Summer, Where have you Gone?

Okay I swear this was the fastest summer on record! I go back to work tomorrow!

I started off the summer by focusing on my social studies textbook and that is DONE.  Turned in and sent to the printers 2 weeks ago.  I sent the lady at the print center a few emails with VERY specific instructions for printing and a cover change color. (from goldenrod to a light yellow)  I'm glad its done and I can't wait to see the finished results.  It should be at the school tomorrow!

In July, I headed out to Utah to visit family.  I spent the first week at my grandparents scanning in over a THOUSAND family portraits. My grandma is big into a family history.  She has four full-size filing cabinets full to the brim of family history.  I'm helping her go digital, but it will take many MANY more man hours.

Here's a picture of Grandma and I about 25 years ago!

  I also had some fun restoring some pictures of some of my ancestors.

These are the before and after pictures of my ancestors the Arnold's.

I scanned in about a kazillion more.  Here are some of my favorites from my family.  Notice how we start to look a little more ragged as the years progress and more kids join the family.

1984 or 1985 (Me as Baby!)

1987 or 1988 (Kate as baby)

1990-ish (Eliza as baby.  I don't even know where my parents are for this picture.)

1991-ish (Chris as baby.  Check out the huge pink ring on my thumb that ruined the whole picture!)

I think my parents stopped sending pictures of the family at this point or they didn't make it into the album that I was scanning, but my parents had two more kids, Shelly and Johnny after this last picture! 

I am going to need to spend more time up there next summer scanning some more pictures because this project is FAR from over.

After a week at my grandparents, we headed over to my in-laws for some rest and relaxation.  We spent a lot of days at their pool, went camping in the mountains, went to a concert, hosted a family reunion, and lots more.

Here are some random pictures from my time there that I took with my new phone.

I admit I was a little obsessed with the chickens!

Fresh eggs every morning! Yum!

New Hair

Lots of pool time with a great view of the mountains at the in-laws

Science Center in SLC

So its seems that summer is officially over. :( I start in my classroom tomorrow and MAYBE this year I'll take before and after shots so you can see how much work it is to set up the room!  Wish me luck!

Dad's Progress on Childhood Home

So I'm blogging from my new phone which I am ABSOLUTELY LOVING. It is amazing and I can do everything on it.
Well the post title says that this will be about my childhood home, so I guess I'll share the pictures that I took today.

About two years ago, my family randomly bought a new house. Now most people when they buy a house, they sell their a old one. Well, not my family. My dad is fixing up the old house so that he and my mom can retire in it. There's nothing wrong with the new house. But the stairs are kinda steep, so he figures it would be better to have a one level house.

The thing that I can't get past is that my dad has been doing this whole project by himself. When I look at it, it just seems crazy. But seeing my dad do this all on his own, makes me feel like I can do anything that I put my mind to like my dad did.

Oh and one last cool thing about my phone. I didn't type a single word for this post. My phone is listening and it's typing for me.

I'm Interesting.. Really!

So I was looking on my camera and I remembered that I've actually done some things as of lately and actually brought my camera.

The first pictures are of a recent camping trip Doug and I took to New Germany State Park in western Maryland. Doug used to go to this campsite as a kid and always talks about it. Now that I've gone, I know why! The park is absolutely breathtaking. We went on several hikes and there were just green ferns everywhere covering the forest ground. We had NO cell phone reception at all, so it was pretty weird being completely cut off from the world... but nice, I guess. I'm still trying to decide if I like sleeping on the ground, but I know FOR SURE that I enjoy campfire food. Whenever we go camping Doug cooks all the meals. The summer he worked at scout camp, he taught the cooking merit badge!

The next pictures are of Brooke and Maggie, the two newest little ladies in my life. Their mom's, Caitlin and Melissa came over and hung out at my place for our weekly Tuesday Girls' Night Out.

The last pictures are of the family room and dinette/kitchen area. I FINALLY, after like 4 years of indecision picked out paint colors that I thought would go well enough together since the rooms border one another. I do have to say that I LOVE the colors, seriously the pictures don't do them justice because it doesn't quite show up as good as it is in person.

Family room

The dinette off of the kitchen painted blue!

These are the two colors next to each other.

Still not done, but it will have to wait until after my trip to Utah.

Summer Update of Randomness

Summer is going well.  I'm staying pretty busy, so that's good.  It's amazing how much better my days go when I have a tutoring appointment to get to.  It keeps me from the all-day pajama days which make me feel loser-ish. I'm making good progress on my textbook as well.

I also started a teacher blog which I'll probably never blog on again, but here's the address if you're interested in checking it out.  My favorite part was actually just putting together the header and designing the page. If anyone wants to redo theirs and they have an idea of what they want, let me know and I would love to create a header graphic for you.  Just putting that out there.

What else... well, Friday night we had this crazy storm.  Doug and I stood in the garage and watched it wreak havoc outside.  At first it was just this crazy lightning storm in the distance and then it came over us and the lightning was turning green.  It was freaky, but really cool to watch.  We heard some transformers blow and a bunch of trees just snapping like toothpicks and blowing by us.  We don't have any big trees near our house, but our two closest neighbors had trees down in their yards. One of my local friends posted this picture on Facebook.  No wonder we lost our power!

Luckily my parents got their power back pretty quickly, so we brought all of our refrigerator and freezer contents over there.  All in all, we only lost our power for 14 hours.  I'm feeling pretty lucky considering that there are many that STILL do not have power and it's like 100 degrees outside.

We then headed over to Doug's Aunt Paula's house for a family reunion/picnic get together.  They didn't have power either, but they had two generators for the refrigerators and they usually grill all of the food anyway.  With all of the storm craziness, I forgot my camera.  I was kicking myself the whole time!  Aunt Paula has 25 acres directly on the Shenandoah river with breathtaking views of the Blue Ridge.  We shot guns, went canoeing, set off fireworks, and just had a great time talking and catching up with one another.  Here are some pictures from last year, so you can get an idea of the awesomeness.

This is Paula's house.  It is absolutely gorgeous inside and out.  I think it was modeled after one of HGTV's dream homes.

Doug and his cousin, Mike, driving around on the property.

  

There is not another single structure in site.  Just the green, rolling mountains of the Blue Ridge.

 Doug is a crack shot.  Here is a picture of him shooting his Glock 9mm.

I've started to prepare for my trip out to Utah, well not really unless THINKING about packing counts.  I leave this Wednesday and I won't be back until the 24th!

As far as trying to get pregnant I feel like time is moving either in slow motion or backward.  I skipped the ovulation predictor kit (OPK) this cycle because I was getting frustrated.  I had done it previous cycles and the doctor had not used the information at all. Well this last Monday, I went in to get some blood work to check my progesterone levels on the Clomid. 

My doctor emailed me with the test results and said that my progesterone levels looked a little low and wanted to know what the results were of the OPK's I did this month.  What??  I had been using them the last few months and no one was using the results.  So this month I skip out and apparently not doing them made my test results inconclusive.  Another wasted month.

Doc says that she wants me to take a break this month while I'm in Utah.  She said that I "sounded a little stressed." Really??

I guess its just that I feel like I'm running out of time.

See this amazing woman below.  It's Doug's grandmother.  His last living grandparent.  I've become pretty close to "JoMa" the seven years that Doug and I have been married.  She's my number one cheerer for getting pregnant.  Doug is the only son of an only son.  This means that he is the ONE to pass down the family name of Doug that has been passed down for generations.

Grandma was diagnosed with colon cancer the year before last.  She's had a rough time going through chemo the last year and they just found out at her last appointment that the cancer has gotten to her lungs. I always hoped that our children would get to know her.  Now, I'm just hoping that I can take a picture of her holding them.

I hate ending on a negative, dramatic note so I'll share something random and positive...

Our cell phone plan is re-upping which means that I get to buy a new phone!  I'm been struggling with my Palm Pre for basically the full two years that I've owned it.  On my tentative schedule tomorrow is me going to pick up a new phone... and I'm thinking about getting the new iPhone 4S.  Most attractive feature at this point is the dual antennas because it will work internationally if we end up moving to Thailand in the next year or two.  Oh yeah and the 8 MP camera doesn't hurt either.

Now I only need to decide if I want in it white or black. :)

Focusing on the Good Times

This particular school year was a tough one for me, the toughest in six years of teaching.  I don't want to say that I had a tough class because I had a bunch of REALLY amazing kids, but I will say that I had a few challenging kids and several conflicting personalities.  I got to the point where there were days like this one when I was leaving school right after the kids and going home to look at other jobs.  Not other teaching jobs, but something entirely out of the teaching profession itself.  I even talked to Doug to see if there were jobs at his work that I might be able to get.  I truly thought that I was done with teaching.

Even when I was a kid, I knew I wanted to be a teacher, it was just a matter of who and what I was going to teach.  My first year of teaching was crazy and overwhelming, but it was MAGICAL.  I got to go to school every day and play with kids!  We did cool experiments, read exciting books, and best of all I got to see the "ah-hah" moment on my students' faces when they finally understood something.

I've come in contact with some, we'll use the term old experienced, teachers in my years.  After working closely with a few, I came to wonder, what happened to them?  Why had they turned so bitter?

This year I started to wonder if that was going to be me.  Was teaching losing its magic for me?  If it was, I wanted to get out of the profession right away.  I always feel bad for the kids that get the teacher that is negative.  I wasn't going to be THAT teacher.

Every year, I take TONS of pictures of my class.  I put them together on a DVD in a slideshow format and add music.  The process always keeps me up the entire night before the last day of school and although I'm incredibly sleep deprived, I'm not sure I'd have it any other way.

The whole process of selecting the pictures, choosing the music, and putting together the slideshow is actually a very reflective process for me.  Now, pictures are a great way to look back at the good times. I mean come on, do you really even take pictures of the bad times?  But, the conclusion that I come to every year, and especially this year, is that we had A LOT of good times and that's what I should focus on.

I handed over my camera a couple of times this year and actually got in a few of the pictures, so I'll share some of my favorites.

Constitution Convention, not a good day for me, but I kept a smile on. I hope it was at least a good day for them.

This is what goes on when I'm not looking.

I LOVE the hand raise here.  Middle and high schoolers don't raise their hand like this!

Learning about series and parallel circuits in class.

End of the Year class party... shouldn't have given THIS teacher the garden hose!

They ended up soaking me, which was fine. BUT I was pretty soaked after school when I accepted my pin for five years in LCPS.

So looking through these pictures and others makes me realize that I'm not ready to retire from the teaching profession just yet.  The "experienced" teachers I mentioned had just FORGOTTEN the magic that we get to experience on a daily basis.

I'm enjoying my summer, but BRING ON NEXT YEAR!  I CAN'T WAIT! :)

Hello Summer!

I won't post much because I'm up way past my bedtime, but I will give a little update.

School is out! I am trying to keep busy this summer. I've taken on a couple students to tutor over the summer, I'm revising the VA Studies textbook I did last summer, I'm going to make my first draft of a science one, and I'm going to Utah for a little while to see my grandparents, my in-laws, and my sister.

What I look at all day.

I started jogging in the mornings last Monday (my first day without kiddos). I've set a schedule where I take breaks on Thursdays and Sundays to give my body time to recooperate. My route is two miles and it usually takes me about nine minutes to get to the one mile point. I go when Doug leaves for work a little after 5 am so it's just me and the deer.

Oh yeah, and I'm still not pregnant. I'm on my second Clomid cycle and continuing to think positively. Maybe THIS will be the month. This August we will have been doing this trying to conceive stuff for the last three years... SO ready to move onto pregnancy/parenthood stuff. I keep on telling my body that it needs to get with the program, so maybe it will start listening soon.

Hot Flash Pedicure Chinatown

I realize that my title is random, but I had a really hard time sticking to a single topic in his blog post.

SO, my hot flashes need to be gone before I can start the Clomid. The Clomid won't work if the Lupron is in my system still. I called the nurse today to schedule an appointment with my doctor. She asked me if I was still experiencing any hot flashes and I was like, "I can't really remember... I had a busy day." So after I hung up with her and then had a hot flash like five seconds later. Seriously?!?

I have a phone appointment this Friday to talk to my doctor and I'm going to refer to my notebook with all the questions. I'm nervous that I'll take the Clomid either too early or too late and mess up my chance to get pregnant one of my three months. I hope there's some sort of blood test that they can do to tell me when I should start. I just don't want my inability to remember when I've had my most recent hot flash mess me up.

So maybe April 1st will not end up being my first Clomid day... I hope the next doctor's appointment will bring some reassuring answers.

Had a bit of a stressful day at work, so Caitlin and I went and got pedicures. Seriously, I LOVE pedicures! I never had one before I lived around these high fulootin northern Virginianers, but NOW I'm seriously addicted. It was the perfect thing to get my mind off of work.

Oh yeah, Doug will be home on Monday!!!!!!!!!!!


Here's one of his latest emails, so you can be jealous with me:

Last night, I decided to visit Chinatown, since I’m trying to cram as much as I possibly can into the next several days. The experience was definitely memorable – first, I walked to the river and took a “water taxi”, which would probably be more appropriately named a “water bus.” It is a long wooden speedboat with very low benches that you hop on at one of the various stops on the river, and then you proceed down the river at a speed that seems well beyond safe. A series of blue tarps strung to hand-drawn pulleys on the sides of the boat prevent you from getting too wet. The ride is a little unsettling, but at ten baht (33 cents) to get across town, it’s cheaper than a taxi or even the BTS skytrain.
 
Once I arrived at the proper stop, I realized Chinatown was not within easy walking distance, so I braved my first tuk-tuk – little three-wheeled contraptions with a driver in the front and a bench seat in the back, powered by either a small motorcycle engine or a large lawnmower engine. Tuk-tuks are named such because the engines make a “tuk-tuk-tuk-tuk-tuk” sound when they’re riding across town. They are also renown for being rip-offs, and this tuk-tuk was no exception – a Thai who spoke remarkably good English told me that for 20 baht, his tuk-tuk driver would take me to see some touristy sites and then to see some “Thai Fashion”, and then ultimately on to my destination of Chinatown. 20 baht is extremely cheap and I know going into it that it’s similar to a timeshare scam, but I go ahead anyway because I want to see it and it’s cheap. I got to see some really cool Buddha statues and temples. “Thai fashion” was, as expected, the hook – a tailor pays this guy to get tourists onto tuk-tuks and into his store so he can sell low-quality tailored suits and shirts. I was able to turn it around and found out that the wife of my salesman worked as a maid for one of the people at the US embassy, and subtly suggested to him that being extremely pushy with me might result in my “good friend” at the embassy finding a new maid, and I was immediately free to leave. The tuk-tuk drove me to my destination with no further sales stops.
 
Chinatown was intense – I think it was moreso since it was an extremely foreign culture inside of another extremely foreign culture. I have a friend at the embassy here who is a native of China, and he warned me that Chinese people are much more rude than Thais and will try harder to rip you off. Sure enough, the first street vendor I visited tried to rip me off by saying the price of the food was 15 baht and then when I gave him a twenty, he said “nooo… fifty baht”, to which I responded that I was not a farang (foreigner) and that I wanted my five baht or else I would call the police. He gave me my five baht and doubled my order for the “mis-understanding.” Sadly, most of the shops were closed by the time I got there, so I will have to visit this Saturday to see some of the famous woodwork that can be purchased for cheap in Chinatown.

Better get back to some REAL work!

Doug

Where do you envision yourself in 10 years?

Yep that's me!  Ten-years-ago-me from an extra little section in my senior yearbook.  I was cleaning the bookshelf in my bedroom the other day when I decided to do a little reminiscing and flip through my yearbook.  I totally forgot about this picture and my answer.  Poor past me... she didn't realize how tough it would be to get pregnant.  

I remember telling my friend that was taking this picture that I would probably have more than *just* two kids in 10 years, but she decided to edit me a little.  I also remember people asking about me getting married because I didn't even mention it... I knew that would happen... I guess I just always dreamed about the being a mom part.

Here, I guess I can edit this a little for accuracy's sake.