Not a hoax

You know those letters you get in the mail (or...by email) that say something like:

Congratulations, you've just won the UK lottery! To claim your 1 million dollar prize, please send us your credit card number, social security number, mother's maiden name, and any other private information you'd like to divulge.

When I get those type of things I'm always like, "But wait, I didn't even enter the US lottery, let alone the UK lottery...somethings fishy."

I'm happy to say that I have yet to fall for one of those...and it does make me wary when we get announcements like this, but when they come from BYU on official BYU letterhead in an official BYU envelope with all the same lovely form letter they send out every year, well, we're falling for this one.

Today Andrew got a letter from BYU in the mail announcing his scholarship. He has a 3.94, or something ridiculous like that, so we were pretty confident that he would get another scholarship, but with all the trouble we had earlier this year about him already having over 200 credits and BYU taking away all of our financial aid and us having to petition to get it back, well, I found myself a little nervous.

Or it could be that I'm emotional about everything right now, so why not this, too?

He got this silly grin on his face when he opened the letter--you know, the "I have something really cool to tell you but I'm trying to act like it isn't very cool because I want you to be surprised" face.

"How much is tuition?" he asked, coyly.

"One thousand something," I said.

"Yeah, but how much?" he asked. For being so smart, he sure does turn to me a lot for all his reference questions.

"I don't know," I said. I've graduated. I don't have to pay tuition.

Andrew looked it up himself. (It's $1920.)

He then read part of his letter, "We are pleased to offer you the Karl G. Maeser Scholarship for the amount of $2300!"

Then he told me that tuition was only $1920, which was wonderful news. The scholarship, I mean, not the tuition.

We looked up the scholarship, having never heard of it before. There isn't a lot of current information on it, unfortunately, but it really does exist, which means that we've just been blessed with an additional $800 for the year!

Truthfully, I've been really worried about quitting my job. There's something powerful and reassuring about earning money, and I've been reluctant to give that up. It's not that I don't trust that Andrew can provide for me and our baby, it's just that the math doesn't quite add up for me all the time.

Recently though, good things have been happening to let me know that staying home with the baby is the right thing: like the fact that I'm going crazy at work and that Andrew keeps finding more ways to get "free" money--like scholarships and grants.

I think we'll be able to survive, after all!