My good friend and inspiration Dawne saw fit to give me the Lovely Blog award and I appreciate her for it. As part of the rules, I have to list 7 things about me so here goes.

1. I am one of the most blessed people I know ever. It wasn't always that way, I was having a hard time in life. It seems like once I learned to appreciate the small blessings, like when I finally was able to go to first shift at my old job, the bigger blessings started coming, like meeting my beautiful wife of almost 4 years and getting a really wonderful step daughter in the process.

2. I am the eternal optimist. Again, wasn't always, but I am now. I never see a hopeless situation. Even though I am not supposed to work during my first year of law school, and it does scare me, I just have faith that God will work his blessings out to cover us. It may not be all steak and ice cream living for that year, but we won't be losing anything either. In fact, once I am done with all this business, I will appreciate the financial gain even more than those who had no trouble cause their parents paid for it.

3. I have a rocky relationship with my Mom and it has often been a source of stress. I am not sure what she is mad at me for now. It is allegedly because I chose not to use my dad's truck to go to Texas and get my wife's china cabinet from her grandma that her dad had given us. I have to wonder if our real problem isn't that my mom didn't have much of a childhood and so when I came to live with her when I was 11 she kinda launched her lost childhood around that time and became a drinking carousing and irresponsible fool. Now that I am about her age when she started all that, and I am actually moving ahead in a positive direction, I think it frustrates her to know what might have been. She had the potential to do all that I am doing, but life just got complicated for her is all.

4. I am so addicted to jogging it isn't funny! And I owe that to Dawne. She put that in me with her posts. I was longing to start but was convinced my ankles and knees would have nothing to do with that. Turns out, when you weight 103 pounds less, the ankles and knees do not protest as much!

5. I think this blog may have saved my life. I was huge. I was looking at a picture of me at Silver Dollar City during the 2010 summer, right before I decided to get the weigh off. I can't believe I was that big. there is no chance I made it for very much longer at that size. I may have mad it to the 60's but that would be amazing.

6. I never knew you could love someone as much as I love my wife. I swear if I hadn't met her, all this craziness I am putting myself through probably wouldn't have happened. I get a little overwhelmed sometimes and I always fall back on the fact I am not doing this so much for me, but for her and Lauren. I want them to have the lives they deserve. I want Lauren to be able to go to college straight out of high school and achieve early in life what it has taken me till so late in life because my resources were limited. I am literally the first person in my family to go this far in school and I had no knowledge of the resources or even the procedure to go to college. Now I have knowledge of both and I can pass that on so that my family can break the cycle of non education.

7. Law school is prolly going to be my last level of education, but I am seriously considering a Masters. I told Kathy that and got the dirty look, so it may have to be back burnered until I actually finish law school before I bring it up again.

so there I am . I will have to think about who I am going to pass it on too. I need to get up and get ready for my race, so I will catch ya'll later!