The Simple Little Things in Life...Day 20

What a busy day! I have worked several hours on lesson plans and assessments, yet feel like I have not accomplished anything!  It is so easy to get caught up in work, life, laundry, etc and forget to stop and be thankful for little things.  Tonight while running errands for my classroom I decided to stop and feed my belly and my brain.  There is a restaurant in up town Athens that is probably one of my favorite; Broney's! They have the best cheese fries with spicy ranch sauce and amazing sweet peach tea.  So I grabbed some take out and went home to continue working.  Thankful for this job even though at the moment it's stressing me out hard core and thankful for little things such as yummy food!  If you haven't caught on yet while reading my blogs, I love food and I love my sweet tea!
God is good!

Day 19....Thankful for Saturdays

I love Saturdays, especially when I am able to sleep in a little and have some q/t time with my man.  Spending time with him without our kiddos is rare and so when we have that time we cherish it!  After having a nice lunch with our pastor from church we decided to look at trucks.  I know some would think that is an incredibly boring way to spend time together, but to us it was fun. We love to "dream" about having something new, bigger, better and just look. We test drove one, talked to many dealers, and realized, yep, those will probably just remain a dream, but that is okay.  We had fun, and that is what matters. I am so thankful that I married someone who isn't into having the "best" and is very frugal with finances.  I am thankful that we don't have to do elaborate dates in order to have fun.  Thankful for the the times we get to spend together, for the ones who watch our kiddos so we can be together. Love him immensely! God is good!

Taken from our Florida trip to Naples last month

Girl Talk and Sleepovers..Day 18

I am thankful for a sleepover with my sweet girl Hadley tonight.  We are watching Romona and Beezus. Thankful for my girl, thankful for sweet mommy/daughter time.  

Finding the Strength...Day 17

Not gonna sugar coat this one, today, a rough one.  At 4:30 am my son decides to wake up, I run in his room to keep him from getting naked and peeing on the floor as he has been lately and to help him pee in the potty. When I went in, he was half naked, put his pull up in the dresser drawer, while I was searching for it, he literally stood right in front of me and peed - ALL OVER THE FLOOR. Did I mention it was 4:30 and that my alarm was set to go off at 5:15? So, I flipped out, yelled at the poor guy and he screamed bloody murder and cried for the next hour. Yep, failed parenting at my finest. I realized soon after (probably the sobs coming from my son) that yelling at him at 4:30 in the morning wasn't the best choice. But I am beyond exhausted and seriously who is thinking logically at this time of the morning, and I should've considered that with my son, he's 2 1/2 its technically the middle of the night, he probably may not really know what he is doing? I don't know, but after trying to console him, get him to go back to sleep for the next hour was a no go.  

This then had me getting a late start for work since I now leave at 6:15am, and when I went to get ready he followed me crying and didn't want me to leave. Broke-my-heart. So as you can guess, today didn't so much start off on a good note.  This was my second day of school and while nothing major happened, the students are great, etc. this sense of standardized testing, lesson plans, etc. etc. started piling on, and the lack of sleep set in which meant my lack of finding things to be thankful for started to flutter off into the distance.

As I drove home from work I could feel the anxiety start to creep in, my exhaustion egged that on and the fear of how my precious son who had been up since 4:30 and at pre-school since 7:15am would be a complete mess when I picked him up, not to mention finding out how many accidents he probably had today.  To my surprise he was more than elated to see me, he kept hugging me, kissing me, and saying miss you mommy, love you mommy - thankful!!!

As I sit here at a coffee shop working on lesson plans after 9pm, when I'd so love to be in bed, while I could easily slip into the complaining mode of..Im tired, I have so much work to do, etc. etc. I think back to this time at 1, 2, and 3 yrs. ago, probably at this same seat and same table feeling like I will NEVER get this master's degree and have my own classroom - tonight I have my degree and have my own classroom - thankful!  God is good!

I Survived ....Day 16 - Incredibly Blessed

I did it! I survived my first day of teaching.  It was fun, tiring, chaotic, exciting, stressful, I LOVED IT!

Thankful for this school, I know I am where God needs me to be.  God is good!

Some pictures of my classroom:

My absolute favorite area; reading corner! It was a huge hit with the students!

Excited I was able to hang books from the ceiling!

:)

Exhausted, Nervous, and Excited...Day 15 of Gratefulness

Since I'm literally running on maybe 2 hrs of sleep in the last 48+ hours, this is gonna be short.  Today was another work day in the classroom with some training and then Open House until 7pm tonight.  It went well, it was fun meeting my soon to be students and their parents.  Tomorrow is the BIG day - my 1st day as a 4th Grade English teacher!!! So thankful and blessed.

Thankful for an awesome podcast that my sweet friend Katie told me about as I was walking out the door this morning.  I had mentioned the whole start of me writing 60 days of thankfulness derived a lot from the book 1,000 Gifts by Ann Voscamp; well she did an interview about this book with LIfe Today and I really cant put into words how amazing she was.  To read about her experiences of finding joy is one thing but to hear her tell it, and here the JOY in her voice now after finding it was just what I needed to hear this morning on my way to school.  I don't remember word for word of what she said but basically, we find JOY by being in the presence of God, we are in the presence of God by being thankful.  Such a simple line, but so rich and true. So that is what my blog of 60 days is all about, finding that JOY by being in the presence of God by being thankful.

There is a verse in the Bible that says just that but of course I can't find it, when I do I'll post it.

JOY - presence of God by being thankful.

If this doesn't scream JOY- then I don't know what does :)

A Special Birthday Celebration! Day 14

Today was a lovely day with family, not just an ordinary day but to celebrate Josh's grandpa.  Pappaw is what we all call him, even people that aren't family call him that.  He turns 77 on Wednesday. It was a fun day with tons of awesome food enough for an army which is always the case with this family.  We swam, well the kids and Josh and I and our puppy ! We are so blessed that our kids still have their great grandparents, many kids aren't able to know them. What is really neat is the special bond Pappaw has with each of our kids. Hadley is his little angel and Landry is his little buddy. From the time Landry was born, Landry fell in love with his Pappaw. Everyday Landry asks for Pappaw and when he's around Landry doesn't let him out of his sight. Truly blessed. Pappaw is very dear to all of us and so thankful that we celebrated another birthday with him!  Happy birthday Pappaw!

This picture of today's celebration captures their special bond!