12 Days of Christmas Music: Day 11

Day 11: From Heinrich Biber's Mystery Sonatas for violin: Number I--"The Annunciation."

12 Days of Christmas Music: Day 12

I love Christmas music and classical music--fortunately, they often cross paths. There are wonderful pieces everyone associates with Christmas like Handel's incredible Messiah (of which only the first third is really about Christmas) and Tchaikovsky's delightful The Nutcracker (which has almost nothing to do with Christmas and was also the source of my childhood nightmares). Nothing against these--I especially love Messiah--but I wanted to share some other findings that may aid you in your quest to make sure Christmas doesn't get canceled.
So to kick it off on Day 12--Bach's jubilant Christmas Oratorio!




If you like this music, Bach also wrote lots of other Christmas cantatas (including numbers 1, 40, 63, 65, 110, 121, 191, and the joyous Magnificat).

Back to the Books

As many of you know, I graduated from Brigham Young University last year with my Bachelors of Science in Social Work. I've always wanted to get my masters, and I think it's time.

Luckily, if you have a BSW (Bachelors of Social Work), you can apply for a one year Masters of Social Work program and it's called the Advanced Standing Program! The undergraduate course work is viewed as the equivalent of the first year of the Masters Program, and the 33 credits of the BSW program are transferred into the MSW transcript.

So... I have been doing lots of research about different Advanced Standing programs here on the east coast. My list included...

Virginia Commonwealth University Fordham University George Mason University

Columbia University New York University Howard University

Brigham Young University University of South Carolina

Some of the factors of greatest concern for me (us) were COST, cost, cost of tuition, cost of living, cost of credits, Location, family, and the actual quality of the social work program... and how likely I would be to actually get in.

So for the purposes of limiting my application fee budget, I narrowed my list down to 3 schools! Which are... drum roll...

• University of South Carolina Columbia, SC
  
• Howard University Washington, DC
  
• Fordham University NYC

My senior year of high school I swore that I would move out of South Carolina and never come back. Who knew in just 6 years, I'd be deeply interested in the idea of renting the house next door to my parents!! Apparently it's for rent to own right now for only $900/mnth!

I'm thinking of opening the back door and saying, "'Liza! Can you find Oma? Where's Oma?" and letting her run free next door! Beautiful, right? Obviously, a grad school program will be intense, so it would be huge to have my family's support and extra baby-sitting options!USC also has a really good social work program. The recruiter told me that many BYU students like the diversity that USC offers them in comparison to UT. I thought that was funny. Their curriculum is a little bit more Research/Analytical heavy, but I think I should be able to take 3 waiver test to at least get out of a couple of them.
Fordham University is a really great social work school in NYC, and I would actually be going to class in Lincoln Center! So cool! Steve and I LOVE NYC and have always wanted to move back there someday. The cost of living is high, BUT there are great illustration opportunities for Steve (unlike SC). But luckily, with Steve's job, he could work from home doing basically the same thing he does now as a freelancer for his same company. I LOVE Fordham's curriculum and would also LOVE my field clinicals too working back in Harlem or the Bronx again.
Howard University is the most expensive but probably the best school on my list. The Meldau family ultimate plan is for us all to end up living somewhat close to eachother, so we've tentatively decided on Washington, DC. It has great illustration opportunities even though it's expensive, but it's also a little more family friendly than NYC.

So I thought I'd get things started off right, and instead of working on my personal statements and applications, I decided to procrastinate and write a blog post instead!

I think I already know what most people's opinions would be on which school they think I should go to... BUT just for fun, what would your vote be?

And anyone feel like being a generous, altruistic benefactor and sponsoring my grad school education??? Yeah, these are the days one wishes for a fairy godmother.

Eliza met Santa

Last night at Steve's work party for the kids, Santa made an appearance.

Eliza wasn't too interested in sitting in his lap.But she did love the part where she got a new book and some brownies.
(Oh, and we bought Eliza's dress last year after Christmas at Target for $3! Sweet! So now I don't really care that much that there are brownie remnants smeared on the front.) Oh, and much to the dismay of the present Nazi (steve's co-worker), Eliza managed to steal some other kids presents too out of santa's little sleigh. I thought Eliza and the Nazi were gonna have an all out brawl- hehe. Go 'Liza!

They also had a Christmas music Dance-off while waiting for Santa. I think Eliza won hands down. She's got made skills, yo. All thanks to yours truly- what. what.

First Hair Cut!

No, not Eliza's! She's still au naturale!!

(This is Eliza's favorite winter hat. She picked it out herself at Wal-mart a few weeks back, and we think it's HILARIOUS!! Can you imagine this cutey running around the neighborhood in this? It's awesome.)

Steve's the freshly cut victim!


Steve being the frugal guy he is, has for a while been asking me to try to cut his hair for him. Why would anyone entrust their hair to me? I DON'T KNOW....!


But today we picked out a 10 dollar electric clipper with 4 different sized trimmers at Marshall's,
And we used our Elmo video time to do this:

Before:

Then halfway there...

It was actually a lot easier than I thought it'd be. But you can be the judge of that:

After:

I think Steve looks great! I've always been very picky about Steve's haircuts and have tried to bring the hair stylists pictures and give them detailed descriptions, recommendations on clipper #'s to use but with only varying success and satisfaction with the end result. I always want it shorter than they do it too.

So this was my chance, and I like it! Steve's hair grows sooo fast, so I hope this will buy us some more time.

Steve likes it too- seriously, he said that! and not under any threats of injury either! ;) I was worried that he was going to look in the mirror and be like, "What'd you do with my hair?!"

But Steve's just most excited that this haircut was like $10 cheaper than a hair cuttery one, AND it'll keep saving us money over and over. Gotta remember the bottom line.