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! :)
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
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!
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!
Monday, October 22, 2007
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! :)
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! :)
Thursday, October 11, 2007
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!
"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!
Monday, October 8, 2007
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!
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!
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
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!
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!
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