Whoa. It's May.

[The Limited dress, necklace (last year), and earrings // Forever 21 belt // Target sandals (recent) and sunglasses]

Mother Nature decided to show off this week and give us some amazingly delicious weather. Like, 70s and low 80s. Yes, please! I think She is trying to apologize for that snow crap at the end of March and the flurries a couple weeks ago. Somehow the apology is easily accepted when I get to wear a maxi dress and no jacket and I'm still comfortable outdoors at 8 pm at night in shorts and a tee.... Even though it's supposed to storm here later today and tomorrow, I don't care, because the high is 75. That's allllll I need :)

Sorry I have been absent of late for those of you who read this. I've been overwhelming myself with thoughts of moving, wedding stuff, and finishing work and what the heck Nick and I are going to do with our lives after we get married. In the past, oh, probably month since I last wrote on here, we found out about Nick's financial aid, but it wasn't quite enough :( With no assistantships available, combined with Illinois apparently being too broke to supply grants to any graduate students (way to go, IL), we decided that it's just not worth it to go into crippling debt. We're pretty lucky to not have a whole lot of school loans to worry about, since Nick only had to take out a couple small ones and mine are miraculously paid off, and we'd like to keep it that way. It seems like they told him that he would get the assistantship if it were available, so he'll just try again next year.... and I will be applying places too! Woohoo!

And that brings me to next year. I know the next 2 months of our lives for sure. We go to Oregon (in a month!!!) and finish planning our wedding and then get married at the end of July. After that, I've got nothin'. I would love to just move to Chicago, but it seems like it would be a bit expensive with no job lined up for sure and him not being in school to go just for a year, only to possibly move somewhere else in the country the very next year. As I said, I am applying this time around and I am really leaning towards getting a double degree in performance AND vocal pedagogy, which leaves my school options a little more limited. We're talking anywhere from Colorado, to Ohio, to Pennsylvania, to North Carolina..... they're all over the place. If I were to get a great scholarship, we'd probably head wherever that led us. So, it's with allll of that in mind that we've pretty much decided just to move back to Oregon for the year. We haven't been able to see family a whole lot in the past few years, and if we have the chance to get to spend some time with ours, well, we figure we should take it. Because, as I said, we could be even further than Illinois the year after! I'm still keeping my options open because there could possibly be opportunities with The Limited in Chicago or St. Louis, but so far nothing is concrete with that and I wouldn't be able to go do that til after the wedding anyway, so we decided home base is a good idea for a bit. Plus, we miss Oregon soooo so much, and I kinda feel like we've been wanting an excuse lately to go back for a bit, so, here it is! But now apparently come the nightmares about moving, one of which I woke up to this morning, and I still feel anxious about what will happen after the wedding and what we'll do. Yes, we'll probably live with my parents temporarily, but we'll figure something out.

It's kinda funny, we feel so old and like we are just wasting time, but I've heard from many that feeling this way right about now is completely normal, and in a few years, we'll know a little better and wonder why we were so stressed out about this crap in our early 20s. And then we'll wish we were that age again....

So there ya have it, folks. We've got one month left in the Dirty D and we are Oregon-bound semi-permanently :) I'm not mad about it. In fact, I'm quite ecstatic at the thought. And thankfully, I have 3 different options for voice teachers in 3 different cities to keep my singing chops in shape, so I think I'll be good on that end ;) It's weird. For someone like me who is such a planner and a little OCD about it, there is something to be said about getting to fly by the seat of your pants, because you don't always get to do that, especially if kids are in the mix! So I should be grateful, and I will deal with the occasional panic attack for the next month or so. At least I know that I have Nick beside me everyday, even through the uncertainty and somehow that makes everything seem so much easier :)