'm going to start attempting to sell them on my Etsy store and where I work (assuming my boss with buy them to sell). I've also got a co-worker that has talked about designing patterns, so I'm going to be working with her as well. Hopefully between the two of us we'll be able to design/write some that make sense and have very few errors (hoping for none!!).

      But seeing as how it is 2300, it's my bed time. I'll try to do better at keeping everyone posted on life in the Matthew Long house!!

       Coming in the next edition Pictures of our "gigantic" 9 month old!!!

Sweet Dreams All!!

~Melanie