Spring and Summer Fashions

One of the advantages of being on the west coast is getting a glimpse of the up and coming fashions and trends. It is always interesting to see what *new* things will be marketed this season! So, without further ado let me inform you of a few trends that I have observed this spring. You can expect these fashions to be coming to your area soon!

Fashions!
Prepare yourselves for the comeback of the... overalls! These showed a slight upwards trend last summer, but most people just looked at them with surprise and amusement. Well, they are back this year and I have actually seen several people wearing them! Both pants and shorts versions are available. Dark denim and washed out denim are options. Fortunately I have not seen any acid washed overalls yet though! :) Another shocking comeback is the jumpsuit! I can just hear you now...

*gasp* "No!" 

But yes, they really are back. They are not only in the stores but I have seen them being worn frequently, even more often than overalls. They come in all sorts of patterns and lengths. I have seen full length jumpsuits (which remind me of clown suits really!) and then the short-sleeve/shorts version. The shorter version is definitely more popular. Another, more general trend this year is the vintage styles in clothing. This seems to include lighter weight shirts with some embroidery around the necklines and hems. Horizontal stripes and polka dots are some of the more popular patterns this year in fabric this year.

Another trend I have seen this year, although not a fashion clothing trend, is a car color. Many newer cars that I am seeing driven on the roads in the greater Seattle area are a deep brown... almost burgundy color. It is actually a very rich and luxurious color. It will be interesting to see if it catches on and is added to the common color swatch for cars.


Summer Plans
The school year is over and summer has begun. I did a little re-arranging in my classroom and have put a few ideas for next year on the back burner to simmer all summer long. But for now I am just ready to rest and relax after this school year. :)

My new library area in my classroom. This is what you see now looking in at the door. I'd like to make some pillows for the floor. :)

The Seattle area summer weather is absolutely glorious. It really makes me sad that I am going to miss it! I am thankful that I had the privilege of experiencing it for four or five weeks before heading out for the summer. My main goals this summer are to visit family and work on my "current reads" shelf.

I realized that I had too many books that I have not finished yet. So this summer I'm going to try and finish most of these books. :) We'll see how far I get!

My cousin Mary flew up to Seattle and spent a few days with me there. Then we flew together back to her new home in Arizona.

Enjoying Molly Moon's ice cream in Seattle with one of my favorite people. I'm so glad Mary came to visit me in Seattle!!!

We have enjoyed a couple of days together in the dry heat of Arizona already. :) I'm hoping to avoid a sunburn while I'm here! ;-) Mary and her husband Caleb have been quite consistent in pointing out the advantages of living in Arizona. I have an inkling that they are trying to get me to move here... ;-)

This weekend I will be attending the Building Tomorrow's Church Conference here in Arizona, then I will spend another week with Mary and Caleb before flying to Indiana. I am so looking forward to being with my family! It is the hardest thing in the world to be apart from those who you love most. There is peace in knowing that you are where God has you, but peace is not necessarily synonymous with easy. In fact I rather think that "peace" and "ease" are rarely found together. In mid-August I will head back to Washington. I am planning on visiting Victoria, B.C. with a couple of other teachers from the school. This is a "just for fun" trip that I have been wanting to take since I moved here. I've heard that Victoria is both gorgeous and a darling place to visit.

Then my summer will be nearly over. I'll have about a week to unpack, deal with my car a little bit more, get together with a few people, and acclimate myself back into the Seattle weather, traffic patterns, driving times, and prepare myself for the school schedule.

Teacher work week is the last week in August and school begins September 2nd. I'm looking forward to a beautiful and refreshing summer.

Sunday Thoughts

I really, really enjoyed being with my family for Christmas. First of alll, I got to spend time with some of my most favorite people! Secondly, I got to spend time with some of the most awesome people. And thirdly, I got to spend time with some of my awesomest and favoritest people! Parents and siblings and cousins and nephews! I was sad that I didn't get to see my oldest sister and her family though. :(

Little bro is so tall!!!

It started snowing as I drove to the airport to head back to Seattle. I ended up waiting for a good 7 hours in the South Bend airport before even boarding a place. 

This is my "YAY! I'm-finally-on-a-plane-and-I hope-we-get-to-take-off!" face. :)

After another 30-40 minutes of waiting on the runway we did get to take off and go to Chicago. Even though I had missed my original connection in Chicago (by 4 or 5 hours), God was so kind as to give me a seat on another plane that had been delayed in taking off. Once I got to Chicago I had another 4 hours of waiting in the airport before we boarded the plane. Snow does crazy things to airports! I ended up getting into Seattle at 4am on Monday morning. I didn't end up going to school that day. ;-)

Made it back to Seattle! Yay! And then got a haircut. :)

Autumn is gone... long gone really. Winter was already here. Now I'm fairly certain that winter is on it's way out giving way to spring rains. The picture of the dusting of snow in my previous post was all the snow that we saw this year. It's always possible that we'll get another dusting, but it doesn't seem likely to me. I'm sitting at the window as I write this, and looking out I see vibrant green grass that needs to be cut again. It only dulled in its bright hue for a few weeks, but never got to the dull brown that the midwest sees during the bleak mid-winter. I awake in the mornings to birds twittering outside my window. Such a cheerful waking-up sound! We've been getting lots and lots of rain lately. Not just the constant autumn/winter drizzle, but rather some good heavy downpours. The rain pounding on the ground is a very pleasant sound but I really feel that I need a good dose of bright, warm sunshine. So much so that I was actually checking weather reports down in Oregon and on the east side of the Cascades to see if it would be worth a Saturday drive. Alas, they were cloudy and rainy too.

One of our recent spring rains. It is coming down hard!

It has been a really bad cold and flu season here. I'm still a young teacher, so I'm not surprised that I've been getting sick a lot, but it sure is exhausting and annoying! ;-) Someone at church commented on the fact that I've been sick a lot and went on to say they were concerned about my "fragile health". Well... that is certainly the first time I have ever had my health described that way. Typically I say that overall I'm really healthy. I'd rather think of it as a young teacher building up her immune system. ;-) Truth be told though, I have been perpetually fatigued the past couple of months. Just absolutely beat by the time three o-clock rolls around each day. It is probably in part just that I've been fighting bug after bug, and probably in part that my job has been emotionally demanding, but it finally dawned on me that probably the biggest slice of the puzzle is that I have been lacking Vitamin D! Last year I was consciously thinking about how I needed to be ready for the lack of sunshine and how I needed to be taking vitamin D to supplement for the lack of sunshine. I didn't get sick as much last year and definitely wasn't as tired. I began taking it again this week so hopefully I'll see an upswing in energy and general health. ;-) Perhaps a dose of sunshine is in order to jumpstart my energy again. I wonder what the forecast in Arizona is for this next weekend...

I am still loving where I'm living. The family that I live with is such a blessing to me on a daily basis. It continues to amuse me just how similar my growing up years were to the kids of the family. The books on the shelves could have come from my parents library. Movies that we watched when we were little... traditions through the holidays... even phrases our parents used! Anyways, all that to say that I am feeling very blessed and very at home with where I'm living this year. Please begin praying with me as I begin to look for my next living arrangement as this one is just temporary. I can stay until December, but know that the summer is typically the best time to move. 

On another note, I think the school year is getting easier. Over Christmas break I took a lot of time to reflect on why I was struggling and none of what I came up with was surprising. It was a lot of what I had already verbalized, but had not yet thought through completely how it was affecting my every day living and teaching. Upon returning to school in January I resolved to switch my focus from trying to get everything done, or even what I though was important done, and instead focusing on just living out each day in love. I decided to switch from trying to get through the lessons and loving as I went to loving as I went and letting the lessons be the vehicle of how I went through the day. I had to actually say to myself that for the month of January it didn't matter how much I got through. I needed to just focus on loving my 21 students. And you know what? It made a huge different in my stress levels. Living love, letting curriculum just be the means. The class size is still a huge challenge for me. I want to give every student the attention they need and have time to deal with heart issues that arise every day and have time for great communication with parents and still teach every lesson thoroughly and meet the curriculum goals that are set for 2nd grade. But the thing is, I can't. There's no way I can do all of that with 21 students. So I'm back to the basics: loving my students and shepherding their hearts. 

I'm still struggling with church... Please pray. I'm not growing and feel very stagnant in my walk. I'm praying for wisdom, a soft heart, and the Lord's leading. 

After many, many, many prayers, lots of patience, and a long time of looking, God granted me a car. It is an electric blue 2003 Mazda Protege5. I've been enjoying the good, firm brakes and the fact that it only has 62,000 miles on it. Woot woot! I didn't ever think that I would be able to afford a car with such low mileage. I need to take it to the mechanic for some squealing belts, but other than that it has been functioning wonderfully for me. Praise the Lord for his new mercies with me!

Introducing Zwingli!

I expect Zwingli and I will enjoy many Bunbury-ing adventures together. ;-)

I read a new book this weekend. It is called "The Lost Princess: A Double Story"by George MacDonald. It is an older book with a very interesting premise, several profound statements, and great insights into the ugliness of the human heart when it is centered upon self. The book is a book meant for children, and so many of the lessons that can be drawn from it are not proclaimed openly but rather woven into the story. It's a good one to pick up and read! I also read "The Giver" by Lois Lowry this weekend. I'm still thinking about that one and trying to decide what I think about it. Have any of you read that one and have thoughts on it?

I just noticed that all my past pictures have disappeared from the blog. Sorry about that. I've looked for a reason why and apparently there's no good reason... it has happened to other blogger.com bloggers. I was also hoping to find a way to get them back up and visible (some of those Yellowstone pictures were just breathtaking! and I'm sorry that they have gone!) but there seems to be no way to put them all back on except manually. That seems a bit tedious. I hope it doesn't happen again! Perhaps that just means it's time for another cross-country roadtrip so that I can take more pictures. ;-) 

Well, I think that's all for today. As always, I appreciate your prayers! I love hearing from you! :)

Stay strong to the end...

One of the things I have been talking with my students a lot about lately is how to remain strong to the finish. Quality of work has been slipping. Good behavior has taken a nose dive. Attention spans are minute. So we have similar conversations each day...
Boys and girls... is this your best work? Are you honoring the Lord in everything right now? Even your handwriting? I expected complete sentences at the beginning of the year and the middle of the year... I do expect complete sentences at the end of the year. Make sure you are studying your memory work and history every night! I can tell who has studied and who hasn't based on your scores, and a lot of you aren't spending time!

One thing that we have talked a lot about is how JESUS stayed strong to the finish. I imagine that things were intensely difficult for him at the end. He knew what was coming. He knew the pain that he would suffer. He knew that he would be separated from his Father. And yet he pressed on. He did his best all the way to the end. He sought to glorify his Father in everything, all the way to the finish. Can you imagine how things would have turned out if he had faltered? If he had said, "But I'm so tired!" or "I just don't want to do this anymore!" I, for one, don't WANT to imagine that. It would have meant inescapable death for me if he had stopped, even for a moment, doing his best. I am so very thankful for his perfect work. Because of that perfect work of his, the punishment for my laziness and imperfection is completely covered.

That is what we have been talking about each day the past few weeks. To be honest, I have been having this conversation not only for my students' good, but also for my own good. I am tired. Worn out. Exhausted. Fatigued. Just ready to be done. But I MUST press on! I must finish well! Pray for me. Only 2 1/2 days left, but they seem to be stretching out in front of me like Lake Michigan.

My car is all better now. The problem was the master cylinder and so they had to replace that. I told them I'm only planning on keeping the car until October, and so they tried to do everything as cheaply as possible and told me that I didn't really need to do anything else on my car right now... it should hold until autumn. I'm thankful to have found this mechanic.

I appreciate your prayers. I miss all my midwestern friends and family! I wish I could be there for a good, midweek prayer meeting with you all tonight. I'll join you in about a month. :)

Car Troubles

I must admit, one of the most daunting parts of moving across the country was the car part. Cars inevitably have problems, and I really, really, really liked my mechanic in Indiana. He would tell me what was wrong and explain it in great detail so that I could understand it. Then he would explain the different options for fixing it, and finally how he decided to fix it. He would even show me examples of what he had done! :) And he did it all really inexpensively. I'm really not sure how he makes a living with the prices he charges people! 

While my car was in the shop in Indiana, I always had a way to get around. My family is awesome like that. They are very selfless and give up a car or give rides to other family members who need it. Moving away I knew that I wouldn't have my family to fall back on. I dreaded the inevitable car troubles and how I would deal with them. 

Well, this past week it finally happened. My brakes started acting funny. Or rather I should say that they were getting gradually worse and this week was the point where I was sure that there was a problem. I knew that my brake pads should still be good since I had had them checked at my last oil change, which was only a month ago. So I started paying attention to what exactly they were doing so that I could describe it to the mechanic. Basically, they are not maintaining the pressure when I press down on them. If I pump them, then I can come to a complete stop, but if I just press down gradually on them, the pedal goes all the way to the metal and I'm still not stopped. I seem to get braking power back if I release it and then re-apply. All that to say, my brakes are not in tip top shape right now. 

Now in Indiana this is a problem that should be corrected sooner than later. I could probably get by with caution. In Seattle, with the traffic and the hills, it is not safe at all. I called to make an appointment at the mechanics, but since it's a holiday weekend they couldn't get me in until Tuesday. Of course, I agreed and set up the appointment, but then I had to figure out rides. Asking family for help is one thing, asking other people is a whole different matter. It is so difficult for me to ask people for help! My first plan was to drive super slow and super careful, but the teachers at my school would not hear it. 
--Two different teachers had me talk to their dads who have worked on cars, and both of these men told me I should not drive the car around. 
--Another teacher told me that she was going out of town for the weekend with her family and that she would be much more comfortable if I drove her car for the weekend. 
--One of my students' parents picked me up and took me to school on Friday. 
--Another teacher offered to give me a ride back from the mechanic's on Tuesday. 
--Another teacher is willing to give me a ride to and from school on Wednesday
--Today, my pastor and his wife told me that they really didn't want me driving the car to the mechanic on Tuesday, especially since when I can drop it off it will be rush hour traffic with a lot of starting and stopping. They offered to use their Triple A to tow it to the mechanics.

I am truly blessed. This is a stretching experience. I do not like to ask for help, and feel really bad accepting it when it is offered. I know that this is pride and that I need to work on it! What a gracious God! He gives us lessons in the things that we will not teach ourselves.

Please pray that it is a simple and inexpensive fix! I'm only planning on keeping this car until October. I have been and will continue saving furiously until then so that I can buy a car that is hopefully more reliable. I pray for this car every day... praying that no serious and expensive repairs need to be made. So far God has answered!