One more to go

A few days ago, Ham and I made the trek over to my school so that I could fill out papers for graduation. Basically, I just needed to sign a few papers to say I had one class left and I was eligible to student teach in the fall. After all of that I could put the old cap and gown on and walk across the stage like I've done twice before.

I never thought that hearing the words graduate and signing a paper would sound so great to me, but it did. This whole process has been anything but an easy one.
Ham should know, he has been right there with me the whole time.

He was in my belly when I sat on the tiny children's chairs while I observed an elementary school the day I went into labor and he was rocking in my mom's arms the week we got home from the hospital when I wrote a fifteen page midterm.

He was in my arms at 2am, at 4am, and at 6am while I fed him, with my Transitions and Students w/Learning Disabilities book propped behind his head and he was cooing in the boppy next to me as I typed up my reflections to articles on children's literacy.

He was learning how to crawl, to stand and to sit back down while I poured all of my energy into a math class from hell and he was crying it out while I sat in his room reading my teaching mathematics text with ear plugs on.

He patiently listened to articles about eduation and paper after paper on theories, methods and best practices. He had little choice in the matter, but he was a good sport about it.

And here we were signing the papers to say just one more round, just one more class.

Yes it was anything but easy, but it was worth it. We made it and survived.

But we would never have made it this far without a husband and a dad who  sacrificed so much to make it a million times easier for us, a family who has pulled through and helped out in every way that they could and God for putting the idea in my head and making it possible by sending the right people along at the just the right time.