The end of another year...goodbye 2011

Another year has quickly gone by. It was a year filled with many ups and downs, challenges and celebrations. While it can be easy to dwell on the negative, there has been plenty to be thankful for as well.
What happened this year....
*I have completed half of my doctoral program maintaining a 4.0
*I was voted to be on the doctoral committee to be the liaison between the students and the faculty
*James made travel baseball
*We bought rafts and rafted several times down the Des Plains river...(this is my favorite thing of the year)
*The basement is 85% complete
*We went to the dells and had a great time
*Grandpa had a rough health year, but hes fighting hard.
*some great friendships continued to grow and others have drifted away
*I started Kris Kringle Christmas Cookies and had a very successful season

This year, Dave and I have spent many hours talking about the idea of contentment. Dave made a great point when he stated that a person cannot be truly happy unless they are content. I believe that a person can be content and still desire things, but when they are not satisfied with what they already have they are often unhappy. It can be easy to blame the economy for why so many people are not currently content with their situation, but I often think it is an excuse. Yes, the economy is not what it has been, but we have been so spoiled that we think poor me I cant have _________. While almost everyone is affected by the economy it is nothing compared to what it could be. There are still people alive who lived through the great depression...and I often wonder what they think about people complaining about the economy. I don't see us waiting in line for a loaf of bread. No, we still have our cell phones, cable, multiple cars, and we are still buying things that are not needed. So it really comes down to being grateful and content with what you have because it really could be a whole lot worse. I debated writing this because I know some people might find it offensive, but sometimes the truth is a hard reality. However, I chose to write it mainly as a reminder to myself (and to others) throughout the upcoming year...2012 could be a very challenging year in a lot of aspects, not just money, but other things too. We all have different situations that may occur this year....financial, school, parenting, health....whatever the situation may be I think we need to be more positive and less of a victim. Ive seen this quote around a lot lately and I find it to be eye opening..."What if you woke up tomorrow with only the things you thanked God for yesterday"....We could spend the whole day be thankful for what we have...maybe it is time to think more about what we have instead of what we dont have.

school update...

I am currently on a few nice long Christmas break (7 weeks!) The end of this past semester marks the 1/2 way point!!! I have two classes this spring and one in the summer. I start my dissertation process this summer and will go until spring of 2013. I have internship the fall and spring of 2012/2013 and I am complete! It has been a great process and I am proud to say I still have that 4.0! I am spending my break baking (www.kriskringlechristmascookies.blogspot.com), writing, and studying. I wrote a paper on Choice Theory for a supervision model that I will be turning into an article and submitting it to a journal when classes start back, so I have some work to do on it. I will be creating notes to start studying for my big exam this summer (3 days, 4 hours each day, 1 essay question a day). Before I know it classes will be starting again. Where does the time go?

Thanksgiving is more than just a day!

After several conversations this past year, Dave and I have come to the conclusion that happiness is based off of contentment. We both feel that we have so very much to be thankful for despite of all the "bad" things going on in the world around us. Being thankful has really been a blessing to us.....it allows us to be more appreciative of the things around us. We have our health, our home, work, school, friends, family, and the list goes on and on. So thank you to God and all those to have touched our life!

A True Honor....

In a few short weeks I will already be half way through my doctoral program! Where on earth has the time gone, oh wait its been spent reading and writing. So far the whole experience has been so much more rewarding than I ever thought. As I move forward in the program more and more wonderful experiences are happening. Last night being one of them...I was asked by the division chair and head of the doc program to be the first doctoral liaison by being a part of the doctoral committee. What this means is that I will meet with the doctoral staff on their monthly meetings. While there I will offer input from the student aspect and share any information that needs to be told to the students. It is such a true honor to me to be picked by my professors. I think this is going to be a GREAT experience.

Fall 2011 family pictures

Freaking out a little

I cannot believe how fast this whole year is going. Its September already!!! The next year is going to be so super crazy. The first year of school went by great, however the second year shows double the amount of work. Its time to start writing the big dissertation and studying for comps exam...comps is a three day test where you get 4 hours each day to answer a question. I'm thrilled its writing because I'd prefer to write than answer multiple choice questions. I am also excited to start writing my dissertation, but I think I need two clones to get it done. I told Dave the other day that I'm gonna need a vacation after my exam!

Family pictures at Lake Katherine- July 2011

where has the summer gone...

This has been such a fast summer for me. I blame school....the summer semester switched to being 11 weeks instead of 15, so that meant a lot of work in a little amount of time. School ended last week for me, but I only get 3 weeks off. James and I both start school back up on the 23rd of Aug....thats less than 2 weeks and I feel like we haven't enjoyed summer yet. We did manage to make it to the beach on a very hot day, so we spent most of it in the lake. I've only been able to swim a few times at my moms. We went to Great America a couple weeks ago and it was perfect. It had been raining so the park was dead. We only got drizzled on for a few min. The lines were about 15 min. We rode it all and did the water park. While there I managed to win my first prize and a large one too! I now own a life size bugs bunny because I broke 3 plates with my three balls! My favorate thing about the summer is that we bought some giant blow up rafts to "canoe" down the dupage river with. We've only gone once so far, but going again this weekend and labor day weekend. Our adventure lasted about 5 hours. We went from Joliet to Channahon. There was a lot of laughs along the way...me getting stuck, me falling out, our friends leaving the keys for the car in channahon in the car in joliet....since we like it we are hoping to get kayaks and do it more often. It appears that they are going to connect the bike paths behind our house and put a launch right behind us! That has really been it for the summer...but school is going well. I am now finished with the first year and still have a 4.0...its going so fast. Only 5 semesters left

Baseball

James' team finished 5-11 for the regular season and start playoffs this week. It was a tough season all around. Could have won a few more games (and I'll leave it at that)

James' 11th birthday party

The weather was perfect...not too cold, not too warm and it was sunny. We had a little over 50 people come. James had a few friends come over and he played for hours...basketball, in the jumper, and baseball...even glow in the dark baseball where they wore glow sticks, stuck glow sticks on the bases and filled the wiffle ball with them. His friends spent the night and were bragging how they were going to stay up all night. We told them they could but they couldnt keep us up too! they were all asleep within 1/2 hour and slept for almost 10 hours!!! They spent the next day playing too. Everything was perfect minus the fact that I dropped the cake!

Cosentino Family pictures

kalahair...wisconsin dells

We just got back from a weekend away in the dells. It was a very needed trip away. I've been working what feels like non stop between classes, the lab, teaching, the dermatologist, seeing clients, and maintaining the house and keeping up with James' baseball and social life. Dave has been working really hard on the basement, so we decided it would be nice to get away for a little while. We left fri morning and headed to Wizard Quest first. This was sooo much fun. Basically it is theme park with trap doors that you go around and try to free the 4 wizards. It is very neatly designed and hard to describe, so I'll just say I highly recommend it. We checked into the hotel and headed to our room to change b/c we wanted to go swimming. We walk into a giant room. (Take the bedroom part of our house away and that was about the size of the room) It was a large room with a king bed and its own bathroom. Another room was attached with a couch, 2 queen beds, its own full bath, a fireplace, and a private patio. I called down to the desk b/c this obviously wasnt the room I'd reserved. I was told that we were complimentary upgrade. It was a really nice surprise. We spent the rest of fri, sat and sun swimming and playing at the indoor theme park. We ventured out to another tourist place called top secret. It was the biggest waste of money. Im not even going to waste my time writting about it b/c it was the worst 25 min of my life. Overall we had a really great time. I thought I'd get more rest than I did, but oh well. I really love our family trips together.