Power of Music

As someone who always appreciates music and its ability to communicate and express so much, I still find myself floored at how some lyrics really hit home and touch me deeply. I heard this on the radio today:

"Before she knows it
She's a brand new bride
In her one bedroom apartment
And her daddy stops by
He tells her its nice place
She says it'll do for now
Starts talking about babies and buying a house
Daddy shakes his head and says, baby just slow down

You're gonna miss this
You're gonna want this back
You're gonna wish these days
Hadn't gone by so fast
These are some good times
So take a good look around
You may not know it now
But you're gonna miss this"

Truly fantastic lyrics and an awesome story in a song.

Yay for music and its impact on people!

By the way, today marks seven months of marriage. Where does the time go? :)

Time flies!

Hello, wonderful people who read this blog! :)

I have officially survived my first 18 weeks of teaching! I am now free for 8 days from teaching... it would be a lie to say that I was free from school. I know I will be going back next week to clean up and organize my classroom to better prepare myself for January.

Chris and I are super excited about our first Christmas together. We have gone all out with our decorations, way more than some of our other newly-married friends. We have a real tree (normal sized) decorated. It is seriously the prettiest tree I think I have ever had. It will be even prettier 10 years from now when it is full of hand made ornaments from future little Edwards. :) We have stockings hung, greenery out, lights outside, matching towels and potholders in our kitchen, and a mini tree in the bay window area of our kitchen. My Willow Tree Nativity set is sitting pretty on a side table. We decorated early... the first week of December to be exact! I wish it could always stay like this... mainly because I am dreading trying to store everything in our serious lack of closet space.

We are off to Virginia this weekend, but we will be back on Christmas Eve to celebrate Christmas in GA with each other and with my family. I'm hoping to go to my old church's Christmas Eve service and eat dinner with my family on Christmas.

We went to an awesome Christmas party last night where we made our own gingerbread houses. Chris and I were quite the team, and we were doing really well! After a few hours later with roof pieces that would not stay, we started to give up. We shalacked it and tried to take it home, but a gingerbread house cannot handle driving through downtown Atlanta without collapsing. We now have icing in the back seat of my car. I am leaving there in loving memory of it.

Life has been busy, but we are expecting it to slow down come the New Year. Isn't that how it always goes?? :) I will be more dedicated to this journal soon enough. I will even get some pictures of our house all decorated for Christmas and post them. It looks really good, if I do say so. :)

I hope you all have a wonderful and blessed Christmas. Remember the reason for the season! God loves us SO MUCH. :)

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Christmas comes early...

This is specifically for the benefit of my oldest sister Jenn and her husband Joe. We know you guys would be here if you could.

We love y'all!!!

-Chris

P.S. Everyone else is welcome to look at the pictures, too. It's just that if I didn't get these up, that previously mentioned sister of mine would hurt me :-/

Life is Good!

The title of the post says it all!

I am not up for much posting because, though life is good, it is also busy!!

Most of the events involve school, and I need to get out of the habit of blogging about that. It could kick me in the rear one day... you never know who is reading these things.

One of the best events so far this month has been the UGA/Auburn blackout game that my sister got us tickets to for a birthday present. It was amazing; it was the best UGA game in current history. Chances are good that it will be the last one we ever go to, mainly because it will be hard to beat that experience.

I will close with a picture of us at the game.



Happy Thanksgiving! We all have so much to be thankful for, and it is always good to reflect on it. :)

Thanksgiving

In exactly two weeks, I will be in Missouri, enjoying Thanksgiving with my family, just like I have done for many years... since I was a child, really. There is only a few years that I can remember staying home from Missouri, so, for me, Missouri for Thanksgiving is a tradition.

Each Thanksgiving-- each trip-- to Missouri is a special blessing now, especially with my grandmother in her condition. I remember hating those trips so much not that long ago, and now I am anxious and eager to spend time up there. So many things have already changed, and I wish I could go back in time and enjoy them more. Some things I will miss this Thanksgiving include:

1. My Grandparent's farmhouse. They bought that home in 1951, and they raised my mom in that home. My mom had her wedding reception in the living room of that house, and she got married in the little chapel down the road. It had a staircase to slide down on, a back porch to read on, a trail that led to the creek and Critter Tree, and a 200 year old Liberty Tree standing tall in the front yard. That house is history now, remembered only with pictures and memories. Grandpa had to sell it to move in to town to be closer to grandma. Those idiots who bought it burnt it down with their renovations. This will be the first time I go there with no farmhouse existing whatsoever.

2. Cinnamon Sticks. Mind you, they were just flat sticks of left over pie crust dough with sugar and cinnamon sprinkled on them, but they were amazing. Grandma would always have a few batches ready to share with her grandkids.

3. The evil fan. This could technically fall under the farmhouse category, but this fan is special. I always thought this ceiling fan had an evil and mean face to it, and it terrified me. I could never sleep facing it. Yet I will miss it. Odd.

4. Grandma's thanksgiving dinner. I will miss her cooking, and I will miss the smell of the house all morning long while she made all the preparations. All of her recipes were fresh from scratch, and the best ones included her dressing, chicken and dumplings, and her rolls. Unfortunately for me, I was a picky eater growing up and never got to fully enjoy her cooking... two years ago marked the last Thanksgiving she cooked for all of us, and I got over my pickyness to eat at least one bite of everything she made. I realized what all I had been missing...

I will stop there because this entry is depressing. A lot has changed over the years, including my increased desire to go to Missouri and spend this time with my family there. I don't know how many Thanksgivings I have left before my Grandma either forgets who we are or leaves the world for a better place. All I really meant to say in this entry was that I am really, truly looking forward to Thanksgiving this year. I have a LOT to be thankful for.

And after Thanksgiving comes me and Chris' first Christmas together. We have already begun thinking about traditions and buying decorations. We are both so excited about this... :)

Nothing too exciting going on in our world, anyway. That is why I chose to write about the holidays that are coming up. They are what we are living for and looking forward to right now. We are both ready for a BREAK! (I know that I AM!)

Hope everyone is well!

3.

Nothing new!

Hi, world. Just a post to share that nothing new and exciting has really happened. Chris and I are making it through another week, and we are just enjoying life. :)

I will admit, though, that I am counting down the days until Christmas break. 53 to go! :)

2 for 2

Hello, all. Just wanted to share some awesome news as a first year teacher. I am 2 for 2 for my principal observations!!!! He snuck in today during what I thought was not a fabulous and well-thought out lesson, but he loved it!

He even wrote on the note, "I am glad you are at MCMS." It made me smile real big...

Yay! :)

Normal week...

If it was last week, I would be celebrating right now because tomorrow would be like my Friday. Alas, I have a full work week this week, and Friday WILL be quite a doozy. We have this thing called "Club Day," which was supposed to give students who were uninvolved in clubs a chance to be involved by having them meet once a month during school. Well, when those who are not involved in a club are given the option of attending a club or hanging out in a classroom for an hour of unproductivity, they generally choose the hour. I am in charge of managing that chaos for my team, and it is SO exhausting and overwhelming... not to mention completely unproductive.

Oh well... it is a new idea, and all new ideas need to have the kinks worked out of them. It will work out better eventually.

This week has been normal. Lots of work, lots of meetings, lots of teaching, and lots of grading. Next week will be even MORE fun, with 75 scary stories to grade. And my kids are GORY... I will not be sleeping well next week... too many nightmares...

Chris has had his first BIG article due for his job, and I guess it went well. I don't know because he doesn't talk about it. Next month will be a BIG open house that he must plan and run. I finally got him to write something on this blog, but it was really me copying and pasting a response from another blog. Scroll down if you haven't read it because it's pretty good. Not funny, but very enlightening. Chris always has something good and smart to say. Maybe one day he can channel that...

Last weekend was wonderful. We meandered on up to North Carolina for a vacation and to watch two dear friends (Chris' roommate and one of my education buddies) get married. We had an awesome vacation at a Bed and Breakfast in Hendersonville (the Angelique Inn), and we even had time to walk around the town and enjoy a local soda shop. Friday and Saturday were a little insane, though, especially Saturday. I ended up directing the wedding and helping out wherever needed. Since my hubby was in the wedding as a groomsmen, I offered the bride my services, if she needed it. Saturday was a 14 hour day, but it was an awesome 14 hours spent with friends. The wedding ceremony was beautiful and sweet, and thankfully there was a funny moment to keep me from crying too much. The reception was rockin' with good food, sweet toasts, and amazing dancing! :) I even got to sing (with my gals, of course) a classic Moulin Rouge song. I must share that I am SO happy for them both to be happily married. I am also very thankful that they are my friends.

This weekend is looking good. I will get to experience my first communion service as a Primitive Baptist. It makes me smile just to think about it. :) Chris and I will have some down time to ourselves, and we will have some awesome fellowship with our dear church family... making up for the weeks we missed. One bad part of last weekend was a SERIOUS cramp I got in my calf in the middle of Saturday night. I woke up around 1am in the morning, startled, with a cramp so scary that I could feel the dent!! No matter what I did, nothing helped. No matter how I moved my foot, no matter how Chris massaged it, it would not go away! Then, when it did go away, I would move my leg and it would come back. I had to get up and walk around and stretch for a looong time before I felt ready to risk going back to sleep. I was up until around 3am, so when the alarm for church went off, Chris and I had only had about 2 hours of sleep. Not so good for driving. My calf also hurt, and the cramp constantly tried to sneak back. I am better now... but still afraid of waking up at night in pain... it was awful...

Anyways. I always make long entries. Bless you if you have read this far! I will leave with some pictures from this weekend...



Chris and I at Looking Glass Falls, but you can't see the falls. The next one below shows us at the falls.



A better picture... but there were too many people hanging around. TOURIST TRAP!



The picture above is one of the bride with some friends, her old roomies. We all had good times in college, and I am glad this was one more experience to share with them! :)

Happy week!

My husband all fired up...

Just last week, my brother in law was at a class in Atlanta. They began to talk about their families, and Deron shared that he and his wife were expecting their fourth child. To his (and our whole family's) utter dismay, someone asked him casually if they were planning to keep the baby. (To hear this story first hand, go to Laura's blog here.)

My husband, in response to her post about this horrible question, posted a lengthy, and pretty amazing, reply. Here it is, some food for thought:

"Wow. It got me fired up reading that. To treat life like that...as if we should have the power to end it without a backward glance...disturbs me. That's always been the most disturbing thing to me. The act seems bad enough, but it's the attitude that it's justifiable to abort for convenience sake is reprehensible.

When I was a staff writer for the student newspaper at Berry, I covered a "History of Abortion" video about how abortion was essentially legal, then illegal, and now legal again. It was followed by a mixed panel discussion about it. The stories of what women were doing to themselves to self-abort during times that abortion was illegal were deeply saddening...not just because I think abortion is wrong but because those women were that scared and that there was hardly anywhere for them to turn. The numbers of women who died because they self-aborted were staggering. Still, I couldn't justify the act of ending a child's life for all the sob stories or poor circumstances surrounding the conception (rape, incest, health complications, etc). I'm sorry, but I cannot accept reasoning that exalts anyone else's life over a child's... However, I know things could be improved. For women who do not want or are not ready for the child they are carrying, they should have somewhere to turn to without that intense level of scorn and shame that some sinners in this world seem to think they have the sole right to inflict on those women. We should reach out to them and not scorn them, regardless of the circumstances surrounding the conception. I'd imagine women (or, more often, young girls) in those situations do not know that they have options (adoption, etc). For women whose health will be severely endangered by the carrying of child, I still don't think I could defend an abortion in that case because I believe in the preciousness of new life that much. It is a blessing, and I don't believe choosing the child is choosing one life over another, even if the mother is in poor health for a pregnancy. The only choice that seems to be made in that circumstance is to end a life...ending a life for a precautionary reason is simply not okay to me. If it seems like there are no options, there are. Prayer is always there. Granted, it shouldn't be treated like an option, but I think it's forgotten in all the rational arguments people have with one another that some circumstances justify an abortion because there are "no options."

Also, I didn't say that any decisions were easy, but one truth has always stayed constant with me. We are not God, and walking around acting as though we have the right to end life is wrong. Life is precious.

I don't often get caught up in argument with people because I believe that if we don't agree that newly-created life (from God) is indefinably precious, I will always have different conclusions from those people.
And I'm not one to waste my time. If anything, people should try to encourage one another that life is precious. It seems like it would be a lot easier to get someone onboard with that than it would be to get them to believe abortion is wrong. Maybe if people saw life as the ultimate gift, everything else would fall into place. I'd hope so anyway.

The only other thing I'd say about that "are you gonna keep it?" attitude is that it is indicative of wickedness. Somewhere along the way people were numbed by the thought that abortion wasn't really destroying life. Yep, the devil might just have something to do with that one.

Thank goodness I wasn't sitting there when that woman asked Deron that question!!! Uh oh...I'm getting fired up again..."


I was impressed with his thoughts, and I wanted to share them.

Hope everyone had an awesome weekend! :)

All grown up

"We're adults! When did that happen? And how do we make it stop?"

"So sacred of getting older; I'm only good at being young. So I play the numbers game to find a way to say that life has just begun..."

"These days, I wish I was 6 again. Oh make me a red cape. I wanna be Superman..."

"I'll never feel like this again; time's rushing by me like the wind. Gotta grab each moment that I can cause I'm never gonna feel like this again..."

I think that sums up how I feel right now. Yep.

Hope everyone is well!

Some funny pictures... Chris' idea!

Our new and wonderful Mac has a photo booth option that lets you take pictures of yourself and add effects to them. Chris thought that they would be funny pictures to post, so, enjoy!


















Not as funny, but I thought it was cute!


Tee hee!

Life is good here. I am teaching Intersession this week, and I am very scared/nervous. I do get extra money right around Christmas, though, so-- yay!

Chris will make a post soon. We need some humor on this blog... :)

Hope evryone is doing well!

Lookin' to be a good week!

My other family members with blogs have all updated, so I figured I would, too!

Nothing life-changing or earth-shattering over in our corner of the world... though I am going to congratulate my sister-in-law and her family for the baby they are expecting in June!! :) Chris was so silly on the phone, not catching on to Laura's hints about why they were looking at a new, bigger car until she outright said, "We will need an extra seat in eight months." HA! Chris can be so oblivious.

The only possible life changing event that has happened to me recently is a positive step towards keeping my job at Morgan County Middle School for next year! I had my first "Awareness Walk" today observed by my principal. An "Awareness Walk" is not a formal observation, but it is a time for an administrator to come in and make sure we are using our planning notebook, writing "KUDos" on the board (like objectives for the lesson), posting standards that match the lesson, practicing good teaching methods and strategies, handling a class, etc... My principal happened to walk in on an awesome day with an awesome class. He only had a few things to nit-pick at, but overall, his comments were very positive and nice. I brought it home to share today because I was so excited. :)

Chris and I also had an amazing weekend. We had a friend come up Friday night to hang out, and we went to Ellijay on Saturday. We bought apples and yummy apple things, picked pumpkins, went in a corn maze, and rode a hot air balloon! Wow! The corn maze was something we had both never done before, and it was hilarious because we ended up finding a group that was seriously lost, helping them make it to the exit. The hot air balloon was neat also because the sun was setting. We went up high enough to see the corn maze pattern from above and to look around at the farmland around us. It was a fantastic day. :) Sunday was awesome too, as always, because of the wonderful church that we belong to. As we drove back on Sunday, Chris and I thought about how we ended up in Madison with his awesome job that is better than grad school, and we thought about how we ended up at such a great church. Really, it was overwhelming to think about, but we just came to the conclusion that everything is perfect because God wanted us here. :) We couldn't have made all this happen to us!

This weekend is lookin' good, too because of a few things. I have Mountain Day stuff this weekend, including Charter Fellows education workshop with my amazing friends!! I cannot even describe how excited I am to see people I was with all day every day again! Saturday is little Joshua's 2nd birthday, so I am ditching Mountain Day stuff early to go celebrate with Brother Ronnie and Sister Jennifer. The weekend is real close, too, because I do not have to teach Friday!! yay!! :)

I hope everyone is having an awesome week!

Random Ramblings

So... I have survived a day of teaching with no hearing in my left ear! I was just sitting around last night, I shifted my weight, then-- BAM!-- something moved in my ear and I couldn't hear anything out of it! I used ear drops, water-- everything I could think of to wash my ears out, and nothing worked! I gave up until the end of the day today; I just got back from an urgent care center and I can hear, as the doctor said, "in stereo!"

It was tricky to keep the students in the dark about my lack of hearing because I could not hear them!! Somehow, I did! Tomorrow I get to meet with parents because it is parents as partners day, and tomorrow will be interesting!

Chris is watching this "Vick Divide" thing on ESPN. It makes me SICK!! I am SO tired of hearing about Michael Vick and his crime. I believe dogfighting is WRONG, and I think that when you chose to be a celebrity, you open yourself up to press, both good and bad, no matter what your race. ESPN solicited volunteers to be in the forum, and the only people who cared enough to show up are racists. All they have done is complain about how the press is biased against black people...

One gentlemen spoke up to say that it is all about the choices you make, and I AGREE. Vick made a bad decision. He is a celebrity. DO the math. HE deserves all the bad press he is getting... he asked for it!! To think that th Humane Society is in the wrong and boo them and their work.... I am just tired of hearing it...

*stepping down off of my soapbox*

In other sports news... the Braves COULD possibly make it to the playoffs!!!! They are three games back for the wildcard. They need to win this series, and, possibly, the next 6 games. I believe they can do it!! Gooooo Braves! :)

Nothing new or exciting is really happening. Chris and I have realized that we have NO free weekends in October, but that is okay! :) They are filled with good stuff-- Mountain Day, Joshua's birthday, Daniel's birthday, Chris' birthday, a wedding, and a church meeting!!! Yay! We are, however, taking the time this weekend to hang out and chill and get some work done around the house.

I am a horrible wife. I would be embarrassed if any member of my family or circle of friends stepped inside our home. I have not done laundry in a long time, and I have not cleaned up any part of this house in at least a week. It is a MESS. I keep thinking I will clean it up every night when I get home.... ha. It will be cleaned this weekend!!

I am encouraged by a second year teacher I have talked with. She told me that she does not do nearly the same amount of work this year as she did last year. I am eager, now, to get to next year. I will, however, always treasure my first year... just not all the effort and work I am having to put into it... :)

Let's see... this week is the norm... then October! I can't believe we are getting into the last months of 2007. SO funny to think that the year that I was so anxious to get to is almost over...

Anyways. I have been rambling long enough! I hope everyone is doing well! I am thinking of posting some pictures reeeal soon... as soon as I figure out how! :)

Refreshment

My last post was written under some heavy emotional stress. I had slipped and vented to some teachers, and I was afraid that my words were coming back to haunt me. Thankfully, however, they did not. I have learned my lesson, though... keep my mouth SHUT; pray constantly for strength to stay positive no matter what. There used to be a time when people noticed how I was always happy and positive. That has not happened in a while. I also used to be really shy and not open about my true thoughts and feelings...

Anyways. My week wrapped up, and it is over. Thank goodness!! It was a long week, and Friday was a long, long day. I had my first HUGE discipline issue in my first academic class. What a way to start the day!!! A student was injured in my class; he was hit in the eye by a "hornet." A "hornet" is a rolled up scrap of paper shot using a rubber band. I did not see it happen, and I did not know how to make a student confess. I had a serious, serious teacher snap decision making moment...

"I WILL pull the assistant principal in here to question EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU until the guilty person FESSES UP!" It was a stretch, but worth a try...

Fortunately, the guilty child raised his hand, and I was shocked. I took him outside in the hallway to grill him...

Me:"What possessed you to do this?"
Student: "Everyone else was doing it."
Me: "That is YOUR reason? That is what you have to say for YOUR actions?"
Student: ...
Me: "You know this is an automatic referral to the assistant principal, right? You caused injury to someone else."
Student: "I tried to apologize..."
Me: "Doesn't matter. You HURT someone. A warning is not a serious enough consequence. A teacher consequence is not enough."
Student: ...
Me: "Go back in and finish your work. I will send the referral in after class. I am VERY disappointed in you and your actions."

And indeed I sent it in at the beginning of the next academic. I stretched the truth about the whole principal referral because I was not certain. I had to ask another teacher before I referred him. I found out that I was not lying, and I spent the beginning of class sending in a referral. He is now in ISS until Thursday. He will also be punished on the football team; I heard you are kicked off the team if you receive ISS.

It really killed me to give him ISS because he is a smart student who is relatively well behaved. He just made one bad decision, and he got caught. He does, however, constantly interrupt my class and has issues staying in his assigned seat. His best bud is also in ISS until Wednesday, so the beginning of next week will be peaceful!

After a crazy week, I have spent a wonderful Friday and Saturday with my family. Chris and I drove up to Atlanta last night to go to the Braves game, and, even though we lost, we got to see Mark T. hit a homerun and Frenchy make an assist from the right field to home plate. It was also Friday night fireworks. We then spent today being lazy and watching college football. We ate out for lunch, and we enjoyed a football dinner of pizza, chips, soda, and brownies. Chris and I just got home twenty minutes ago.

Georgia JUST made an AWESOME game winning play against Alabama. My weekend just improved even more!!! :) It's great to be a Georgia BULLDAWG!!!! I wish I could be with my sister, celebrating now, but we needed to get home. I enjoyed spending time with her this weekend.

My weekend will keep getting better with church tomorrow! I am looking forward to a Sunday with my church family. I really really wish that my church met more than once a week!!!

Anyways! Now that the excitement of the GA game is over, I am off to sleep! Happy weekend to all, and to all a great night! :)

Attitude

Sometimes I have a bad attitude. I generally try to be positive, but when I am flustered, overwelemd, and/or stressed, my evil side tends to come out and prowl.

I try to tame the monster and watch who is witness to the monster, but, like any monsters, it can get out of control.

I am afraid it has gotten out of control.

Please, if you think to, say a small prayer for me and my attitude. I know I need to pray that God gives me strength and discipline to train myself and cut the 'tude, as I used to say. Why should I have a bad attitude when I have it so good?

I hope that people see my positive side more than my negative side. Especially at school...

Anyways. Hopefully I am just paranoid. But right now I want to cry...

Oh, well! God is good, and I am finished with my "homework" for the night. The Braves are on and Frenchy just made a good play... yay! :)

I hope everyone is having a good week.

So thankful I married a country boy!

So I had a funny post here, but nothing is private anymore (as in, this harmless story could be used against me in my profession), so I had to remove it. It is a funny story, so if you want to know... just ask...

Long week...

I am relaxing right now with some Grey's Anatomy season three... I accidentally forgot to bring home some quizzes to grade. Whoops! :) The next two days will involve drafting personal narratives, so there will be some easy days for me. Friday will be stressful, though, because the BOE will be at the school, and I know that they will be stopping by my room to see what is going on. woo hoo! I hope they like what they see.

Today has been overwhelming to say the least. I have found out that we are planning our units and lessons wrong, so now we have to meet to plan our next unit right! It is so scary about how our actions as teachers really really impact our students! It was so overwhelming for me two weeks ago. I handed a test to my mentor teacher that most of my students did not do well on, and her question for me was if they failed the format or the content. That thought never crossed my mind, and if they failed the format, it is MY fault that they failed. It was an awful feeling that I cannot even describe. I came home and cried. For a long time.

My learning curve as a teacher affects them, but it is not just me! All teachers have those horrible years. The years where they look back and pity their students. That will be this year! I am taking it day by day right now... hoping I will be able to keep my job for next year. I love MCMS! I want to stay!

Oh, well. Nothing too exciting is going on anyway. Chris and I are just hanging out... eating food, watching TV..

We went to Talulah Gorge on Labor Day. I had a lock in with my students Friday night. We went to Gwinnett on Saturday and hung out with my friends and family for a little bit. We enjoyed church on Sunday... as always! :) We got to eat lunch with Brother Ronnie and Sisiter Jennifer, too. Yay! It makes me sad that I only see my church family once a week. I wish I could see them more!

Enough with the rambling... I am going to rest and chill. It is a midweek present to myself! :) God bless!

A New Home

I was having some issues with Wordpress, so I have moved our blog to a new home before I posted too many entries to feel attatched. I had wordpress so Chris could post as well, but he is not as keen to post as I am, which is sad since he is such a hilarious writer! Maybe I will get him on here a few times...

This is our new blogging home, so change your links and bookmarks!

Thanks for being flexible! :)