Ready or Not--The Mini Is Here!

I can't believe it but the mini is finally here! When I started training for the mini it seemed forever away but it's in two days! I have tomorrow off work as we are leaving in the early afternoon hours to get to Indy, register for the race, check into our hotel, and dine at Bravo. Regardless of what time I get I'm excited to be doing it and have definitely trained a ridiculous amount for this race! I'm just hoping for really great weather--we haven't had any of that this week!

This week has been nutty--holy cow. I'm exhausted but I'm so tired that I can't sleep--I hate that feeling! I just returned from South Bend. I went up after work tonight and took my sister shopping for a dress, shoes, etc. for her graduation! We were extremely successful (not that there were any doubts!) and conquered the whole look within one store! Of course it was at our favorite store...Maurices! One thing that I appreciate greatly about that store is that the sales people there are awesome and so helpful. It didn't take long and they had put together the whole thing for Heather--dress, sweater, necklace, earrings, bracelet, and shoes. I was just glad that we didn't have to go to fifty five stores to find a dress!

This was our last week of ISTEP--it was the third time that the kids have tested ISTEP this year and we are DONE! Praise God! I can't believe how close we are getting to the end of the school year too!

We finally had our first track meet this week (since last week's was rained out!) and WON! Both boys and girls won, which is awesome. This track season is flying by usually they seem to take a while but not this one!

I got my Ipod back today and just in time for the weekend of the mini! It was a huge/frustrating fiasco of me getting it back but it's here now! I was not a huge fan of Fed Ex after it was all said and done!

I started the process of refinancing my house tonight. The rates are almost two percent lower than when I purchased my home--that's a huge amount! So that process should be over by the end of May. I'm grateful to have an awesome mortgage officer--she's amazing and makes it really easy.

I have a huge weekend ahead--obviously the mini, then I'm headed to Indiana Wesleyan in Marion to watch my sister run for a while (no rush on getting there though because she doesn't run till 6 p.m.!), spending the night at my parents, then we are all headed to South Bend along with my Grandma on Sunday morning for my sister's college graduation! We will then all go out to dinner afterwards with a few of her closest friends and her boyfriend. I'm sure I will shed a few tears at this event--I can't believe that my 'little' sister is officially done with school!

Random Updates...

**The past two weeks have been crazy crazy. This time of year is always like this--everything is going on all at once and you feel like you are always spinning out of control! We are gearing up for ISTEP again at school for next week--I can't believe this will be the third time this year that we have taken that test! This week we are just trying to stay as sane as possible with a field trip on Friday to Kids Healthworks and every afternoon the kids are presenting their state projects that they have been working on for months. They are all on the computers and they turned out so good--I'm proud of those kids! I can't believe that it's almost May and that soon the school year will be winding down! Where does the time go??

**Check out this You Tube video. I had my kids watch it in class today--we were doing a little lesson on how to treat other people. Some of us needed reminded of how to do that well. The kids of course thought it was hilarious but then had a lot of really insightful comments after it about how we judge people in our society. The rest of the day they were a lot more careful about what they were saying and how they were saying things--I was so grateful.

**I've had a Grace College student in my class for the past few months. She's a freshman and when she started she was uncertain as to if she wanted to be a teacher. She was so so so great--we couldn't have asked for a better fit! Today was her last day and the kids adored her--she did make a decision through this process to become an elementary teacher and I'm super excited for her.

**Tonight was supposed to be our first track meet but unfortunately the rain won and we didn't get to run. :( That was frustrating because the kids were so excited and as coaches we had put so much prep and work into getting ready for tonight....oh well. Hopefully next week the weather is better for a meet....in the meantime we'll practice a lot....:)

**I am seriously contemplating getting a treadmill for here at my house and getting rid of my Y membership. I love the Y but the money adds up and I could easily have a treadmill for what I pay per year. It would be really convenient to be able to get up in the morning and just work out here...we'll see. I've been looking online and then a friend encouraged me to just post something on facebook and it looks like that might be the ticket. With grad school starting I'm trying my best to free up a few dollars or cents.

**The mini is next weekend--can't believe it!!!! I just can't believe that it's here already! I feel like I'm as ready as I will ever be...I could probably train for another month and still wouldn't be satisfied. I did the 12 mile run last Friday and it was good so I think I'm set. The next two weeks are a lot easier training wise with tapering. I'm also trying to do some other things as well because I pulled a crazy muscle in my side last week and hadn't been in that much pain for some time......I just overdid it. I've been going to lots of spinning classes and am going to a Hip Hop class at a new fitness studio tomorrow after work. If all goes well with this mini I think that I might want to do the mini in Fort Wayne in September--one thing at a time though. :)

**My ipod died an unfortunate death....I've only had it since January--how frustrating. On the 12 mile run it just quit. It's dead! I'm waiting on the box from Apple to come so that I can send it in. Fortunately, I stil have my old trusty MP3 player......

**My sister, Heather, graduates from college next weekend too! I can't believe it at all!!! She still has 3 weeks of track after that so she isn't all the way done but done with classes! She qualified for Nationals for track in the A Standard Division, which is amazing. So she will be traveling to St. Louis the week before Memorial Day. I'm super excited for her--what a great way to end your senior year of college!

**I'm officially scraping some things off my plate in terms of commitments....it's way past time. I felt like all last week I kept saying to myself, "Something's gotta give." Two commitments I know of for sure that I'll finish them up (they end in like a month) then I'm done. I just have too much going on and want to make sure that I keep everything in balance.

Whew!

The first day back after break always is exhausting and I always forget just how exhausting it is! This one proved no differently....after a little over 12 hours at work today I'm completely spent! It's always entertaining to me though what kiddos 'forget' or conveniently forget over vacation. I just had to laugh at nearly half the questions I answered today. One of my favorite moments of today (was not sitting in a 2 hour long PTO budget meeting) but this morning the kids were having a spanish lesson. They have spanish names on cute little passports for them during these times. We did a spelling test afterwards and over half of them wrote their spanish names on their papers but I don't have their spanish names memorized so I didn't know whose spelling test was whose. When I asked them about it one said, "We are just trying to express our pesronalities in a new way." Oh my.....:)

Hopefully tomorrow it won't be so dreary, cold, and rainy that will help too and then we can actually have track practice since we have a meet in a week--yikes!

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Too too funny!!!

My sister and I text a lot......and I mean a lot! She was texting me today because she wasn't able to come home for Easter at all because of a track meet but she qualified last night for A Standard for Christian Nationals in St. Louis in May--so excited for that girl! When she was texting me she said that she saw on facebook that someone was engaged. She didn't include a last name when she texted me so I assumed it was her friend that my whole family knows well but she meant our cousin. After we cleared up the confusion I got a text a few hours later that her friend (who I thought it was in the first place) got engaged today. Apparently, I'm prophetic or something....haha!

I'm back!

I'm officially back from spring break 2009! Wow, what a great spring break and now it's back to reality! Ashley and I had an amazing time in the Bahamas....loved it!!! We had amazing weather and had an amazing time catching up, relaxing, soaking in the sun, reading (a LOT!), and laughing! Pictures to come!!

I had a super busy Easter weekend! I got back Friday night from the trip and got things ready to have the high school girls over for breakfast on Saturday morning. It was super fun though and we spent several hours catching up and laughing at each other's lives! As soon as they left around 1:00 it was time for me to get cleaned up from my 11 mile run that morning (the mini is in 3 weeks!) and get to Grandma's lake house for the Braman family Easter. It was super great and it was super great for it to be back at Grandma's house. I enjoyed catching up with family on what's going on in their lives! We had a family breakfast this morning and took much needed naps this afternoon! Then I came back to my house to work on getting things under control from being gone--mowed my yard for the first time of the year (it was out of control when I got back), cleaned, paid bills, sorted through stacks of mail, ran, worked on some stuff for school. Now it's back to reality!

Bahama Bound!!

Yay--the stretch from Christmas to spring break is officially over as of 4:00 p.m. tomorrow!!!! Shortly after my kiddos leave the room I am going to be Bahama bound! Woohoo!!! I'll be back just in the nick of time for Easter shenanigans for some of my high school friends' annual Easter breakfast at my house and then lots of family stuff!

I did finally go to the doctor tonight after track practice because that 'lovely' cough I have had for nearly three weeks is out of control! Low and behold, I have bronchitis just like nearly half my class. Thank goodness for good meds though--hopefully they do the trick fast. I would really just like to sleep well again and not cough throughout the night!

Off to packing for the cruise--yay!!!!!