Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

It's been a while since I have been on and posted, which is evidence of how busy and tiring this pregnancy and job situation has been!  Finally I am sitting down to write a post and I am not completely sure what I want to say, but I know I should update.

To get perspective on where we are at on the pregnancy, we are at 26 weeks today and almost in the third trimester!!  It is unbelievable that in apr. 3 months we are going to be bringing a little baby boy or girl home from the hospital.  This little one sure makes her/her presence known already though!  I have read forum posts about the baby playing bongos on your bladder....  Well our little one sure does do that and has been doing it since about the end of November!  I have felt our baby move since about mid November.  In November at our check up the doctor was using a doppler to get the heartbeat and our dear child would not stop moving!  She was literally chasing our baby down on my belly.  It was quite entertaining!

The December check-up was ultrasound time!  Our baby kept placing his/her hands by the mouth, making it really hard to get a good 3D shot of the head.  We elected not to find out the gender of our baby.  So we don't know, and if we don't know we sure can't tell you!

We also had an exciting and not so fun incident the week before Thanksgiving.  My husband was playing basketball and managed to not only sprain his ankle, but also break his foot.  For a little more than a week now he has finally be allowed to not wear a walking boot all the time.  Which is also good thing for me, because he broke his right foot, meaning I have been honored to do all the driving!

Now the reason I called this post Decisions, Decisions, Decisions is because of a decision I was left needing to make this winter.  As I mentioned before the only real pregnancy symptom I have had has been exhaustion.  Well, that continues to be the case.  Now the exhaustion I have been experiencing has been really hard to deal with when it comes to be a first year, full time teacher.

This school year has been amazing!  I have thoroughly enjoyed being a Spanish teacher.  I just noticed a downhill slide when my energy never seemed to really come back.  I had a slight bump in energy for about a week or two as first tri ended and the second one began, but that was it, then I was back to just being completely exhausted all the time again and this time it was wearing on my quite a bit.  I started going to bed insanely early just to make it through the next day.  If I got what used to be my usual amount of sleep, I would be pretty worthless the next day...

So after lots of conversations with my husband and lots of prayer I went back from Christmas break having decided to step down from the position.  This has really been one of the hardest decisions of my life.  I really wanted to continue, I enjoyed teaching, but at the same time the joy I felt at the beginning of the school year seemed to be lost in yawns in constantly checking the clock.  Besides with our baby due in April I wasn't going to be able to finish the school year anyways...

It was amazing how quickly they managed to find someone to step in.  God is good all time!  After less than a week after break they were already hiring the new teacher!  I met with her a few times (it turns out we live in the same town and thus have the same half hour commute to work) and then this week (Mon-Wed) I worked with her to get things set up in the classroom and let her take over.  She seems like she will do a great job!  I left the job feeling excited for my (former) students that they have a new teacher excited to be there and one that has a lot of energy!

Now I get to focus on nesting.  :-)  I haven't done too much with that this week, but this first week is more about recovery and getting my feet back under me.  I did cook my husband breakfast yesterday (I hadn't cooked in a long time) and I am cooking him supper today, so I am moving forward, doing things I had been lacking the energy to do.  Hoping to make our house a home ready for a newborn infant.

With this change, I am sure I will be able to get on more often and write more about what is going on.  I will also be able to get caught up on things that were shoved to the side while working.  I am excited about the next 3 months.  It feels great to have a fresh start for the last trimester!

Time Flies When You're Busy!

I just got on here and realized I haven't posted anything in a few months...  Not good!  I'm really sorry about that!  Let's just suffice it to say that I have been VERY busy!  But that is definitely not a bad thing!

First and foremost, working as a full-time teacher really takes a lot of time and energy!  This school year has been full of figuring out what it means to be a first year teacher and what it means to teach well.  I am still working on it (both parts of it), but it has been a great experience so far!

Some of the challenges I have found is balancing a good lesson plan when class sizes are so vastly different!  I teach Spanish III & IV with classes ranging from 10-22 in the same level!  Some days I do better with that balancing act than others.  If you have any ideas of how to make a good plan to help balance them let me know, I am always open for suggestions!

Overall though it has been a very good experience.  My students work hard are a really good kids (which I remind myself of on days when their energy level is higher than their concentration level) which makes them fun to work with.

Other than that I have not had time to do much of anything else!  Last weekend Ben and I brought a group of youth to visit Concordia University Wisconsin.  That was especially fun for me because it is my alma mater and it was Homecoming!  It is amazing to see all the things they have done to campus since I was a student there and it is hard to believe that it has already been 4 years (this December) since I was a student there!

Watching the end of the football game was fun.  We finished the college visit with the kids, got them settled with the college students they were staying with, and headed out to catch some of the games that were being played.  We made it to the football game just in time for the 4th quarter and it wasn't looking good.  They were down, 20 to NOTHING.  Well, we watched them score one touchdown.  Then we watched them score another touchdown.  So finally they were kicking the ball to the other team with seconds left on the clock.  They did a short kick, recovered it and went to run it down the field....  when they were stopped and lost the game after all.  So even though they still lost, we personally believe we made it for the most exciting quarter of the game!

Well, I need to get some things done yet tonight, but watch for future posts.  I am cooking one up right now to write later!

Much Has Happened

I haven't written since the very end of June and a lot has happened!  Some of the highlights have been that my husband and I went to D.C. on vacation.  My Mom, Dad and little brother came and participated in a 5K or 8K with us.  We had VBS at Church (I helped with the little kids drama).  Oh and I started a new job!

I really want to focus on that last point in this post, hopefully I can also post pictures of our D.C. trip at some point in the near future.  As for the race, I couldn't run it, I had to walk it because my knees are still bothering me...

So I got a job teaching Spanish III and IV at a private school.  As many of you know I wasn't planning on applying for teaching jobs.  It's amazing how things can change and how quickly those things can change.  Someone I know also works there and when one of their Spanish teachers resigned in July so came to me to ask me to apply, but I didn't want to.  So she came to me again to ask me to apply.  The more I got thinking about it the more encouraged I was to apply.  Here are two reasons of my I decided to apply after all:

• The school is a much smaller school than where I student taught.  I think I felt lost there because I come from an extremely small school background (in fact both schools I attended growing up were K-12 and both have been consolidated with other schools, due to how small they were, after I was there).  My schools always had 100-200 students in the entire K-12 facility and I student taught in a school that has more like 1400 students in the high school alone...  The school I am currently teaching at is a K-12 building (though much larger than any that I attended growing up) with less than 1000 students in the entire building.  Still many times the size I ever attended, but not nearly so large either!

• I also applied because I knew there would be another Spanish teacher there.  I wouldn't be left on my own at the school trying to figure out all 4 levels of Spanish out by myself.  I teach levels III and IV and our Spanish I and II teacher actually used to teach III and IV and she seems to be a wonderful teacher.  I am excited to be able to work with her!

Yes, there were other reasons I decided to apply, but here are two of the bigger ones.  Needless to say I applied and then got the job (exactly 3 weeks before kids would start school).  About a week after getting the job we left for D.C for a week and a half, then I came home and went straight into teacher in-service (that was almost 2 weeks ago now).

The first two weeks there have been extremely busy, but good.  Now we all could have appreciated having air conditioning several of those days, but we all made it through that.  Just pray for cooler weather so I don't feel like I'm melting!  :-)  The kids overall seem to be responding well to me and I do enjoy my students.  You probably won't find me writing in too much detail about my job here, but I wanted to at least let you know I have it and that I am enjoying it.  Though it is definitely not what I saw myself doing at this point, it is proving to be a good adventure (as all of life is an adventure).

Pray for me that I can teach these high school students to the best of my ability with keeping their needs in mind!