The Beginning of the End

Today is a very big day for us. One that I want to be sure and document in "real time." (as opposed to my usual "blog time")

Tonight Matt heads off to his last face to face class! He has one more class to take online this summer -- and an easy one at that. But, it's the face to face classes that have been much harder and much more of a strain on all of us. It's meant that at least one night a week for the past 4 years he's been gone until well past when the kids are in bed. Those have been the toughest nights and I'm so thankful that this is the end!

It really feels like we are finally reaching the end of this journey. The Ph.D is now just months away -- not years. :) When we started this journey, 55 hours of coursework seemed like it would never end, but now Matt is just 3 little hours from finishing it all up! That's 52 hours down, 3 to go. Then all that's left is that little thing called a dissertation. Ha! I really think that will be the easiest part of all of this because Matt can work on his own schedule. After 2 years of a Master's program & 4 years of Ph.D school, he has pretty good time management skills. Hehe! And, it should go by pretty quickly.

He's already picked out a topic. Yay! That's a huge step. And, he has Comps scheduled for end of July-end of August (it's a 30 day time frame). So, that will be tough, but only for a month. That's nothing after 4 years of tough.

It's exciting to think that in just 12 months this whole thing will be over! We are certainly going to be celebrating then! I'm still not sure what the future holds for us. We'd love to stay in NWA, but some pretty big doors have to open for that to happy. Whether that will happen or not remains to be seen, but it is something we are praying about constantly. And, I know and am thankful that we serve a big God, one that can open those big doors.

But, for tonight, I'm just happy. So so happy that we've made it this far. And, we are stronger than we were when we started -- thanks to our families, friends, an amazing church family, and our God that has been with us each step of the way.