The fastest two weeks ever...

Darrell's R&R has come and gone. So, it's back to "normal" around here.

Justin's done for the school year. His summer is BOOKED - just finished a week at Cub Scout day came. Next up, mornings at a summer school program and afternoons at the zoo.

Kaden's second birthday party was low key and fun. We had Sam & The Gang over for munchies and cake. Kaden's favorite part? The balloons.

I'm working on my motivation level to start seriously moving on my thesis. Luckily, my advisor needs me to look over my data and come up with some basic thoughts. That, hopefully, will get me going.

I'm also itching to start running again. I had some minor surgery in mid-May and can't do much for another month or so. I knew it was coming, so I wasn't too upset with leaving my training behind earlier this year. But, strangely, I miss it. I'm thinking of finding a half marathon to sign up for. The 10K was fun, but the distance wasn't very challenging. I'm not yet in it for time, I'm wanting to work towards distance. The next six months are so are plenty open for lots of training. I'll never get a better opportunity. So, sounds like I need to find a race in late November or December.

After a quick Google, I found one:

Gobbler Grind Marathon, Half Marathon & 5K - Overland Park, KS - November 18th, 2007 (I'm going to assume they'll hold it again on a similar date...)

I should be up and running by mid-June, or late-June at the latest. That leaves me four and a half months to get back into shape. Definitely doable.

I'd love to find out more about the course...

I've been having some bizarre dreams lately.

1) Apparently I'm doing something in the business field. I show up to work and at the last minute, I'm asked to re-give a presentation. No problem! Someone even sets it up so that I can use my PalmPilot instead of the laptop - and wirelessly (not sure if that even is possible, and I don't even have a PalmPilot any more, but hey, it's a dream... ) I go to give the presentation, and all the people in the room are the same people that heard it the first time. So, I'm being all casual about it, but then things start getting weird. The PowerPoint isn't right. And the books people were given to follow along aren't right. And then I find that there's an auditorium FILLED with people that are listening to me give this presentation. Very professionally dressed people who are attending as part of a conference, and they're lost trying to follow along in this book (that isn't right) and my slides aren't right, and now I can't figure out how to cancel the whole thing, and who set me up for this??!!? And then I wake up. And spend the next half-hour trying to figure out how to professionally apologize for someone setting me up for failure without blaming anyone.

2) I'm a new teacher the day school starts. I'm in my classroom, thinkin' I'm on top of everything, when someone reminds me to check my mailbox in some office I didn't know about (that weirdly is attached to the cafeteria ). So, I get there and see the mailbox and can't figure out where mine is. Turns out it's arranged by the last three numbers of your social security number (in the dream, the last three weren't really my last three - I find that really funny for some reason), but stuck together in a box with others that have the same 4th-to-last digit. Oh. How silly of me to not understand that. And then it turns out there's a CRAPLOAD of stuff in there, paperwork galore that I have to take care of, and every time I get distracted in the pile and then look again at the box, there's even MORE stuff in there. And then I woke up.

I guess I'm a little more nervous about this whole student teaching thing than I realize?

Memorial Day

I'll never understand "Happy Memorial Day!" wishes.

Too long...

It's been way too long since I've updated here. My apologies. I know I don't have very many readers and I'm likely losing the few I DO have unless you have me on a feed reader. I'm finding it difficult to decide how much of what's going on I want the world to know about, and in response, I've decided by not deciding, and thus not posting.

Anyway, my semester from hell is OVER!! While it wasn't more than I could handle, it was about as much as I could handle. About two weeks left of the semester, I was sweating pretty hard, having to plan out every spare bit of time I had in order to get everything done. And it all did get done, so it worked. But I certainly don't want to do anything like that again.

Next semester should be much easier. I will have the same teaching load, but it'll be easier because I won't have to prep so much. I'll have a MUCH smaller class load, as I'm only taking one scheduled class and another appointment class. Plus, I don't have any education classes, which means no time spent in any other classrooms or working on massive lesson planning projects.

My intention is to work on my thesis this summer and defend early in the fall. Best case scenario puts me defending in early September. Both boys will be busy with summer activities, leaving me plenty of alone time to get it all done. I have all of my data, just need to analyze it all and figure out what it all means. I am teaching one class this summer, but only in June, and only for two hours a day. Plenty of time left for number crunching or library research.

The boys are doing great. I have a bunch of new pictures I need to upload. I should get to that today or tomorrow. Kaden is learning new words (thank goodness!) and Justin is almost done with 2nd grade (already?!)

Darrell is super busy, but things have settled down into a routine, so he is pretty happy with the way things are going.