Good questions to ponder...

Our church service this morning was so great and everything that was said was exactly what I needed to hear but there were a few questions presented that have me really thinking....

**How is God using my current circumstances to show himself through me?

**What is going to be 'different' about me and how am I going to choose to be different?

Super excited!

Yay! So I found out some things that I have coming up that I'm super excited about!

One of my best friends from high school is in seminary in Kentucky and I got to see her today and rarely get to see her. Another one of my best friends from high school, Angela, and I are going to take a weekend road trip to go see her in January! She lives in a tiny tiny town but it is pretty close to Lexington but the three of us have always made everything fun. I love going and visiting people!

It was soooo good to sit and talk with her today and learn what the Lord is doing in her life.....I just love hearing about stuff like that!

One of my friends from college always has a 'Holiday Movie Extravaganza' at her house in Chicago every December and every year I have had a conflict i.e. family Christmas, staff party, etc. and this year I can go! Yay! There was a group of us that all lived together for a few years and there's like 17 people in this group and they were/are so much fun!

I signed up today for the mini marathon in Indy for this upcoming May! I'm excited about it and the process of training for it! I debated whether it was the right decision to focus my energy/attention onto that because it's really easy for me to become obsessive about training for things and that's unhealthy but I'm going to be intentional about making sure this time is way different because ultimately the Lord wants us to be healthy and active but not obsessive about those things....it took me a lot of years to figure that out and I regret it so much.

The low part of break was I discovered that I have to have a very expensive part of my heating/cooling system replaced and it will be replaced as soon as the company can get the part in.....ugh the unexpected joys of home ownership. I was going to decorate outside for Christmas......but due to this expense I decided that wasn't a responsible decision and so my great dad gave me an outside Christmas tree that is super cute and kind of big so that I had something outside because it seems like all my neighbors all going all out with lights/decorations. :)

...

Check out this horrible story... It makes me think a lot about where our priorities are and apparently they aren't in line with what they are supposed to be.......:( It makes me just want to buy everything online and stay out of the stores.....

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aviWbQ4bOa1w&refer=home

Mmm...vacation!

So it hit me today that I'm really ready for Thanksgiving vacation! 3 days!!!!! In my family Thanksgiving is relatively low key because we start having family Christmas parties in two weeks. But I'm so looking forward to just spending time with my family and doing the random things that we do like go shopping on Friday. Every year we claim we'll never do it again but then for some reason we show back up.....:) I'm almost done with my Christmas shopping (I'm a planner to the core) so I just go for fun! :)

Hilarious!

So I have the funniest kiddos in my classroom! The past few days we needed a little break from 'routine' so another teacher in my team and I randomly came up with the idea of "Thanksgiving Carols". We decided we would have the kids pick a Christmas Carol as a model and then write a Thanksgiving Carol instead..... They sang them today and some of them were SO funny.

At school yesterday someone else in my team discovered this AWESOME new website called
www.wordle.net

It is awesome! It basically makes a collage of words that you put into the text box and the more times you enter a word the bigger it becomes. You can play around with the fonts, colors, sizes, etc. It's fun!

Thankful Thursday....

So it's been a rough night but it's been a rough few weeks......things can only build up for so long before they hit you all at once and that's exactly what happened. But I'm going to focus on the things that I am SO thankful for today....

**My AMAZING group of girlfriends and our Thursday night bible study. Tonight we talked a lot about vulnerability as women and I am so grateful to have girlfriends that are in a similar place in life with their walk with the Lord that I can be vulnerable around and they know where I am coming from because they know my heart. So often, I don't like being vulnerable. I love other people being vulnerable around me and I love listening to other people but for some reason it's hard for me to do it on the other end.
**The Holiday Season! I love how when I went into Courthouse Coffee today that Christmas music was playing, there are Christmas movies on tv, and my beautifully decorated Christmas trees in my home. It makes my heart happy!
**That weeks are cyclical that we get two days off work each week for a reason so that we can start new. It is a even more definite reminder of how the Lords promises are new every morning....
**The BEAUTIFUL SNOW! :)
**A warm home.....it's amazing what we take for granted
**For a friend from North Carolina visiting this weekend!
**For having an awesome Thanksgiving dinner at my house next Tuesday evening with a bunch of really really great friends

Life Changes....

Today must be the day for going to the doctor......I have countless family members and friends that had serious doctor appointments today... so many that I just spent nearly three hours talking to people and finding out how they all went. Needless to say, none of them were too great. Granted they could have been worse but they could have been a lot better. For all these people in my life their health has turned completely on them in the past month. It's amazing how life can change all of a sudden..... I feel so burdened for all these people because I love them so much but ultimately there isn't anything I can do for them except love them and make sure that I'm as emotionally filled as possible so that I can give as much of myself as possible. Sometimes when it rains it pours...........

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions...

Wow, I feel like I have been making a lot of huge huge decisions lately, which is fine but this one I'm stuck on...

I'm planning on starting my masters degree next summer through Ball State University so that I can do it online...I would start sooner but I need to be pretty intentional about saving up for this so that I don't incur unnecessary debt. I can't decide what exactly to get my master's degree in....there are so many options and I can see myself potentially taking advantage of so many different options! There is a program specifically just for elementary education, which would be the quickest and cheapest way to get my masters.

But there is also a reading specialist masters program, which is just two extra classes...

A gifted and talented masters program that I could totally see myself doing as well....

Many people want me to go into the masters program for administration, which I always wanted to do and still may...

Last week my principal sent me a program option through Ball State to take a class to mentor brand new teachers.

Ultimately, I could see myself doing so many things in the future which I think is what makes this decision hard. What I would really really like to get my masters in is counseling to be a lisc. counselor but I just can't do that at this point in my life because those programs are intense and pretty much you have to quit your job, which I can't do. I LOVE LOVE LOVE my job but I want to make sure that I am very marketable in other areas too in the future because you never know what can change. Or maybe one day I'll be a stay at home mom and won't even have to worry about it.....:) HA! I just know that I definitely want to do my masters now before I have a family because I saw first hand from my parents that the two don't combine well.....:)

Love It!!

The Lord has me in an intense season of growing/changing right now, which is always an interesting journey. We are always growing and changing whether we are seeking Christ or not and the road always looks different but it seems like the road I've been on lately is looking different all the time and quickly. About a year ago the Lord kept telling me over and over again to get ready because big changes were coming...of course I just assumed they would be changes that I would pick. But that wasn't the case at all......they were changes that I would have never dreamed of and half the time don't really want but that's because they don't fit in a neat little box with a bow on top. Sometimes I get into little stages where I'm not sure if I'm ready for all the changing and growing that the Lord is doing in me but then I'm reminded that He chose me specifically. Over the past year I have been getting little snippets/previews of what this is going to look like and it has been exciting and honestly scary. Last week it hit me that either I'm in or out and obviously chose in... I love when the Lord confirms so many things because sometimes I need confirmation desperately. Tonight a great friend of mine and I went to an amazing teaching, which I honestly didn't really want to go because it was long and I have a million things I need to get done this week and just have a lot going on but the Lord started on me at about 3 in the morning last night that I would be going. It was so cool to learn amazing new things but also to receive so many amazing confirmations. So many things that have been said to me from other people, prayed over me, revelations in scripture, dreams, etc. were exactly the same as things spoken tonight. Sometimes I just need that.... My favorite thing that I was reminded of tonight is that I'm not a banana but instead an onion.....that I have layers and layers of things in my life that I have to work through with the lord to get to the center that I can't just peel everything off in one try. That right now is a perfect reminder for my life and so amazing because I have had that visual lately a lot for other people going through some rough stuff. I never cease to be amazed by the Lord!!

Thoughts from this weekend...

I just had an extremely event/fun/emotional weekend but have a lot of thoughts from it.

I had a sleepover for my elementary small group girls on Friday night at my house. It was so much fun..definitely got a little crazy but that's ok. I'm so grateful that the Lord has entrusted me to so many different types of children. Around 1:00 in the morning they decided that it would be appropriate to have a worship time. They were awesome during it and afterwards we talked about things going on in our lives. One girl told the story of how she was adopted, which is a huge testimony of God's amazing power to save. But so many of the girls told little snippets of things that they are going through personally and it was so interesting because they were things that I didn't start dealing with until I was almost in high school. There is so much pressure on our girls right now because of media and such and it makes me so sad but I'm so grateful that I can relate and encourage young girls in the right direction.

As soon as the last girl left on Saturday I immediately left for Carmel where one of my best friends lives. The timing of going down there was amazing because there was so much on both of our hearts that we wanted to talk about. We did lots and lots of fun things but perhaps my favorite was sitting in Panera once I got down there and just processing through some of the things going on in our lives right now. I love how women always get each other and how we don't really need to tell the whole story because they already know. I love how the Lord helps give us accountability to other people in our lives for so many different areas of our lives. We did lots of fun things though like going to her church's holiday craft bazaar and took care of some Christmas shopping, went to see the movie "The Secret Life of Bees", went to Zionsville to visit her sister, brother-in-law, and their baby, frequented Starbucks, church, the mall, and Cheesecake Factory....but perhaps the best of all is that we figured out what we are going to do for spring break! We have traveled on spring break together for the past 6 years and every year we do something amazing because we both really want to look back on this season of our lives and have no regrets and know that we took advantage of every moment of it! So we are going on a cruise to the Bahamas! :) I am SO excited!! We found a good deal and instead to Orlando we are going to drive because it is going to save us a ton of money! It will be a 4 day cruise and will get back just in time for us to celebrate Easter with our families. Yay!

I went to Rochester after leaving Indy to visit Grandma and did her grocery shopping, ran all her errands, and sat with her for a while. I didn't spend the night tonight but probably will for about half this week...I'm still trying to recover my sleep from last week. I have always been one to try to invest into others/love others the best that I possibly can and watching someone go through stuff like this reminds me of how important that is. I am glad that I have a passion for serving others and trying to remain as selfless as possible.

My friend's mom was reminding me of her favorite saying this weekend that she instilled in all her kids and I think it may become my new favorite saying:

Use it up
Wear it out
Make Due
Do without

I'm definitely trying to live like that more than ever right now and not get caught up in 'stuff' because ultimately it doesn't matter at all but loving others is what really matters.

Funny Kids

I have the funniest kids in my classroom! I have a major rule about saying certain words i.e. stupid, shut-up, jerk face, sucks, putting the word God in front of any negative word, etc. The list could go on forever because kids at this age say these words all the time to each other and hear it everywhere. I have a student in my class who is very academically smart but also hilarious and good at finding the loop hole in rules. Today she was mildly annoyed with another kid and she said, "You do the 'tupidest' things. It's funny to me how it drives them nuts not be able to use those words....:)

Precious...

Sometimes I think we start taking life for granted and these past several weeks have made me really re-evaluate that... I guess sometimes I need a good reminder that this is not our home and was never intended to be our home but it never makes it any easier when people are taken from our lives. I know so many people that have lost loved ones recently and I have a loved one whose health is slipping quickly. We take for granted so many ordinary things everyday that we don't even consider to be a big deal but when you can't do them anymore, don't have the energy for them, or don't remember how to do them it causes quite a dillema. I've been helping out/living with my grandma this week and it's so hard to see her ready to go but I'm so incredibly grateful that I know where her 'home' is and that she will be taken at the perfect time. My grandad suffered for a really long time when he was preparing to pass away and I don't want that for her and hope that it doesn't turn into that situation. It really makes me remember that we need to be so intentional in expressing our love towards people everyday because we don't know the plans for our lives or for others and it can be different in a moment's notice. It's always such a good reminder when people hit this stage in life that the things that we worry about on a daily basis: money, career advancement, material possessions, status, body image, etc. aren't at all important anymore whereas just doing the necessary things like eating and sleeping are at the top of the priority list... It's a good reminder that we can't add a day to our lives by worrying about those things and just how precious life is....

Random Thoughts...

So I was on a run this afternoon, which turned more into a walk but that's ok. :) I was trying to process through some things that have been going on lately in my life and in other people's lives that I am deeply burdened for and was just really handing them over to the Lord. I realized how often in our world that we feel 'responsible' for other people's actions/decisions when ultimately it's not out fault or responsibility. Instead it's more the effect of their own personal decisions. The Lord kept bringing up times in my life when I felt responsible for uncontrollable situations that were never my responsibility in the first place. Interesteringly enough, most of those times were a result of things that people said to me that made me feel that way even at an extremely young age. I guess I was so reminded about the power of people's words especially to our kids that so often we are saying things that make them feel like things are their responsibility/faults and it's so good to become more aware of that as a whole.