Final Final Exam

EXCITING NEWS: Tonight Wesley requested his FINAL final Exam!

He finished Health on Wednesday in less than 10 hours. He was able to breeze through astronomy. And his last one today was Financial Literacy. I helped him a little bit today by sending him meal cost estimates, which he used to go back in time over what he's eaten these past 2 weeks and create a meal plan budget for those. "Mom, I need how much you think a serving of each of these meals would cost: 

1. roast and potatoes
2. orange chicken, rice and broccoli
3. rice, beans, biscuits and potatoes
4. nachos
5. spaghetti and meatballs
6. rice and beans and chicken"

When I went over there to pick up Corey for date night (we went to Aubergine in Sugarhouse) I helped Wes a little more while Corey finished up some tasks. Wes was still plugging away in his finances class yet in such a good mood - the end is near!

Over the course of these past few months, he has become less of a perfectionist, which is good. That was a necessary step of development for him in order for it to be possible to complete everything he had to do. He's become quite proficient at it now. Tonight he was kinda rambling on about whatever he could to answer and check off each assignment. His teachers were ok with that and know about his situation - how he wasn't making a budget for going forward for the next two weeks or getting quotes that would help him any time soon (cause of the mission) and they let him cause he needed to finish this class this week cause he starts the MTC on the 22nd! They were all cool with it, followed with a "Let's get you on your mission!" He was on track to get an A in the financial lit class, but then had this last one assignment on car insurance. He was kinda stuck so I tried to help him, and now I'm going to be getting lots of emails cause in our google searches I gave my email address out to Geico, Liberty, Progressive, Allstate, etc... ugh. He was supposed to compare a few different quotes. He asked me what we do, and I said we just give any car questions to our agent via email. Wes said that sounded good, and then finished his almost last homework assignment with this for his answer:

"My mom tried to help me but I was too young to get an actual quote. My grandpa also tried to help me, & I've spent 40 minutes on this and I made 0 progress, please just give me a zero and let me be done. I'll just get our agent to figure out all this stuff when I'm older because it makes absolutely ZERO SENSE!!" 

Learning how to BS, good job Wes. 10 questions on budgeting and here is his paragraph:

"Budgeting isn't completely new to me, although I had never known how to do it properly, or the best ways to budget. I have made a budget before to try and save up for toys when I was younger, although without any income outside from birthday cash from my grandma, spending was limited. Having money as a kid, I often blew it on candy pretty quickly. I've noticed that budgeting gets easier the more you understand it. If truly know the consequences of your spending habits, it's a lot easier to practice the diligence required. When I would track the expenses of my scenario, even though I did not live it, I was able to see how easy it is to overspend. When I overspent, I would use money from my next payment and put it towards my debt payments..." The only debt payments Wes has ever had are to us. 

So yeah, he's taking his final test tomorrow morning for Financial Literacy and then he is DONE! I am amazed. I didn't think he'd be able to do it! But he's done and with a week to spare, like he had planned. Now we've got a week to finish getting ready for his mission and also let him have some down time to enjoy family for the next week. The weather forecast looks snowy this upcoming weekend - 40% snow for Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and so Corey's arranged for us to go skiing at Brianhead. We're  staying at his friend Jeff's cabin. We'll leave Sunday after church. I'll be a little nervous about driving if it is snowing. Fingers crossed that if it does snow, that it's not bad or that I don't end up going! 

Few other pics of the day - K teaching her brothers how to dance! This is Katharine's move when she hears "Cotton Eye Joe" come on. It's really cute. 

Also around 4 today, I came into our room and found Katharine looking like this...

With this note on our bathroom door from Natalie.

"Katharine is watching baby einstein and I am taking a bath." I thought it was funny that she got K dressed up like a strawberry. Just one of those fun things that kids do. 

I got book "Minimalist Home" by Joshua Becker from library today (good job me getting it from the library - the library can help me in my effort to stop buying every book I want to read). I'm hoping this book will teach me something that will help me in my cleaning and home organization efforts this year. I finished a book last week, Elder Oaks' book "Life's Lessons Learned - Personal Reflections" It was good. Bought it December 18th, finished it Jan 2. I took pictures of the 4 pages that made up chapter 34 (on page 139) titled "Death of a Spouse" and sent it to Wayne and Lisa. I hope it helped them as they continue to seek comfort.