New Season, New Semester, New Classes

Mary Ellen has started the Fall semester at BYU and she continues to love it. She is taking another Watercolor class, a Figure Drawing Illustration class, another Art History class, and a Marriage class. She also has a mandatory Art Seminar that I usually attend with her. Her marriage class is taught by an ex- State College -ite, Kent Brooks, who was a former institute director there mucho years ago. It is a VERY popular class, with people sitting on the floor most days. It is also one of the few classes that I can help Mary Ellen with, as the others are "Art" classes, and my abilities in Art are usually surpassed by my 4 year old granddaughters and grandson.

It is quite exciting to be at campus. Mary Ellen loves the classes, the students, and especially the learning. She is still doing really well - all A's and B's (mostly A's). She even got an A in her technology class this summer. It turns out that the instructor was Eric & Sarah's home teacher.

The weather in Utah this summer has been cool for the most part. Cool is a relative term. We have spent most of July and August in the 90s. But usually we have a few weeks of 100s (I think normal is 15 days or so - last summer was 43 days). This year we have had one or two. But September hasn't cooled off much, with 90s until last week and 80s forecast for the next week. Very dry though with hardly any rain for the last three months. Needless to stay, no snow yet.

Our usual routine is school Monday thru Thursday. Friday is "my" day. Mary Ellen and I spend it doing things together and getting away from the normal routine. Last week we went art supply shopping in Salt Lake, bought a couple of chairs and a table for the bedroom we are working on (see below), bought a Sunday dress for Mary Ellen, and had a wonderful dinner of unlimited shrimp at Red Lobster. On Saturday, Mary Ellen generally spends the entire day working on homework, with a little housework thrown in. Sunday is the Lord's day, along with seeing family. We went to Eric & Sarah's Primary program last week, and then saw Rachel & kids and met with Neil & LeAnn when we got home with a brief visit from Josh. Fun but tiring.

We have been redoing one of the upstairs bedrooms. It had an "orange" accent wall and was decorated with "Halloween" colors (my opinion, not necessarily shared by others). We changed the accent wall to light blue. Also changed the bedding and some of the pieces in the room. We are still working on the wall decorations. I think I have a "before" picture somewhere and will post the before and after when we are about done with this.

The hardest part of the routine is that Mary Ellen has 8am classes every day. I am NOT a morning person. I really like to stay up until past 11pm, but that will have to be limited to weekends for the next few months. Maybe in the winter she won't start classes until 10?? :}