In love with my classroom!

Well, this isn't so much a post about being a Mrs., but instead a post about being a teacher... :)  Can you blame me?  It's that time of year!  After 6 full days of living in my classroom, it's finished and it's BEAUTIFUL!  Definitely my favorite classroom so far and helps a little to take away the sting of having only three more days of summer...

So, here you go - a classroom tour of my first grade room! I'm THRILLED with how it turned out!!

hallway display.  hours of my life down the drain.

my new sign! :)  outside my room...

view walking in the door

worth a try, right?

word wall and library (part of the library)

goals, CAFE, and listening center

view from my desk

view from my desk

my new student spotlight board!!

my new cabinet in action :)

daily 5 and math stations (and my new pillow!) - missing two students' pictures though :(

hoping for donations and my new crates in action! :)

family tree - will add student's photos when they arrive (so bummed it's fuzzy!)

more library and computer station

computer station

paintings i made several years back - live, laugh

learn, love

learning target board and strategy posters

more new pillows!

table signs

unfortunately, most of the "grabbers" can't read the warning signs...

yup, more library

view from the corner of the lockers

helper board... unfinished

the end.

Hope you enjoyed your first grade visit!!

Bathroom Love Notes...

What is the one thing all women LOVE and deeply desire from their man??  Simple, the same thing that most men simply don't think to do for us.... :)  One of many communication problems we've encountered in navigating through marriage the past year...

I have always wanted to Jeremy to write me love letters, love notes, love anything really... the written word has always been an important part of my life as an educator and as a "grammar nazi" (as I was nicknamed in college) and I have ached to wake up to beautiful sonnets of our love and happiness.  Well, it hasn't exactly happened... no fault to my husband, it's just not his love language.  Similarly, playing 8 hours straight of strategy board games with literally 40 pages of instructions isn't my love language.   Shocking, I know. 

Insert my project from earlier this week...

Our bathroom love notes - please note my hand sticking out of the door :)  Only my hubby gets to see my pjs!!

Let me zoom in a bit so you can actually see what it is...

The love note I woke up to this morning from my husband - who HATES writing me love letters!

And my note back to him...

I purchased a super awesome picture frame from Hobby Lobby (always 50% off!), used some leftover Christmas gift wrapping, grabbed a black dry erase marker, and viola!  $10 creation... Bathroom love notes.  I hid the marker an eraser behind the candles so it's a quick and easy grab and we're both loving the surprise of seeing a new little note (I think we've both used the bathroom about twice as much as usual over the past couple days!) whenever we pop into the bathroom.

My husband loves having a simple and no-pressure way to love on me and I love seeing his face when he comes out of the bathroom with a little smirk on his face... speaking of, he just got out of the shower, I'm going to go check for a new one! :) 

A Wonderful(ish) Trip to My Favorite Place...

My wonderful husband and I overlooking La Mision

Spent my yearly vacation last week in Mexico.  It did not include resorts and spas and massages and pedicures (actually, the removal of a pedicure).  It did include 45 students, my husband, 100 kids at an orphanage, un-flushed toilets, and 1,000,000 flea and mange ridden dogs... You know, like my usual (other than the husband thing) summer vaca!


It was a ... well ... it was ... it was an interesting week.  Turns out I had caught some little flu bug before we left on Saturday and the combination of driving through the entire night and a super turbulent flight, I was down for the count.  Well, 4 of the 7 "counts" at least.  I went into this trip desiring nothing more than to just BE.  Be fun, be energetic, be the best me I could be...  All I wanted to do was to hang out with students and love up on my leaders that went with me.  An unmet goal for sure.  I failed miserably.  Which I hate.  I hate that the day I finally started feeling good enough that I could physically get out of bed (and the bathroom!), it was time to go home.  I hate that I couldn't physically manage to get the strength up to play cards or go to a soccer game.  If it didn't include my bed, I just plain couldn't do it.

The worst part?  I am the girl that needs to be loved on when sick.  My husband was there but in a different bunk on the other side of the campground.  No boys allowed.  I debated calling my mommy a hundred different times, knowing full well that she would jump on a plane and be there as soon as she could just to take care of me and rub my back and wipe my tears.  I didn't though.  I am learning to be a grown up!

The best part of the trip?  The night we snuck away to a hotel (don't go there, we were asleep by 8:30!).  I had a private bathroom with a flushing toilet (not to mention it didn't come with 10 students standing outside the door telling me to hurry up!), a HOT and un-timed shower, and a bed that allowed my hubby to cuddle up next to me, rub my back, and wipe my tears.  It was just what I needed to be back on the job site the next morning.

Week 1 group - 65 total participants

Our building group... although not in front of the house we built ... wonder why we did that!?

The last two days of the trip?  Fantastic! :)  Houses built (mostly finished), good girl time had, safety in crossing the border, beautiful night in San Diego... That's my week in a recap.  Bathroom visit after bathroom visit after bathroom visit but a great last 48 hours.  And then it was finished... as suddenly as it started.  A very long trip home, a super late arrival and there I was, with the same feelings I had 8 years earlier following one of my first Mexico trips...

"We pulled into Pella tonight and the second we we on the off ramp, I felt reality starting to consume me. All of a sudden, my life there didn't seem real. It no longer seemed important. It seemed distant - too distant to recall those exact pictures and moments where I found the Lord taking my breath away. In an instant, I was back. Thinking about McDonald's french fries, the errands I had to run, the things I had to buy, the computer I find myself sitting at... I came home to find hundreds of emails, a giant stack of bills, a lawn that needs mowed, garbage that needs taken out, and I tried to remember. I tried to remember the real issues in life: the toddlers that were unsupervised and kept behind bars 12 hours a day, the police that had turned to corruption and greed instead of integrity and honesty, the face of a homeless child who realizes he's 1 person too late to get a bowl of cereal that morning, the 12 year old girls parading the streets as child prostitutes, the old woman that was run over in the garbage dump while searching for something she could sell on the streets for a little money, the children crawling out of the garbage they call home on a daily basis. Those are problems. Not which color of lipstick or foundation I need to buy to match my new tan. Not where to put the pottery I purchased in Mexico. Not which outfit to wear to church in the morning... in the matter of minutes, the value of my experience was lost. Actually, that's inaccurate. It wasn't lost - I had simply let it go."

So, here's to remembering.  To letting it affect me.  To letting it hurt me and change me and make me a better person.  To forgetting my personal misery of the trip and remembering the joy.  To making a change and making the hard choices that life requires.

sunburns, monsoons in a tent, and the adventures in marriage...

I tend to be a planner.  An over-planner perhaps, but typically, this works in my favor.... yesterday, it did not.  Our first wedding anniversary was supposed to be perfect.  Beyond perfect actually, that that wonderful dreams are made of and blog readers literally turned green with envy at our incredible day... well, that will not happen here.  So read on freely, for if nothing else, you might feel a bit smug about how your first anniversaries turned out.

I will not share the events of the morning.  Not because of what you think happened (trust me, that would have started this day off on a much better note!) but because some fights in marriage are meant to stay in marriage.  :) Un-awesome #1.  We obviously hit up El Charro - it was still a Sunday! - and Jeremy's lunch made him a bit sick.  Un-awesome #2.  Headed to the ICubs game where it was literally 100 degrees and there was no shade to be found anywhere... here comes Un-awesome # 3:

On the up side, we always love a good ball game and in shocking ICubs fashion, they won!  The game wasn't all bad... good seats (especially when everyone around us got smart and left the game early!), great hot dogs (I've lost 14 pounds, I can have a hot dog!), and a never ending flow of ice cold diet coke.

my hubby the hottie (in desperate need of a haircut and new sunglasses!)

 

 every one of these heads left by the 2nd inning.  holy hot day.

we're seriously adorable.

Anywho.  Ball game.  At hour three, the fourth inning ended and we were definitely feeling the effects of too much sun.  Un-awesome #4?  Headaches, stomach aches, and crankiness hit us hard.  (Yes, you read that right - three hours, only 4 innings!)  So, we took off.  Best decision of the day!  The problem was, we couldn't head home because I had a surprise being set up for him in the backyard and we weren't to be home until at least 7.  We couldn't eat dinner because well, we had just eaten giant ball park hot dogs!  So, we decided to catch a movie.  :)  A perfect idea for the hottest day known to man.  Drove to Jordan Creek, movie wasn't playing. (that's 5!)  So, we sat.  In the mall.  Doing nothing until our favorite restaurant was open.  (Latin King, where we had our first date!)  Drove there, mouths watering, to discover it's closed on Sundays (this is a rant for another day!).  Yup, #6.  Turned around AGAIN and headed back toward West Des Moines.  Came to a shockingly fast stop in the middle of I80 and sat in traffic for an hour due to one of the worst accidents either of us has ever seen.  Covering all three lanes of traffic and as we drove by, they were cutting a woman out of the truck that was laying on it's hood.  (Insert lots of prayers for these people!)  (This equals at least 4 un-awesomes) Dinner at HuHot and then headed home for him to find this... 

And this... 

And this... 

And these people... 

(Happy Curt day!)

 

(thanks to the Aubergs for setting up the tent and campfire fun!)

Happy to report that campfire was wonderful, the smores were fantastic, the company was incredible and the twinkle lights were beautiful.  Enjoyed the thought of sleeping in the tent and made it until about midnight when we could no longer breathe and headed in to enjoy some AC.  An hour later, torrential downpour.  Sometimes God works in sneaky ways... :)

We are sooooo thankful for a wonderful year of marriage and for all of our friends and family that have loved and supported us during this time.  Now, looking forward to year 2 (everyone says that the first year is the worst so I'm assuming that starting today, marriage will be easy and incredibly blissful! :) can't wait!)

High School Fat

Our first wedding anniversary is tomorrow.  Insane.  Life is going ridiculously fast and I don't foresee it slowing down any time soon.

Feeling a bit nostalgic about life, I was looking through some old photo albums and scrapbooks and somehow ended up perusing some high school yearbooks.  I was good at high school.  Lots of friends, lots of success, homecoming court... Pretty good indeed.  But, like a lot of high school girls, I spent all four years insecure about my weight.  I mean, I was a cheerleader for Pete's sake (is Pete an actual person here that requires a capital 'P'?)!  Cheerleaders are supposed to be thin and beautiful and super super fit.  Well, that wasn't me.  I was a normal sized girl with a normal sized waist and thighs and (gasp!) I even had a booty!!  All the while though, I felt huge and struggled on a daily basis with my body insecurities...

Today, I look back at these photos and think, "I wish I was "high school fat" again!"   Turns out, high school fat wasn't actually fat at all.  It was curvy.  Beautiful, actually...  Now, 13 years out of high school and 35 pounds heavier, I've embarked on finding my way back to high school fat. Diet.  Exercise.   Dedication and determination... An exhausting process but one that I'm proud of.  Working my butt off and down 14 pounds... pretty good for an "old lady", huh?

Here's what I've learned in the last 6 weeks of this process.  It's not about losing weight.  I mean, it is, of course, but... it's more... it's... it's about finding my way back to being secure in my body, my appearance, and the person that I am... a wife, a teacher, a daughter, sister, aunt... mostly importantly though, a princess.  The daughter of a King!  A King who created me to be exactly who I am and to love exactly WHO I am, including the flab on my arms and the jiggle in my thighs.  I'm learning.  Learning how to eat healthier, learning how to read my body, but most importantly, learning how to love myself, exactly the way I am.

My prayer is that we would all find this peace.  Young or old, skinny or fat, cheerleaders or band members, single or married...

^{Psalms 139}

¹³ For you created my inmost being;
    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
¹⁴ I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
    your works are wonderful,
    I know that full well.

 May you know the love and security that comes from being a child of a great King.

The day after...

What a night!  

Highlights: dancing in the living room with my husband to both the chicken dance and the cha cha slide
Low light: dancing in the living room to our first song from our wedding while my husband was burping in my face (where has all the romance gone!?!)

Dinner was delicious, the dance was a riot, and people at the restaurant thought we were both weird and adorable.  :)  Here are some photos from our fun night.

It wasn't tacky, it was beautiful!

I don't think he actually knew how to do the chicken dance... 

An excellent date night all around!  Thanks to everyone that helped and all that were excited for us!  Stayed tuned for our next adventure...