Spring is here.

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood -- 70 degrees and sunny. The tulips and daffodils are finally making an appearance. I see bits of green tentatatively poking out from the buds on the trees outside my office window. Ahh, spring in Chicago. It takes a while, but once it's here it's a glorious payoff after all of our months of suffering. Later, I will go running by the lakefront.

It was a difficult winter, but now things are looking up in more ways than one. We surprisingly had enough money to pay our taxes. With both David and I being self-employed, Uncle Sam gouges us. And since it took a little longer than expected for my freelance business to get up and running, we weren't saving enough money. But thankfully, I've been working a lot since January and we didn't owe as much as we thought, so on Tuesday we sent off a check to the IRS. Feels good.

Plus, my very smart husband was accepted into three schools: Northwestern, Loyola, and Case Western to earn a degree in counseling/psychology. At first he thought Case Western was his first choice -- which would mean we'd have to move to Cleveland. I wasn't too excited about that. But after talking with the folks at Northwestern, he decided that the NW program was a better fit. Sigh of relief -- it's only a few miles from where we live. BUT, it was the most expensive of the three, and didn't offer any scholarships! How would we pay for it?! I kept looking on their website for any loophole...."are you sure they don't offer any scholarships?" I kept asking David. "ARe you sure you don't want to go to Loyola" (which is much cheaper). "Are you sure Case Western wouldn't be better?" (they offer lots of money). "No," David kept saying. "I really want to go to Northwestern." Sigh. "Okay, if you feel this way then I think you should do it." Leap of faith (with lots of moments of anxiety, I have to admit).

So we figured out our finances, and decided that if he could go to school part-time, keep working to try to pay for tuition, maybe, just maybe, we could swing it. But that would mean it would take him three years to finish instead of two. More anxiety. More sleepless nights.

Then, last week, out of the blue, David got a call from the director of the NW program. "How much money do you need to go fulltime?" she asked. David and I talked about it. If we could get money for half of the tuition, he could go fulltime, work on weekends to help pay for the rest. We thought it could work. "Let me see what I can do" she said. The next day she called and offered David a scholarship to pay for half of the tuition! Yay!! This is amazing -- since NW doesn't offer scholarships to Master's students -- only PhDs. It's an answer to prayer, and confirmation that he's headed in the right direction.

I love when God does that...