Work

I can honestly say that if there is one reason that I have not been posting, it is work. Don't get me wrong, I love my job but it is definitely more time consuming then I ever imagined. The first semester of school for me was a little rough. I found myself questioning if what I spent so much time and effort in college for was really the right thing for me. My days would go from 7 am until late afternoon or early evening. When I would get home, I would have enough time to talk with Caleb for about 10 minutes and then it was off to get more work done for school. It felt like it was never ending. Caleb was a huge support though. I talked with a lot of teachers who said that their marriages struggled a lot because the work never ended. I can completely understand how this could happen. I, however, am really lucky. Caleb has been unbelievably helpful through all of this. Instead of just going into another room and hanging out by himself, he would join me and do whatever it was that I needed him to do. I can't tell you how many nights he would sit on the floor with me and color and cut different activities that I was preparing for my lessons. There were the occasional days he would ask me, "Isn't this what a TA is for?" but he never complained. I guess the most important thing for him is that we were spending time together. How lucky am I?
Things have gotten a lot better since Christmas. I actually feel like I have fallen into a great routine with my kids. They are learning so much and I can really see the progress that I am helping them make. I have one child who is reading and a few more who are so close to reading. It really makes me feel good. I have a new TA who is the most wonderful person ever and I love her very much. I realize now that I do not have to do everything myself. I am able to leave work at a reasonable hour and come home and hang out with Caleb without doing any work for the classroom. Yes there are still several days where I am swamped with paperwork, etc...but there are also days where I put it all aside and just relax. I guess it just took a few weeks off and a nice visit with my parents to realize that there is no point in stressing over things that I cannot control. There were a lot of downs in my first few months as a teacher and I had completely shut myself down. Thanks to Caleb, my parents and my new TA (oh yeah and Powell), I have done a complete 180 and so has my classroom. There is life again and I actually wake up (most mornings...haha) ready to go to school not work. :) I cannot post pictures of my kids online but I will post some pictures of my classroom once the camera charger returns to us.
Caleb's job is going ok. There are a lot of what if's at this point. The economy is taking its toll on Caleb's company. They are making a lot of changes that could affect job security. He now has to work Saturdays which stinks because it is less time we see eachother but we are just both thankful that we have jobs. Caleb has another opportunity that might present itself in the next few months. He is really excited about it and we hope it pans out. I will let him post about it later! :)

Where Does the Time Go?!?

Ok...so I swore to myself that I would keep up with this blog...5 months later...here I am. Things have been rediculously busy over the last few months! I cannot believe it is February, 2009 already. So I guess I will update in a few entries about what has been going on in our lives since I last posted. First things first...

THE HOUSE
We are absolutely loving our new house. It is so nice to come home everyday to a place that you work so hard to have. It is tough work keeping up with everything though. I feel like we constantly clean and it never feels finished. We still have boxes that have not been unpacked from moving over six months ago. I think I am just going to take those boxes to Goodwill and donate them. If they haven't been opened yet, I am sure there is nothing that we would miss too much in them. HAHA!
We have several projects that we are working on at the moment. The biggest is our garage. Right now, it looks like a bomb went off. During our move, it seemed like the general statement was, "Just throw it in the garage, we will get to it later". We started cleaning it out a little in the fall but then the weather got pretty cold and we put it off. Well...it is no longer being put of. I cannot stand to go outside and look at our neighbors with their garages open and so organized. I feel embarassed to have ours open for 10 seconds. My goal is to get the garage so organized that we can pull one of our cars into it. I think we might try our hand at a garage sale and then donate whatever is left after that. Our neighborhood had a community garage sale back in November but we just weren't prepared enough for one at that time. Only a few houses (all in our cul-de-sac) participated but the turnout was great! I think we might try and organize another community garage sale in the spring. I think we will definitely take advantage of the "spring cleaning" this year. Anyway, the garage is just one of several "to do's" we have on our list. Hopefully by this summer, we will have made a dent.
I have some pictures of our house and the pups in the recent snow. We left our battery charger for our camera in Virginia a few weeks ago and the batteries are dead. As soon as we get them back, I will post pictures.