The End of Another Year

It is so hard to believe that last Friday I completed my 4th year of teaching. I feel blessed to have a job that I can honestly say I enjoy going to everyday and also that I get to work with amazing people who are not only my co-workers, but my friends. I have wrestled with the idea of going back to school to get my specialist's degree to do administration, but I love teaching so much that I just don't know if I want to do anything else. I guess we will just have to see where the Lord leads me.

We had a pretty uneventful holiday weekend. We made a quick trip to Branson to the outlet mall and we spent Sunday and Monday in Bolivar with my family. Justin and my brother went fishing in between the rain, but unfortunately they didn't catch enough for us to eat. This week I am enjoying my time off before I begin my four weeks on teaching summer school on Monday. People tell me I am crazy for teaching summer school, but I actually enjoy it and hey, the extra paycheck is nice and it keeps me from losing my sanity by being at home for 12 weeks. Then I get the whole month of July off and 1/2 of August and we are VERY EXCITED for our vacation to Vegas.

This weekend we are heading to Sikeston for a wedding. It will be nice to get away for a bit before going back to work. We are attending the wedding of Jenni Gillespie (the sister of Justin's best friend) and we are looking forward to seeing friends we haven't seen since a wedding last summer. Also, the winner of last years America's Got Talent, Neal Boyd, was booked to sing, but we aren't sure if he still is. It will be amazing to hear him in person if he does sing at the wedding.

Here are a few pictures of Makenna. She decided to get in the laundry basket the other day while I was folding clothes to watch her Saturday morning cartoons.

Crazy Storms

I promise to post some overdue pictures on here soon, but this is going to be a quick post because we are getting ready to head to Bolivar for the rest of the weekend to celebrate Mother's Day.

If you don't live in the area or haven't heard, we had some vry crazy weather yesterday morning that resulted in perhaps the craziest day of my teaching career thus far. We knew that storms were predicted, but we really weren't expected what happened. Around 8 o'clock in the morning it got VERY dark and we knew the storm was about to come through. I didn't have a class at the time, so I went to the science department to round up so flashlights in case the power went out--which proved to be a very wise decision. I had just finished distributing the flashlights to some other teachers when the storms sirens began going off so everyone headed out to the hallway. We were out there about 15 minutes and then they dismissed everyone to 2nd hour. We were in class about 10 minutes when the power went out and they sent us back into the hall. At this point, I should mention that out of the 8 teachers in my hallway only two of us were there--the rest had subs. So, needless to say it was pretty crazy. Anyways, we were out in the hall for 2 hours because it was a little lighter that the classrooms. At one point I looked out the window and I had never seen anything like I saw--the wind was blowing so hard that huge trees were bending over, etc. Thankfully, we didn't have any damage to our school building (a few others in our district did), but we were without power for the remainder of the day. I heard that the city of Willard just got power back this morning. CRAZY!

This is an abbreviated version of yesterday's events, but I am just thankful no one was hurt and now we have something to look back on and talk about for several years to come.

We wish every Mom a Happy Mother's Day and we will post some updated pictures of our almost 16 month old soon.