In case you are checking this...
I tried to email you, but we have a new computer and I don't know if I'm using the right email address. :) We are coming up to TN next week for Thanksgiving, and I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to see you while we're in town!! Please email me or leave a comment so we can try to figure out a time! I am missing you and can't wait to (hopefully!!) see your smiling face!! :)
Love,
Becca
Thursday was my birthday, and we had the distinct delight of having my parents join us for the celebration. :) :) :) :)
My kids were really sweet at school on my birthday, and I received several flowers, a card from each of them, and a couple other things. :) Then after I tutored Thursday afternoon, I got to come home to Dad and Mom--what a treat! Matt came home, and we had a yummy dinner together, cake and birthday cake flavored ice cream (one of my favs), and then opened presents. I felt very loved, and it was a GREAT day!!
On Friday, Matt and I both worked. Dad went to a nature preserve to take pictures (though the wildest thing he saw was.... a squirrel.... no bison, gators, or deer, as we know actually live there). Mom stayed home and caught us up on some things around the house. Sammy apparently played outside most of the day! So we all the FL residents were on the receiving end of huge blessings! :) Friday evening we had a second, yummy home-cooked meal (more later on why that's special). YUM!
On Saturday, the guys inspected our damp laundry room. It turns out the water heater may or may not be leaking, but it's far enough along in age that we plan to get a new one. As for the washer, the line it empties into is backing up, so water is pouring down the wall and onto the floor. Lovely, right? We have a plumber coming tomorrow to hopefully clean out the line and get that sorted out. Hooray for Dad the diagnostician!
That night we had another yummy dinner, some popcorn, and a movie. :)
It was a quick trip :-(, but it was soooo good to see Dad and Mom! AND, we'll see them again in 2.5 weeks for Thanskgiving (only 10 work days until then!).
I have tomorrow and Tuesday off, which I am really excited about! Then it's a full week next week and a 2 day week after that. Tomorrow I am planning on doing some school stuff since I have to be home for the plumber anyway. Tuesday I'm hoping to craft--I got great craft stuff for my birthday, like books, patterns, and awesome hippo fabric. :)
Before I close, here are some birthday pictures (because I KNOW those of you who know my family are waiting for them)...
So I'm a posting slacker. Sorry!
A couple activities from the last couple weeks:
.... to us!!
This post is actually a day late, but that's okay. :) We're celebrating our anniversary over the next week and a half or so. :) hehe
Yesterday marked three WONDERFUL years with my husband! He is such a gift, blessing, and answer to prayer in my life. We have been together 5 years as of a little later this year, and it's amazing how it's hard to think about what routines and life were like before him. I am so thankful for his friendship, having someone so safe and strong to be completely comfortable with (which is especially nice when you're feeling goofy), his love, his patience, his forgiveness, his wisdom, his SUPER hard work to take great care of us, his help, his gentleness, and so many other things. God blew my dreams WIDE open when Matt came into my life. And we are both all the better for it.
The past three years have seen us through exciting changes like, well, getting married, starting our first "real" jobs, buying our house, finding a church here, and adopting Sammy dog. Sure there have been hard times too. But you know the best part? Even in the hard times, I am living with my best friend. And even better than that, He loves Jesus more than He loves me. So when we're tired or stressed or feel bewildered, He points me to Christ. There is no better way for him to love me well!! Our hard times have brought us not only closer together in relying upon each other and turning to each other (not too much of an option since it's just the two of us down here in FL), but turning to God together. We have grown so much closer in the Lord and each other as a result of each trial. I can honestly say, I would go through them again because of how I have seen God work in our tenderness to each other and desire for obedience in Christ. It's more than worth it.
So here's to the past three years, and here's to many, many (MANY) more!!
Matt and I are headed out this evening for dinner. I am really looking forward to it! He has worked really hard this week and is loving his new job. If I failed to mention it before, Matt is now working as part of the knee design team (as opposed to his previous work on the hip design team). He is still working for the same company, but he's on a different team. Someone on the knee team is moving over to marketing, and Matt was asked if he'd be interested in switching to knees. He is loving it and the challenge (and familiarity--he did work with knees in grad school) of having a full plate and knocking things off his "to do" list left and right. :)
We are also counting down to our THIRD anniversary on... Wednesday! I can hardly believe it's been three years already! And that we've been together five years. I know 5 is small compared to many couples in my family (being the youngest and all), but five seems like such a big, grown up number. :) A year (okay, 10 months) of dating, 1 year of engagement (alright, 54 weeks ;)), and now 3 WONDERFUL years of marriage. To celebrate our anniversary, we're going to the beach for a LONG weekend later this month. We're actually getting to stay in the same condo as we did on our honeymoon! Our intention is not to relive our honeymoon, but to build more sweet memories in a place we love. It's perfect this time of year, and we are realllllly looking forward to relaxing and getting away together.
Sweet Samantha is sleeping beside me on the couch. She loves this time of year with a touch of coolness in the air. I think she could stay out playing and patrolling "her" backyard for hours in the fall. All the squirrels scurrying about for acorns also provide her quite the amusement. :)
Alright, Matt should be home any minute, so I ought to get ready to go. We hope you have a great weekend!
Love,
Becca
I know I said I wouldn't post too much on here about sewing, but a friend of mine asked me to help her embroider some onesies a week or two ago. Our first attempt didn't go too well (I hadn't embroidered a knit fabric before), but I read up on it today and tried again. Here are a few of the designs I came up with so far.
I saw a onesie with this slogan for over $20 in an online store.... this was much cheaper. ;) Though this one is off center, it was my first try (now that I've read how to stabilize knits better). I think I can go back and add a heart in front of the words or something to make it look more centered. :)
I saw this on another blog, and while it's kind of strange, we've had several laughs over it. We hope it makes you chuckle as well. :) And it's actually kinda cool because bees actually do a dance when they find nectar to tell the other bees in the hive where it is and how far away it is (I read about it for science, and I'm going to have my class do the real bee dance in the next week or two!). Amazing, huh?
Today was an exciting day at our church for a couple reasons.
#1 We both wore shorts to church (just kidding... Well, we did both wear shorts, but that's not why it was an exciting day).
#2 We celebrated the ceremonial ground breaking for the church building! That's actually why we wore shorts. Instead of meeting at the school where we usually have Sunday worship, we met on the property that has just been cleared this week. Imagine an outside service in Florida during the summer. That's why we all dressed comfortably and cool. ;) We did have a big tent that kept us pretty shaded though. It's an amazing blessing to be a part of the church in the midst of so much growth. It was planted about 11 years ago, and in the last 3 we've been here it's just amazing to see how God has/is working and moving. And even better to know the vision is to use the building to SERVE others, not just have a pretty place, and secondly to know the church isn't really a building. ;)
#3 We ordained deacons, including Matt! Four deacons were ordained, and it's really neat to see God provide a place for Matt to serve in this capacity, as his heart is so oriented to serve.
I took my camera, but I didn't get any pictures because we were on the greeting/question answering team and I didn't want to walk around with my camera. I'll post some from our pastor's blog as soon as he puts some up!
We hope you had a good weekend. :)
... until tonight, I had made it unscathed through every parent-teacher opportunity of the year. THE question had not been asked. The one I'm asked every year. Do you know THE question?
It comes in two forms, and it goes a little something like this:
(nonchalantly) So, how long have you been teaching?
(not subtle at all) Is this your FIRST year teaching?
Either way, the parent is getting at one real question and one only: How old ARE you?? i.e. Are you old enough to each my child?
I made it all the way to TODAY without that question. I was so excited thinking I had turned a corner. That I was no longer the totally baby-faced teacher. I thought too soon.
Tonight at open house someone lowered the boom and asked, "So, is this your first year teaching?"
My response, "No, actually it's my 4th year at this school."
silence
"Oh."
.... Oh well, there's always next year!
..whew ! August 23 was my last post. Eek!
I guess you could say things have been pretty busy around here. I haven't been able to do any more embroidering or sewing since TS Fay came through and I had those 2 days off for the storms. But I am hoping to this weekend, especially because I have some more gifts to make. :) And the fabric is already picked out, so that helps a LOT!
It has been SUPER busy at school. On top of keeping a team of 6 (3 brand new to our school) going, I have my own classroom things to keep running. Tomorrow night is open house, so that adds a whole other element to the current stress level. And then Monday is our last day to enter progress report grades. In the past, we've done them by hand (on carbon copy forms). But this year we have a fancy schmancy new program that we have to use. I need to grade some reading and writing assignments, and then I should be good to go. We had a slow start with reading since we didn't have our whole kids (just TEs and student books). And the pace I think is just a lot faster than lots of my new-to-my-school students are used to. I was trying to give them a chance to complete their folder work, so I wouldn't have to enter incompletes for assignments. And then writing has been delayed because we JUST got the writing criteria finalized/approved yesterday afternoon! Ay ay ay!
Last night I got home at 6, and tonight I got home at 6:30. While I have a GREAT class (really, I do!), it's still a long day when the alarm goes off at 5:30, you chase 8 year-olds around all day, and then stay in your room until 6:30. Matt is oh-so-sweetly picking up our favorite Chinese on his way home tonight. Yum!
It's amazing the things that fall by the wayside when your day is filled up with work. You know, things like:
I know I said I wouldn't be loading this blog up with sewing, but I can't help it--it's how I've passed the time the last few days. :)
Today I made a nursing cover for a "baby shower by mail." I need to take my gift to some ladies at church tomorrow so they can put it in a big box to mail on Monday. I made two things, a burp cloth and a nursing cover. Here they are for your viewing enjoyment. :)
... the school year is about to begin and we are SWAMPED!
I started getting my classroom ready the week before preplanning (actually, the Friday before that !). With 2 teachers on my team who are new to my school, one of whom is a first year teacher and the other hasn't been a homeroom teacher before, I thought it best to get my room as ready as possible to be available to help them and answer questions. Boy, am I glad I did! They are both GREAT, and I'm really excited to have them on the team, but I was running around getting answers to lots of questions and working on things for the writing committee that came up. I cannot imagine where I would be if I hadn't already put most of my room in order, because I was still at school 12 hours yesterday--8 to 8! Whew! Then we stopped by again today (Matt came with me) and we stayed for probably 2-3 more hours, I think.
I have one thing left to do for prep that really needs to be done for Monday. The other things I want to do can wait until the second week of school. And I need to finish deciding on plans for the rest of the week after Monday. Add to that a tropical storm that is projected to hit the gulf side of Florida near Orlando as a hurricane and then basically cut right up through us--the first week of school--and it makes for one CRAZY week coming up!
So, we're about to make the 2 week spring to Labor Day weekend, at which point we catch a little breather before diving in again. I really think I have a *fantastic* group this year, and I am very excited to get started with them. I have 19 in my homeroom, I keep all of them for reading, writing, science, and social studies, but I'm currently slotted with 4 (count 'em, FOUR) students for math. Amazing, huh? I can only imagine the things we'll get to do with only FOUR! At most, I might end up with 3 additional students.... that's still only 7!!! WOW!
I need to head for bed--our church is starting back up with 2 services again for the fall beginning tomorrow and we are on for ushering. We hope this finds you well, and please be patient as the first weeks of school are hectic. I'll be back to more regular posting soon, I hope. :)
Love,
Becca
