Fall

Have I ever mentioned I love fall?! Pumpkin candles are simply the best :) It has got to be the best season.. October especially! September can sometimes still feel like summer, and by then I'm way over the warm weather. Yesterday I got home from work and there were leaves all over our landscaping. Instead of getting annoyed with this, I was thinking YES! The leaves are falling, haha! So I joyfully swept them out of the landscaping and went inside to open the front door. We haven't been able to open the front door and just see the screen door since like May. So, I was pretty excited. I love having it open and letting that natural sunlight inside.

Jared's grandma dropeed off some pumpkins and a mum the other day. I was so thrilled because I was actually thinking I needed to buy a mum but never got around to it. The pumpkins look great next to the orange mum :)

Fall is also a nice change at school because we are starting to do art projects with apples and pumpkins! Those are always fun in school. We also ordered cable for our house last week. We have always just used netflix to watch stuff but we figured 34 bucks a month is a steal for as many channels we get. I was kinda hoping to have some football parties as well so that was a must!

There's one more reason I LOVE FALL.. oh yah, BIRTHDAYS!
My birthday is October 18, Jared's is October 23, and my dad's is October 26. I do enjoy presents, but mostly I enjoy doing special things around our birthdays. For Jared's birthday weekend we are heading to Shawnee to camp with some friends. The boys are planning on hunting, so that will be a great present for Jared in itself. I have only thought of a few things I need and could ask for for my birthday.. both of them kinda costly. I want a pair of Sperry shoes to wear in the winter to school (they're dressy and casual at the same time) I have some picked out and I emailed them to Jared to show people, haha! I also want a new winter coat. Mine is a pea coat, not exactly the warmest thing. I need a heavy duty, waterproof, hooded coat! I found one from JC Penny that I really want. Since I have bus duty at school every evening, I thought I needed to be sure I had a good one for those snowy days coming up!

Carson is here!

Jen had her baby! YAY!
Carson Robert Jones was born on August 29th, 2011 at about 11:30 am. He was born pretty much right after she got to the hospital.. within the hour! I just love babies as you can probably figure out.. so I think he's just about the most precious thing!

I can't get enough of him! I wish I had more time to go over there and just snuggle him.. When Noah was born I wasn't married, didn't have a house, and didn't have a job... so I was there all the time. Oh well.. Carson will still know I love him just as much :) How could you not! I have felt bad about this lately.. not bein able to see him. I don't want him to grow up thinkin he's not as important as Noah cause I can tell you that I sure do love him just as much as I did Noah! It's hard adjusting to 2 babies for Jen.. but I think she's just ready for him to be bigger and be able to play with his big brother. I can't wait to see them play together in about a year. It'll be so cute!

I got to go shopping with Jen last Saturday and it was fun to be with just her and the two babies. I love them both so much and it makes me so anxious to have our own someday!

first 2 weeks!

Well, the first couple weeks of school are over, and I survived! It was a crazy 2 weeks but I'm loving it more and more each day. I only have 12 kids in my class and it's awesome!! I can't wait till a holiday so we can make cute halloween or thanksgiving crafts etc.
The kids are learning their routine better and better each day. They know every morning we turn in our MOOSE books (communication binder), move their lunch stick (a popsicle stick that has their name on it.. they move it to the eating at school bucket or the brought my lunch bucket), then they go to their desk to color a page until all the students get there!
Next 20 minutes we do morning calendar time- a time to talk about the date, weather, patterns, and count!
Then we go to our seats for an hour and learn a letter, it's sound and how to write it.. eventually we will be learning to read during this time of our day!
Next they get free time (15 minutes of inside recess basically)
The day flys by after this~
30 minutes of language
30 minutes of special (music, library, computer... etc.)
30 minutes of lunch
30 minutes of recess
30 minutes of math
45 minutes of sharing/story time
20 minutes of snack time
then we have the last 20 minutes to do art projects or fun stuff that goes along with our letter of the week!
That's it!

My class has 8 boys and 4 girls! The boys tend to get a little wild.. but we're getting there!
I have already had one parent tell me their kid hated school last year and has totally changed this year! She told me that her son said he loved his teacher <3 aww!

August Already?!

I can't believe it's August 4th already! It seems like summer just started! I guess we had a busy summer with me graduating college and then getting married and our honeymoon... It just went too fast. I had good intentions of getting our spare room painted and our front porch power washed and painted as well. Oh well! I'm far to busy now to work on house stuff. From here on out its all about the classroom.
I found out yesterday that my first day is August 16th. I have to be there all day for new teacher orientation aka meetings. August 17th is teacher's institute and "Back to school night!" YIKES!
I'm so nervous about back to school night. I've never done this before, and I'm supposed to talk to the parents and tell them what my year will look like... hmmm. I also found out that the other Kindergarten teacher is new to Kindergarten this year. She's moving from second down to K. I'm hoping we get along well, I know she's 3 years older than me so that will be fun!

The kids first day is a half day on August 18th. I've been thinking about what we will do on that first day... read books, take a tour, play a game, color.. probably all of the above.

I'm heading in to the school today to sign my contract and look at my classroom! I have all next week to set it up, I hope I can get everything bought and hung in one week! Its crazy how your life can change in a matter of minutes! I'm so thankful for this job, and can't wait to teach my first year of Kindergarten!

Faith

"If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.  But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.  That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord;  he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does." James 1:5-8

 

Well, I haven't updated on the job search lately but let me tell you, there have been some changes! 2 weeks ago I got a call from Windsor Elementary asking me to come in for an interview. I was so excited about this interview! There were 10 interviews and she was going to call 5 back for second interviews. The day after my interview I got a call for a second! I was soo soo excited! This interview was a little different than most. I had to prepare a 15-20 minute mini lesson on reading/writing for an imaginary kindergarten class.

 

So, with the help of some awesome teacher friends, I got my lesson all set up! I knew it was going to have to be over the top if I wanted to stand out, and it was! I had the kids singing, dancing, writing, reading, etc! It went so well! However, I was a little discouraged because right before my interview a lady walked into the office and said are you here for an interview? I said yes. She said oh ok I'm looking for Misty. I said Misty who? She goes, oh that was my aide from last year, she must be in her interveiw now. My heart sunk. I quickly went form believing I had to job, to being so discouraged that I wasn't going to get it :(

I still went into my interview with a good attitude knowing that anything was possible. When I left on my drive home Satan started putting bad thoughts into my head about not getting it. I was thinking how in the world could I get hired over someone who was an aide for a whole year in this school? I quickly changed my attitude and started thanking God for my interview. I decided I wasn't going to let Satan put doubt into my head anymore! I looked up scriptures on doubt and faith and came across James 1:5-8. As I was in the middle of reading this, my phone rang. NO JOKE! It was the principal at Windsor offering me the kindergarten job! I COULDNT BE MORE EXCITED! There are so many questions I should have asked but I was just so excited I didn't get any of them out! :)

 

God is so good and he knows the desires of our hearts!

Mouse in the house!

So we saw our first mouse in the house about a month and a half ago. I of course was freaking out when jared told me he saw one run along the living room floor. So, we went out and got some traps. We put one in the basement because he thinks it came up through the drain. Another one in the living room because thats where we saw it, and we put another one in the kitchen. We soon caught 2 in the basement and 2 in the living room. I was freaking out because I'm thinking they are going to reproduce and have a mice infestation in our house! We kept the traps out and within the last month have probably caught 2 more in the kitchen. Then about 2 weeks went by where there weren't any and I thought we got them all!.... I was wrong!
Yesterday I started vaccuming the guest bedroom and I swore I saw one under the dresser, so quickly I moved into the kitchen to vacuum that, then the living room, then I moved to our bedroom. As soon as I snuck the vacuum in I saw one run from under Jared's dresser under our bed! I SCREAMED and dropped the vacuum. I couldn't decide if I should shut the door or just run out and let it wonder out the the traps.. so thats what I did! I left and went to the store to get more traps. I was sick and tired of these things and beyond scared of the little rodents!

So I got back and you should have seen me, walking through the house in tennis shoes and stomping in every room before I walked in. That night we went to Jared's dads house for dinner and I was telling them about it. They gave us some sticky traps to set out..so needless to say, we have about 10 out right now! That night I knew I wasn't going to be able to sleep because what if that thing was still in our room!!!!!

I woke up several times checking the trap in our room... nothing. The next morning I got up when I heard Jareds alarm and went on a hunt around the house to check all the traps. I did find the living room trap upside down!! I went to get Jared and sure enough there was a dead one. I'm REALLY REALLY hoping that he was the only one in here and I got him. I did some DEEP cleaning today. Made sure there were no crumbs on the counters, floors, under couches.. etc. I bought an air tight container for the dog food and moved that outside. I'm really hoping that the dog food was what they were attracted to. Please pray we have no more mice because the next time I see one I might go crazy!! I will call an exterminater next time, and then that will suck because you have to try and find them when they die! uhh.. stupid things, no one likes them!

House Updates!

Well we have been in our house for 9 months already! It has flown by, thats for sure! As for house updates we have made it look so much better with not too much money into it!
We have:
--painted every room except the "guest room/future baby room" which we will prob either wait to paint or just do tan since we aren't planning on kids for a long time.. I just hate painting so I don't wanna paint it and then in a year paint again, so we'll see
--torn up the old nasty carpets in guest room and office, replace office with tan shag carpet and left hardwood in guest room
--torn out all the kitchen countertops and replaced with new!
--torn out the kitchen backsplash and had a new one tiled
--tomorrow we are pouring a small 13x12 concrete patio in the back yard!

*The future house improvement plans include building a deck up from the patio
*Cleaning out the garage and putting in a garage door opener so I can park there this winter
*Painting the front porch cement grey (right now it's red and chipping)
*Having the basement floor and walls painted grey (hopfully with a sprayer!)
*Dry walling a small portion of the basement so it can be a little hang out area down there (mostly because jared wants to hang his deer stuff somewhere, haha)
*Still not sure what to do about our kitchen cabinets but they are so ugly! I want to paint them white but Jared says no, so we'll see about staining them or maybe replacing them but I know that is very costly! We don't want to put too much money into this house beacuse we aren't sure we will be able to get it back out when we sell it down the road.

Our plans are to stay here for about 4 more years, once we have kids, we'll see how that goes!