Counting my blessings...

At a time when I'm feeling incredibly down, I feel it important to share something positive... (and yes, I realize I've done this a lot lately, but I've been kind of overwhelmed and down lately)

- Jake's 4th Birthday was Sunday. We had a small family get together at our house. Jake had a wonderful time seeing all the family and especially playing with Emory and all his new toys. Favorite line of the day, "Aww, more clothes?!" He was hilarious and having his birthday party on a day when I got horrible news definitely made the day more manageable.





- My friend and colleague Brandi got me a movie to show my classes for the rest of the week. I need a break and I'm letting the kids have one too. I'm grateful that she was able to help me out today with this.

- My dear friends and my wonderful family have been so supportive during this time. This is a huge loss for all of us and I have needed the support to get through this.

- Even my students today were super awesome and helpful. I know that they're excited about the aforementioned movie but I also know that they are sad to see me not like myself. I know I'll snap out of it and get back to being the teacher they know and love, but right now I'm just overwhelmed and luckily they understand that.

RIP Tasha.

I found out this morning that my friend Tasha has passed away. My heart is broken. I haven't told Ellie yet, but when I do, I know it'll be bad. She was an amazing woman. She was a great teacher. She was just awesome. I was so thankful to get to know her.



She fought for over a year to beat cancer and had such an amazing attitude towards it the whole time. I only hope that if I were faced with the same things that I would have as much poise and grace as she did. She truthfully has inspired me in so many ways.

Rest in Peace, my dear friend, I hope I can someday be half the person you are.

If I could behave like my 7 year old and get away with it...

I would. I would eat whatever I wanted and then cry and complain when I couldn't have what I wanted. I would throw fits about not getting to do what I wanted to do. I would scream constantly about how unfair life is.

What's bad, is that this week I wish I could've acted like that...

The good news is that I have survived the week, now comes the unknown and the unknown is what I fear most. My friend, Ellie's former teacher, is not doing well. My heart is broken for her family and her other friends. Ellie isn't handling it well at all.

In trying to be a good parent, I've been talking to her about it and trying to get her to talk about her feelings. I got a book recommended to me by another friend (Thanks, Noelle!) called Heaven is Real for Kids. It's a beautiful book and I do think it brought some comfort to Ellie. She's read it a couple times now and since it is AR test worthy, I'm going to have her test on it. I also bought a card for my friend and Ellie has said that she wants to draw her a picture and write her something. I would like to get this done and in the mail today.

I think what's been really hard for me is that since Tasha has been in the hospital I've felt that she needed to be working on resting/healing/getting better/focusing on treatment, etc. I felt that people who were visiting her should be family and her close friends. I regret that I didn't ask to go see her, but at the time I was worried about those aforementioned items and also working with students I was worried about exposing her to illness. I hate to think that I have missed my chance to see her especially because now really is about family. I'm hoping/praying that I'll be able to see her this weekend. I'm still praying so much for her but I'm praying for her other friends and family too.

It's amazing how dealing with stress/anger/grief/most of the "sad" emotions can make you want to just forget how we're supposed to behave. I am absolutely at the point of stomping my feet, screaming and throwing a fit. I could scream, "Life isn't fair!" And the adult comes back into my head saying, "You're right it isn't." and I take a deep breath, wipe away my tears, and try to focus on the positive. So again, I'm ending this post with things that are positive.

1. My laundry is all put away (well everything that is clean).
2. We're going to the hockey game tonight.
3. We have tickets for the Comets soccer game next Friday.
4. Jake's birthday party. How is it possible that my baby boy turns 4 on Sunday?! That's a whole other post!
5. Hearing my kids play nicely and laugh while waiting a ridiculously long time to pick up the tickets mentioned in #3.
6. My amazing friends who have been my shoulder to cry on during all of this. They have let me cry, scream, rant and rave and during all of it they are understanding and supportive and honestly they're doing the same thing.

I know there are more, but I'm going to stop there. I have dishes to do and a house to clean up for a little guy's birthday party.

Things I'm grateful for this week...

So it's been another long and hard week here. I honestly think I'm just really tired and am desperately in need of a break from school. Because of how down I'm feeling, I'm going to talk about things I'm thankful for this week. I want to be more positive versus constantly focusing on the negative.

1. My family. While I feel like I really haven't had a lot of time with my husband this week, our kiddos have been SO well behaved. I'm so grateful that we've had a lot more praise than punishment here.

2. The weekend is coming. I'm looking forward to a couple days off school with my family, James included. I'm looking forward to watching movies and eating yummy food and cleaning the house.

3. waffles for dinner. Yep, it's night breakfast time at our house - why? Because I don't have the energy to make anything else and everyone will eat it.

4. being part-time. I love being part-time and being able to leave when I'm done teaching. I can come home and just veg, sleep, plan, whatever I need to do. sometimes I need to get housework done but at least I'm able to do that while kids are at school and are having fun elsewhere.

5. Jake's daycare and Ellie's school. They both go to great schools where I know they are safe. Even with all the little crap that I'm not thrilled about with Ellie's school, I know that most of the time things are positive and she loves it there.

Even just writing those 5 things has put a smile on my face. Now I can go pick up kids and have a nice quiet evening, with waffles for dinner.

Hard week

This week has been incredibly hard for me. I'm not entirely sure why but I have a couple ideas.

1. Ellie's 1st grade teacher, who is also my friend, is battling lung cancer and we found out this week that she had to go back into the hospital. I love her dearly and I'm praying for her for healing and I am asking all of you to do the same. She's an amazing woman and she's fighting so hard. (Please God, send your healing to Tasha, please guide the doctor's hands to help her heal. Amen.) I'm so worried about her.

2. Evaluation time at school. I should be used to this by now, but I'm not. It makes me incredibly nervous because I want to do a good job for these students and I want other people to see that I'm doing a good job. My one meeting went very well today and I have another one next Friday. I know more than likely it'll be ok, but I'm overwhelmed with it all.

3. I've been worried about my kids getting sick. Ellie has felt off all week and of course that puts me on edge. So many kiddos are sick right now and of course they're both in germ factories all day long. I just hope that teaching them to wash their hands a lot and to eat healthy foods will help keep them from getting sick as much.

4. Even though my students really have been good this week, it's been stressful. I'm behind my friend at the other high school and I need to get caught up. I'm feeling overwhelmed with making sure they know what they need to. I do feel good though that my level 1 students wrote paragraphs about people, my level 2 students wrote really good stories about their friends having to do chores, and my level 3 and 4 students are working super hard. I feel like whatever I'm doing in the classroom is obviously working, so that's positive, it was just a hard classroom week for me and I don't know why. I think I can see all the stuff that I need to get done and it's not getting done. Period. I have this HUGE pile of stuff to do and it's not getting any smaller.

5. There's been some other school related stuff that I've not been really happy about, I'm not going to specify - if you really want to know - email me. I think it'll be ok, but I'm waiting to hear what happened today during a meeting.

All in all - I'm glad it's Thursday. I'm glad that tomorrow is Friday and 3 of my hours are taking quizzes. I'm not looking forward to grading all of them, but that's the life of a teacher.

I look back at the week - trying to positive, like I normally am - and see the things that made me happy.

1. Going to Zumba on Monday.
2. Taking Ellie to dance and getting to chat with my friends while she's at dance.
3. Ellie had a great p/t conference at her gifted program.
4. I made the kids "mock-donald's" for dinner (thanks Inga for the idea!) and they were playing with the apple slices and making mustaches, beards and unibrows with them - totally cracked me up.
5. My husband and just how awesome he is. And the fact that he has done a ton of dishes this week and started laundry this morning.
6. New babies!
7. Going out to dinner for James's brother's birthday tomorrow.

There's a lot to be happy about and that is positive this week. I need to focus on that and maybe I can get out of this funk. Plus it's almost the weekend!! Yay!

The Winter That Isn't...

So everyone who lives in the mid-west knows that we haven't had much of a winter. Honestly part of me is really glad for this because I really want to get out of school on time - May 18th sounds like a lovely day for school to get out. Plus Bobbi is due on May 28th (with a girl!!) and I'd love to be able to be at the hospital with her during that time.

Anyway, as a teacher, I do find that I get burnt out this time of year much faster than I do at the beginning. I feel like the monotony of getting through each week and dealing with the same stupid complaints from the students gets to me faster. I'm worn out and I need a break. I'd love a snow day - just one or 2, nothing ridiculous like a week or 10 days. Just 1. Although I don't want to come back after my birthday (May 21st, if you're wondering. I like sparkly things.) Even my kids are feeling it. Ellie and Jake both have asked to stay home on multiple occasions and have been asking when they'll be able to sled again. All I can say is that I don't know.

I really feel like I've become this crazy person monitoring the forecasts and reading weather blogs to see if there's even a small chance of snow for the kids, for myself, for 1 stinking snow day.

All that being said, I almost feel like I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. We've had a couple of minor snow events, and it's been so nice, I just keep thinking it can't stay this way. Eventually we are going to be hit by a major snow storm that will have us out of school for a week and that'll just really suck in May when we're all OVERLY done. We'll see what ends up happening. I'm going to continue to be crazy and watch forecasts and stuff. Maybe my diligence in buying my children winter boots and new yak trax things for my shoes will keep the crazy winter weather away.

Also to update everyone since it's been a while since I've posted...

Work is going well - My students are awesome, great kids in fact and I'm grateful for the opportunity to be in the classroom again. It really is what I'm meant to do. I need to remember that when I'm feeling down about things and hating getting up so early.

Obviously, My sister is pregnant with her 1st child. We're all super excited about the surprise and even more ecstatic that it's a girl!!

Jake and Ellie are both excelling in school. Jake is learning to write his name and the letters and numbers. Ellie is really amazing me at all she's learning. She loves school and we have been so incredibly lucky having another wonderful teacher this year for her. We've added IMPACT (the gifted program) to her schedule this year and she's enjoying that a lot too. She loves the challenge that they present to her and it's really encouraging her to think harder and explain why she got to that conclusion.

Ellie is in her 3rd year of girl scouts. We've been selling girl scout cookies like crazy and we have reached our sales goal and Ellie is super excited about it.

And so far, we've survived...

I was looking at my last post and thinking about how far I've come since then. We did survive Jury Duty. It was actually a very easy process this time. They called one panel and immediately took them away, then called the probate panel and then told the rest of us that we were free to go - that was at like 11 AM.

So, because I got done early and James had taken several days off work, I called him and told him we were done and he left Paradise Park where he had taken the kiddos and we came home and packed up and left for a mini-emergency-vacation to St. Louis. In the span of about 2 hours, I found us an inexpensive hotel, a Groupon for the Magic House (the children's museum), found someone to feed the dog and got us all packed up. We were on the road by 2 and headed towards St. Louis. The kids were excited because we haven't really done the vacation thing since we went to Omaha when Jake was one. The kids watched movies on the iPad and I read books and magazines and used my iPhone for directions and stuff while James was driving. We stayed at a hotel that had a pool and free breakfast, so the first evening we just had dinner out and then swam in the pool until time for bed. The second day we went to the Magic House. That place is incredible. We were there until 1 and the kids were starving and we still hadn't seen everything. We were looking at going to the City Museum but it's a lot of climbing and James and I decided that we would wait until the kiddos were older because I worry about Ellie getting scared while climbing on all the stuff, not only that but it was one of the hottest days of the year so far and a lot of the stuff was outside. We ended up spending the afternoon at the Science center because it's free and there were a lot of things aimed at our kiddos' ages. The kids LOVED it! We got to look at their dinosaur exhibit, the kids really liked the show we saw about cryogenics, and the bridge over the highway where you can see the cars go by and see how fast they're going. SUPER COOL! We left there and went back to the hotel for a bit to rest and decide on dinner. We ended up eating at this little Mexican restaurant. It was super yummy!! Since it had cooled off a little (think 98 instead of 105) we took the kids up to the arch to see it and see the museum in there. They liked being able to touch the arch and have their picture taken with it. They also liked seeing all the stuffed buffalo and deer that they had in the Lewis and Clark museum. The next day was Wednesday, our last day in St. Louis, but before we headed home we stopped at the Butterfly House. James and I had been there before and really enjoyed it. The kids, well, they were kind of freaked out by the butterflies flying so close to them. It was SO humid in there - we were all just dripping with sweat and we were very glad we had gone in the morning before it got super miserable for the day. We saw all kinds of cool bugs and some of the most beautiful butterflies. Then began our trek home and the kids talked for a long time about how much fun they had and how they can't wait to go back. I can't wait to take them on their next vacation - which is to Disney! (part of the reason why I took the teaching job!!)

So onto teaching. Honestly, it's going very well. I have some really wonderful students. I have some that are not so wonderful, but honestly even then, they're just being kids. I do live for the weekends when I have a lot of time with James and the kiddos, I miss them terribly during the day. I've had to let go of a lot since I've been at work. I really liked taking Ellie to school and knowing for a fact that she got there safely, trusting the bus to get her there has been a major issue for me, but she gets to school every day and I get there to pick her up and she's loving it. She also started the gifted program this year. She's really loving that too. One of her teachers is a teacher that I had in the gifted program when I was a kid!! Ellie loves both her teachers, she loves riding the bus to a different school on Fridays. She does miss her friends, but that's normal. She also has to be more responsible because her spelling tests are on Thursdays instead of Fridays (when she's at impact) and she has extra work for Impact that she has to do. She's doing a great job with all of it so far and is so happy!

The question is, am I happy? Ya know, I don't know. I miss having the freedom to do whatever I want. I miss being home with Jake and having a clean house and stuff like that. I hate going to work at 6:30 in the morning and missing all the morning stuff. I hate waking up at 5:30. But I really like my students. I think I'm doing a good job of teaching them. I feel like they like me. I don't know where I stand on things yet and maybe that's a good thing. Basically I've been told that if I don't keep numbers up in the French program that there won't be one next year - so maybe it's best if I don't get too attached. *shrug*