It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Thanksgiving has come and gone, and it was delicious! Taylor and I went to my parents' house for turkey and all the trimmings (including that ice cream cake I told you about here!) I contributed by signature turkey pumpkin chili dish, which people actually ate! I couldn't have been happier.

Now that Thanksgiving is behind us, we can officially look forward to Christmas! My parents are loaning us their 7-ft. Christmas tree until we can purchase one on clearance after the holidays. (We also have a small 4-ft. pre-lit tree that Taylor's parents gave us last year.) It's our first Christmas as a married couple and our first Christmas as homeowners, so I wanted to celebrate in style. I could hardly wait to decorate the house upon arriving home last night!

Thelma was particularly fond of the decorations:

Each branch was color-coded, so we got to work on sorting and inserting the right branches into the right area of the tree:
Finally the tree was assembled, but we needed lights. My parents had given us two strands of multi-colored lights with the tree, but we were going for a silver and white theme this year, so they weren't going to work. Instead of calling it an evening and getting the lights later like a normal person, I threw on my jacket and dashed out to Wal-Mart at 9:30 p.m. in a torrential downpour to pick up some lights so we could finish the tree.

Before long we were back in business, and we had even managed to put up some ornaments:


You'll notice they aren't all silver or white (some were just too meaningful not to put on the tree!) but for the most part, we followed our theme. Last weekend we went to Crate & Barrel to get some special "Wessels' First Christmas" ornaments, and naturally they were the stars of the show:


Some of the ornaments were so pretty that we decided to share the love with our entryway mirror all season long:

And we would be remiss not to spread the sparkle to the other areas of the house. Here's a glimpse of the dining room table (as seen in the background of the above Christmas tree picture) complete with silver ball ornaments:


Even though I love our festive decorations, we aren't losing track of the real meaning behind the holiday. We have so much to be grateful for, including our warm house, complete with sparkling Christmas tree and blossoming traditions.

Happy birthday!

Today, November 23rd, is the 23rd anniversary of Taylor's birth. However, because Taylor worked overnight last night and spent most of the day sleeping (and because I worked in Oxford today to finish up the grant from last week and then had class this evening), we knew we weren't going to get to celebrate in the traditional way today.

Which is why we deemed this Birthday Week! We kicked it off on Sunday with a small party with Taylor's parents. I made my first double layer chocolate cake with peanut butter icing (Taylor's fave), and ended up with a huge mess on my hands. Literally. The cake collapsed in several spots around the edges and ended up looking like a mudslide before he had even blown out the candles (all 23 of them!)

Taylor opened presents from his parents (shop-vac, winter coat, clothes) and presents from me (electric shaver, Foo Fighters CD, and subscription to This Old House magazine) and before long, our living room was covered in wrapping paper and boxes.

The cats wasted no time in enjoying the house in this condition:

Louise hopped right in the box and made herself at home.

Thelma thoroughly enjoyed making the wrapping paper crunch under her feet.

But the birthday fun doesn't stop there. Tomorrow night we'll celebrate with my parents in Urbana with cupcakes and presents, and Thursday (Thanksgiving Day, of course), we'll celebrate with my extended family with, get this, a homemade ice cream cake. I know.

So Happy Birthday-week, Taylor! Hope it is as wonderful as ever.

General Grant

I'm back in the saddle as a grant-writer! A couple of days ago the Director of the Rape Crisis Program emailed me about my work for the week. Instead of data entry, she asked, would you be interested in helping us write a grant?

Ummm chya!

So the next day when I arrived in the office, I found the grant proposal guidelines, sample grant narratives from previous grants, and a note with instructions. I was all set--I hopped on a computer and got to work.

At first I spent most of my time sorting through previous grants and locating their electronic version on the computer. There were certain parts of each grant that would work beautifully in this one, so I was just in the compiling phase. Before long though, I had reached 7 pages--more than double the maximum length of the proposal. I trimmed it down, cringing every time I had to cut a solid statistic or a persuasive emotional appeal, but I still can't get it to less than 4 pages. I will be returning next week to tidy that up.

As much as I love this added responsibility of grant-writing, it's a terrifying job at the same time. Granted (ha!), this grant request is for less than $10,000 to a foundation I am very familiar with from my last spell of grant-writing during my VISTA days. But every dollar is crucial to the future of the program right now.

If you recall, the Butler County United Way recently cut all of their funding to the Rape Crisis Program and other mental health agencies, choosing to focus instead on job-training programs. As terrible as it is to lose a funding source, this loss packs a second punch. Without that funding, the Rape Crisis Program can't provide the necessary 25% cash match for their federal and state grants. Losing UW funding potentially equates to losing nearly all of your funding.

We can't count on Butler Co. UW to reinstate their financial support of our program in future years, so we have to figure out a more sustainable solution for future funding cycles so that we can hold on to our federal grants. At this moment, though, we're scrambling to make up the immediate loss with one-time emergency grants from other sources, like the area community foundations and benevolent groups.

So that's where we are. By helping to write the grant narrative for one of these potentially program-saving grants, now more than ever before I need to get this right! The grant is due next month, so we won't know for a while whether it was accepted, but I'll keep you posted.

And if you happen to know any wealthy donors looking for a worthwhile project in which to invest thousands of dollars, we've got just the program for you!

Kitty therapy

In all the 200+ blog posts I've written, I don't think I've mentioned much about two members of our family: Thelma and Louise.


Thelma is the white calico on the right, and Louise is the gray tabby on the left. We adopted them from a friend of ours who was moving to a new city and could not bring them along to his new apartment. He sent a message out to his friends to find a new home for his cats, and from the minute I saw their picture, I immediately loved them. By May 25, 2010, Thelma and Louise came to join us at our apartment in Fairfield for a few days until we moved into our house on the 29th.

It didn't take long for them to settle right in. Both cats are 15 years old and came from the same litter. Louise has a few health problems, but overall both cats are happy and full of mischief. They are amazed by the refrigerator:


And the kitchen table and the food that magically appears there:


And the cozy warm floor vents. This may be one of the reasons our heating bill is so high--Thelma blocks all the warm air from entering any of the rooms!


After long, busy days away from the house, we look forward to coming home to cuddle with our kitties. They seem to have powerful calming powers--no matter what has happened that day, petting our kitties always makes me feel a little better. Call it kitty therapy, but it works! We love our cats like members of our family and I couldn't imagine our lives without them.

Under pressure

Every once in a while, you hit a week or two of life that is just...hectic. You know what I'm talking about--the times when it seems like everything is happening at once and you're unsure how you're making it day to day, moment to moment.

Well, I'm experiencing one of those times right now. And I don't anticipate it ending until, oh, December 7th.

Yep--graduate school is intensifying as we approach the last two weeks of the quarter. As cliche as it sounds, it really is amazing to think how fast this quarter has gone. But before I can celebrate the end of my first quarter of graduate school, I've got to get through final exams, final projects, group presentations, and final papers galore. I won't list everything that is due in the next two weeks--I'm not sure even I could handle that right now--but know that it's a lot.

Actually, I should clarify. It isn't so much the amount of work due that is overwhelming. In fact, each assignment is pretty manageable on its own, and with a little time management magic, I should have no problem completing everything. What's overwhelming is the pressure I put on myself to excel.

For those of you who have known me through grade school and college, this isn't a shock. I was Valedictorian of my high school class, and I graduated summa cum laude with my undergraduate degree. I've always been a bit of a perfectionist, and grades have always been "my thing." I pushed myself in high school to get top grades to get into college, and I pushed myself in my undergrad to get top grades to get into graduate school.

So why am I pushing myself now? After all, as long as I maintain a B average, I can keep my financial aid and I'll graduate with my MSW degree. I can coast through the program and I'll be a social worker like any of my peers.

But I just can't do that. I can't bring myself to cut corners and take shortcuts because I really want to know this stuff. I want to learn it and internalize it so that I can be a knowledgeable, well-rounded professional. I figure if I am putting this much time and money and energy into this right now, then I should probably have something to show for it more than just a piece of paper at the end. Lastly, and perhaps the most self-centered reason of all, I don't want to look bad! I genuinely want to earn the respect of my professors and peers as I progress through the program; I don't want to be known as a "slacker" student right out of the gate!

So I'm setting the bar for myself this quarter, and I'm setting it high, even by my own standards. And as a result, I can expect more than a few late nights over the next couple of weeks (okay, let's face it, years) while I work toward this degree. What I need to keep in mind, though, when I am feeling like this--aka overwhelmed--is that I am doing my best and that's all I can ask of myself.

That, and, it'll all be over in a few weeks. No matter what happens, it'll all be over on December 7th and THEN I can relax!