Fall Break '09

Ohhh.....I look at the clock and fall break 2009 is almost over. :( Typically, I travel over fall break but this year I decided to stay around here to save money, stay away from the flu, and spend quality time with my boyfriend. It has been quite wonderful. Thursday I spent the majority of the day catching up on things at my house, running errands, spent some time with my dad, and then had dinner with Pat's family. Friday Pat took a personal day and we spent the day together. We had aspirations of doing lots of 'fallish' things. Like going to a pumpkin patch, getting apple cider, etc. Friday the weather was horrible and it poured the whole day. So that got scratched and we spent the day in South Bend doing lots of random things like going to Lowe's and such. :) Friday night I hung out with my sister in South Bend. Saturday Pat surprised me and we went to the Notre Dame game vs. Boston College. It was COLD and RAINY but we still had a great time. Today my family and Pat's family all had a huge lunch together. It was really fun getting the two families together. Then tonight a bunch of Pat's friends children came over to his house and we made cookies together while their dad's all watched football. It was my goal to spend as little time as possible working on school stuff and grad school over break so that I could spend quality time with Pat. That was accomplished! The next few weeks grad school is going to get really intense again because I have to start working on final projects and the basketball season starts for Pat and he is a head coach for high school so I really cherished our time this weekend. Since we live kind of far apart and both lead very busy lives I have to really value the time that we have together and make the most of every moment. On another weekend note, I bought a new car! I bought a 2008 Jetta....it's beautiful. My car, Cali, has been very special to me and has been a great car but it's time to pass her onto someone who doesn't drive as much. There wasn't anything particularly wrong with my car but if I was going to keep it I would have had to start putting extreme money into it and it's not worth doing that because it's starting to get old. So an amazing opportunity came up to buy this Jetta and it only has 2,500 miles on it so I'm doing it. Everything has just kind of worked out with it! I will probably have it in a week or so once everything goes through with the bank. I'm excited for a new car but am sad to see my car go...:(

Time to breathe again....at least for a few minutes. :)

This past week was absolutely crazy. As many of you know, I have a huge midterm project for one of my classes due at midnight tomorrow night. I had to do a huge data and financial audit of our corporation plus tomorrow I have due 4 quizzes, two case studies, and a paper. Of course, last week did not go as planned at all and all sorts of unexpected events came up out of no where that I had to attend. And then after a full weekend of throwing my boyfriend a housewarming party for 60+ people, attending a birthday party for a precious one year old, and attending a smoker fundraiser I still got it all done. I'm glad to say that this week I just might get some sleep unlike last week. :) Good....just in time to do report cards. :)

Driving time...

Does anyone have any good recommendations of good quality things to listen to while driving besides music? Good podcasts that they have enjoyed? CD's? Books on tape? I'm really open to lots of suggestions...

I find myself driving a lot these days for a lot of reasons. One is because my boyfriend lives an hour away, I've been going to see my family a lot too which all require a great amount of driving. I find myself driving at weird times of night and feel like it's easy for me to 'waste' that time. I would love to find something worthwhile for my mind to feed on during that time because that time my thoughts usually get the best of me and cause me to worry about all sorts of things. I will be driving a lot more here in the nearest future as my boyfriend coaches high school basketball and I will be driving to lots of high school basketball games in northern Indiana.

Thoughts/suggestions? Because I'm just about sick of the radio........

Updates on life....

Life......is pretty crazy busy right now! It's great but I feel like it's busier than ever. Late last winter I constantly had this overwhelming feeling that my life could change quite a bit this year and that there were certain things that I needed to step down from because I wouldn't be able to handle them. I didn't understand what this was about but I trusted it and followed through. OH my I'm glad I did! I was just thinking tonight about how if I wouldn't have done that I don't know what I would have done! Of course, I miss those things that I was involved in that I'm not longer involved in but having sanity is pretty important too!

One of the biggest changes is my grad school work for my admin. lisc. I am on the accelerated track for this program so it's intense. I know that I'll look back one day and be glad that I did it this way but right now I question that. I'm taking 9 credit hours of graduate work right now and each class in itself is very intense....let alone three! I feel like on most days that I barely keep my head above water but I'm managing. I struggle with the balance of everything because I want to be the perfect teacher, student, daughter, sister, friend, girlfriend, etc. etc. etc. but something always has to give. I for sure don't have that balance down right now at all.

I have a super sweet class this year! I'm blessed to have this class with all that I have going on because I can't imagine dealing with lots of behavioral issues right now. I have taken on more leadership positions at our school and am continuing to tutor students in the morning. I love what I do though and am glad to have all the experiences that I can get.

I am running another half marathon with my sister in Fort Wayne this coming Saturday! I can't believe that it's here already! I feel like we're as ready as we'll ever be! I'm looking forward to it a lot. My body has become so used to the longer distance running that it cracks me up. I did a night run last week that would have in the past been tough but I did it without ever thinking twice about it. It's funny what your body can get used too... I'm highly contemplating running a full marathon on November 14th. I overtrained for this half marathon; therefore, I basically trained like I was training for a marathon. It wouldn't be fun but I could continue the training between this race and November 14th and be ready. Every Saturday or Sunday morning in October though would be filled with no so fun distances like 19 miles and such. It's something that I want to do though....who knows why! I think I like the challenge of it and with all that I have going on in my life those runs are something that I look forward to a lot I think it keeps me sane.

I feel like every weekend I have been somewhere fun and exciting. A few weeks ago I went to a Notre Dame football game with my boyfriend and two of his friends. Yesterday we went to a Purdue football game with two of my friends. Both games were lots of fun. I really enjoy athletic events like that! At yesterday's game we were surrounded by such fun people! Each of us had awesome people sitting beside us. The couple sitting beside me knew some of the same people that I did....crazy small world! I'm going to another Purdue game in October vs. Ohio State with my dad. I went on a fishing trip with my dad last weekend....too fun. We grew up fishing all the time with my dad so I went with him just the two of us. It was a lot of fun and we got to have really good conversation that we don't usually get to have because there are too many other people around.

Current Challenge

So if you know me well I always seem to have a goal or such that I'm working toward. I have multiple right now but the most recent is more of a challenge/competition. My boyfriend and I have made a challenge to see who can go the longest without drinking pop.....so far so good. :) He drinks a lot of pop and wanted to try to stop but needed the accountability so we decided to do it together. We're both a little competitive so we decided to make this challenge a little interesting. The person who loses (which won't be me!) has to do something that they definitely don't desire to do at all. If I lose I have to go hunting with him, which he loves, and I have no desire to do. If I win he will be running a half marathon with me.....let's just say he's a football/baseball player and definitely not a runner. At this rate, it could be a long long time before I have pop again because neither of us will give in.

What a Great Summer!!

Well it looks like the summer of '09 is wrapping up! It was such a great, great, great summer. Despite the fact that I taught summer school pretty much all summer and did the grad school thing I still had an amazing time doing lots and lots and lots of fun things. Since the last update here are some fun things that I have done:

~Went sky diving!!!! Woohoo!! :) It was so awesome--I loved it! We had such an incredibly fun/random weekend! I'm blessed to have friends/sister that are very spontaneous, fun, and pretty much just awesome. I would highly recommend that you go sometime!

~Went to Texas for a few days with Laura to visit Chelle and work on wedding stuff. The trip was great--the drive....not so much. Fortunately, Laura is fun to travel with so we made it fun. We told lots and lots of stories, learned lots of random stuff about each other's lives, memorized parts of the bible (not joking!), played games, and called anyone that would possibly be up at 2:00 a.m. to keep us entertained. There were some rough stretches but we did it. The good news--that trip was so cheap it was ridiclous since we drove!

~Taught summer school at Valley. Yep, it was challenging as it always is but we made it!

~Went to the Dunes for the day with my bf, and two of my lovely friends. We had a great time and it was great weather.

~Went to more weddings......with still more to come.

~Went camping last weekend at Potato Creek State Park--the weather was awful. Absolutely awful. I was never so glad to see my bed and air conditioning again in my life!!! But we had fun! My boyfriend and I went with his best friend's family. We made it fun but I would rather sleep in my bed than on the ground. :)

~Went to a casino for the first time in my life. We went to Four Winds Casino in New Buffalo, MI. It is so big and so nice. I'm not much for gambling or the thought of losing money in general. But I just wanted to go once to say I had been. It was fun but I have no burning desire to return.

~Now I'm wrapping up the summer and ready for a new, fresh group of fifth graders! What is fun is I have already had some of these kids before when I taught 3rd grade. It's definitely going to be a good year. :) I will be taking three grad classes on top of working full time so we'll see how that goes. I have loved the past few weeks of not needing to worry about classes. It has been glorious!!! Classes start again a week from Monday. I'm glad that I still have that week so that I can get going at school and such. The first week is always tough. Two of my classes will be completely online and then one will be internet broadcasted every Tuesday from 4-7 p.m. so I will just stay at school till 7 on those nights.

~I have some more running events coming up. I'm running a 15K in two weeks with my friend Jill at the Blueberry Festival in Plymouth. Then running a half marathon in Fort Wayne at the end of September and then have a wedding in Muncie that afternoon--awesome. My sister and I are going to do a half marathon together in November in Columbia City so that will be way fun. Training for this half marathon has been really different than my last one. Probably because I know that I can do it and I just did one in May. I've still been training and all but not as hardcore. I have a ten mile run this weekend. I think that I'm going to solicit people to do it with me early Saturday or Sunday morning to get it over with.

~Some other random/fun things that I already have planned for the fall are: going to a Cubs game in a few weeks, taking my dad to the Purdue vs. OSU football game, going to other Purdue football games, ..... :)

Summerness....:)

So the summer of '09 is in full swing and it's flying by! :( I can't believe that tomorrow is JULY 1st!

**Today was the last day of the first round of summer school for me. I taught upcoming 4th grade kiddos. It was a blast....I loved it as always! I had a lot of kids but they were super fun but I must admit that today when it was time to go I realized how much they needed a break because they haven't had a break at all from school yet! We accomplished a lot in the past several weeks and I saw awesome awesome growth in all of them. I taught with an awesome team this year, which also made every day a lot of fun because we could just laugh at the craziness around us!

**I have a small amount of time off, which I'm super grateful for because I need a little bit of a break. I am one who still loves routine and structure, which is why I love still having summer school but I'll be glad for a few days to catch up! Tomorrow I have to go to Valley to plan out the summer school curriculum there so the 'catching up' will start in a few days. :)

**I am done with one grad class that I loved! It was my intro to educational administration class and I loved it. My other class will end at the end of July and let's just say I don't love it... It's one of the toughest courses in the whole program and it's just plain hard. Nothing about it is easy. I'll be throwing a party when it's over I'm pretty sure! I plan on focusing on it hard core next week to get ahead because I haven't been able to get ahead on it all summer because there is so much to do for it.

**In other news this summer has been awesome! I went to the Rascal Flatts concert at Verizon with Ash at the beginning of June and it was wonderful! And got to visit other college friends that weekend as well!

**The following weekend I sporadically went to Chicago to a concert with my friend Jill...it was so awesome! She had participated in the Avon Breast Cancer walk (39.3 miles!) the prior weekend and received two free Kenny Chesney concert tickets to Soldier Field. Little did we know that there were 7 bands that played until we got there! We got there at 3:00 and left at 1:00 in the morning! And they were all awesome.....Lady Antebellum, Sugarland, Kenny, and tons others....it was so much fun!

**I'm trying to get my act together and get running again consistently. I signed up for the Fort Wayne half marathon last week! It has been so hot and let's face it I haven't been getting up early before summer school. During the normal school year I get up really early and run/workout before school. There is so much social stuff going on in the summer and it always seems like the alarm clock loses and my pillow wins because I'm out and about later. I'm going to try to start getting up earlier again and getting the run over with because I like when I do that anyways.

**My school officially has a new principal for next year...he's awesome. I'm excited about next year in a lot of different ways...it's going to be good!!

**I can't believe that this weekend is 4th of July! I have a ton of parties/cookouts! I need to make a plan of how to make them all actually! And I have a yearly tradition of running the 5K in Akron...at my alma mater! :) I grew up in one very small town but they throw awesome 4th of July celebrations....in fact people come from all over to participate. It's pretty cool. I have a weird tradition of running the 5K at my old elementary school and it's fun to see people and then go to my parent's cookout followed by a ton of other parties. I guarantee that I will do better in this year's 5K than I did in last year's. Last year I had just done the triathlon and my body was not recovered at all! I finished it.....barely.

**My sister, Ash, Jill, and I go skydiving in a week....ah!!! :) Followed the next day by a trip across the country with Laura to visit Rachelle in Texas! Both Laura and I also have friends from college who live in Austin so we are all going to have dinner together with them one night, which will be a lot of fun! :)