No More Snow! No More Snow!

That is me protesting against the snow that is coming!  The school district has moved my orientation AGAIN to NEXT Monday because we are supposed to get lots of snow Tuesday night and all day Wednesday and it's supposed to be icy as well.  Am I ever going to get to work???  Not that I mind having free time, but it would be nice to be earning a paycheck!  Although, God has really provided for us, and we're doing ok, but this is a little ridiculous.  Is He trying to teach me patience or something??? :-)  And what about the student I'm supposed to be working with?  Is he/she just without an aide?  Poor kid.  I'm so glad we moved out of Anchorage and all the snow...
I guess I have more time to study now!  Yay!  :-/  I took an official practice test on Friday after studying for several hours, trying to grasp, again, what a derivative is and I was 4 questions short of passing.  Tim was helping me with some of the questions I missed and helped me realize that I actually could have solved some of the ones I didn't think I knew because I just got overwhelmed with the question and thought I had no idea how to do it.  So, even though I didn't score nearly high enough for my liking, it did help my confidence to see that I wasn't as far off on the scoring part as I thought I would be. 
Well, Tim and I did have fun in the snow last week when we went sledding on the big hill at the church building.  The snow was so high, that we sunk down when we sat on it, so we had to drag ourselves down a couple of times to make a track smooth enough to slide down.  But once we did, it was fun!  (Climbing up after going down was not as fun, but what goes down, must come up, right? ;-p).  We brought Toby too, and after I went down the first time, he really wanted to come save me, so Tim let him go and he ran down the hill to me, and then I let him go back up to Tim, thinking he would stop when he got to the top, but he didn't.  He ran into the parking lot, made a huge circle around it to the back of the church building, where the snow was really deep, and that slowed him down enough for Tim to catch up to him and grab him.  It was HILARIOUS.  I wish I had gotten it on tape, but Tim had the camera.  :-) 
One last thing, GO PACKERS!!!  We're having the youth group over at our house for the Super Bowl.  It should be fun.  You may think I'm crazy for rooting for the Packers against the Steelers in Pennsylvania, but first, I have a family member on the Packers!  What's his name again?  Something Wells...  :-)  And there are more Eagles fans here than Steelers because we're much closer to Philadelphia.  I did find out last night at youth group that one of the girls is a big Steelers fans.  Oh well.
Have a good week everyone! :-)

Good Things!

Well, the soda maker makes pretty good soda!  It's not exactly the same as the name brands, but it's pretty good! 
This past weekend was a good one.  Ruth, Tim's mom, came in on Saturday for Tim's ordination on Sunday.  It was the first time Toby had met anyone else in our home, and he didn't give the best impression, I'm sorry to say.  He growled at her when she came in and showed his teeth.  She had brought two toys for him, so she got them out, hoping to win him over.  It worked!  He loved his new toys: a green frog and a plush hamburger, then she called him and turned to walk to the couch, and he ran after her, jumped up, and bit her!!  I thought he was playing at first, because he likes to jump up on us to say "hello" and get patted, but he was not being nice!!  We scolded him and he knew right away that he did a bad thing, and went into the kitchen.  Later that night, we let Ruth give him a treat, and then he was her friend, although he did growl a couple of other times before she left, but he cuddled with her.  So, we learned that strangers need to be cautious with him, and maybe we'll have everyone who comes over give him a treat so he'll like them! :-)
Sunday was a special day.  Tim preached, was officially installed as the Associate Minister of Hillside, (they wanted to wait until after the holidays when everyone was back in town), and was ordained by the congregation.  I am so proud of him!  He is so smart, and is such a good man of God, and I am so lucky to be married to him.

Well, the snow just won't stop!  We are supposed to get 8 inches today, and the receptionist at the school district administration building called and said because of the weather, the board meeting which was supposed to be today, was moved to Monday, which means my orientation has been pushed to February 2nd.   Will I ever be able to work?  Haha...just kidding.  It just gives me more time to study!!!  I have less than two months until my math test, and I studied for several hours last night, going over some Pre-Calculus concepts that I haven't seen in a while, and today I'm going to start going through my Calculus book.  Yay!  :-/  When I was taking Calculus in high school, my motto for this subject was, "Calculus is from the devil!"  But I am ready to take it on again, and I was thinking yesterday when I took a break from studying to cook dinner that I don't like studying, but at least it's math, which is something I do enjoy!  I like doing practice problems, the reading and trying to understand how to do them is the hard part, but once I get it, it's fun! :-)  I know I'm a math nerd, and I'm proud of it!!
Hope everyone has a good rest of the week!

Awesomeness!

Tim and I are hanging out with another couple from church tomorrow night and she said she will make hot cocoa from scratch for us, and I was like, "Wow, I've never had hot cocoa from scratch before, I didn't even know that was possible!"  And Tim was like, "Yeah, you ground up your own cocoa, and you don't have all the preservatives and you can use whatever kind of organic sweetener you want." (I've been on this thing recently about not consuming aspartame and high fructose corn syrup, except that it's in EVERYTHING and I don't make anything from scratch.  So this randomly gets me thinking this morning about soda and how we would ever make it from scratch, (Not that I would actually do it if we knew how.) so today when I was going through boxes in the guest room I found two Bed, Bath and Beyond gift cards, $150 worth, so Tim and I just went and guess what we found!!!  A home soda maker!!!  And the best part is for the diet soda there is no aspartame, and for the regular, no high fructose corn syrup!!!!  You buy a machine that carbonates the water, and then you get different mixes.  They have their own mixes for Coke, Diet Coke, Dr. Pepper, Sprite, Orange soda, Pink Grapefruit Fresca, even Red Bull and some others.  It's called SodaStream, and it's supposed to save money in the long run with the cost of buying soda.  The mixes are 5 bucks, and make 6 liters and the carbonator, which is $15 to replace, is supposed to last for 60 liters.  So now I won't have to worry about Tim drinking so much diet soda, and I won't feel as guilty for drinking it when I do.  (I've been trying to cut back!)
Just wanted to share my excitement over our new purchase!!  I hope everyone has a lovely evening!

Meet Toby

Toby is a one- to one and a half- (the shelter wasn't sure) year-old Lhasa Apso mix.  We got him from a shelter here and he was a stray and had only been there for about 2 weeks.  Tim had a Lhasa when he was younger and said it was the best dog, so he immediately fell in love with him.  I have to admit, when I first saw his picture, I wasn't impressed, but when we saw him in person at the shelter, he was so cute and lovable I couldn't resist.  He has long hair so he doesn't shed, but will need to be brushed and groomed.  He really needs a bath, but he was just "fixed" on Friday so we'll have to wait until he heals.  Tim and I were both worried about how he was going to get along with Evil Cat Max.  At the shelter when one of the employees asked if we had any other pets, and we told her we had a cat, she took Toby (then "Richard") through the cat room, and he was fine, wasn't really interested in the cats, although they all were behind bars, so we still weren't sure what would happen once we got home.  We both agreed that we wouldn't force them to meet but let Max do his own thing and interact as he felt comfortable.  Of course, Max was not happy with him, but he didn't run and hide either.  Toby wanted to play a few times, but once he saw Max getting upset, he left him alone, so it's been really good.  Max still is unsure about him, but is actually trying to get closer, without Toby noticing.  But once Toby sees him and tries to make contact, Max runs away.  And if we pick Max up anywhere near Toby, Max gets really upset and starts hissing and growling.  I think the key is to not let Max feel trapped and just let him adjust in his own way.  He'll get comfortable with his new little brother eventually and maybe one day even LIKE him! :-)  And for those who have never hear of the Lhasa Apso breed before (I hadn't, when we found him), here are a couple of pictures of pure bred Lhasas and what they can look like.  I kind of want to grow his hair out and see what it looks like.  We don't know what breed he is mixed with.

In other news, I got a job!  I will be a teacher's assistant for Autistic support, one-on-one.  I don't even remember what school the lady said on the phone, so I'll have to figure that out, but I think it's an elementary school.  I had to get a drug test, physical, and TB test.  Everything's done except I have to go back tomorrow to get my TB test read, and then take the paperwork to the school district, and then I can start.  I'm very excited!  It sounds like something I will enjoy.  And it's full-time with benefits which is what I needed.  And on top of that, the church is going to pay for the cost for Tim to be covered by the school district on my plan!  We were not expecting that at all, so we are very thankful for that!  God has really provided for us since we've moved here.  We'll just randomly get money in the mail, or someone will just say, "Hey I want to give you money," and every time it reminds us how good God is, and if you just live for Him, he will provide everything you need! :-)

Interview Went Well!

I had my interview with Reading School District today and it went really well.  They were not specific about what position is actually available, but made a note that I would enjoy Emotional Support or Austism Support (since that is the kind of work I did in Anchorage).  There are full-time and part-time positions available, and I told her I would prefer full-time, so hopefully that's what happens.  I will have to get my CPR and First Aid certification if I get the job, which the school district offers.
I should hear back from them in a week or two, so I'll let everyone know what happens.
Well, not too much to say besides that.  I knew people were wanting to hear about the interview, so I thought I'd do a post for it.  :-)

Well this has been a pretty good week.  I got all my clearances I need to be employed by the school district, applied to Reading School District for their education assistant positions on Wednesday and they called me to schedule an interview on Friday.  It should be full-time, according to the ones that are listed on their website, which is awesome because I had called the district before I applied and I was told that the full-time assistants do get benefits.  And talking to a teacher from church who teaches in this district, she said that their benefits are really good.  This is pretty much an urban district, and I have been warned that it's not the easiest district to teach in, but if you stay with it a year or two, you become very employable by other districts if you want to leave.  So, my interview is on Wednesday at 11:40 Eastern Time.  It won't be much money, but it will be enough for now, and depending on what kind of students I will be working with, I think I will enjoy it because I loved being the teacher assistant in Anchorage.  I am still working toward my certification though.  I even bought a book yesterday (after spending almost 5 hours at Barnes and Noble) called "Your First Year as a High School Teacher" because it has a lot of good information, and reminders for me about how to set up your classroom, organization ideas, how to set up rules, and lessons, etc.  All of these things will be helpful for me if/whenever I go back to teaching.  It also is helping me get excited about teaching again.  I have really learned from my first two experiences in middle school and high school and feel like I'm ready and in a better place that I could succeed if I tried again. (Third time's a charm, right?)  I have much more realistic expectations of my student's behavior, and I know now how important it is to be firm and consistent from the beginning because you easily lose control if you make empty threats and don't have any consequences to go with them.
Today we had our first rehearsal with the youth/adult contemporary praise band.  With the exception of the drummers not always keeping the tempo steady and not knowing how to end the songs, it went pretty well! :-)  Tonight is our big "kick off" night for youth group at someone's house and Tim's going to just have the kids fill out info cards and we're going to eat and play games.  Hopefully the play-off game won't keep kids from showing up.  The Eagles play two hours before it starts.
We also went to the young adult Bible study on Friday night.  The leader, Dan, was telling us about a leap of faith he's making this coming week.  He's quitting his job for another job that pays half as much as he's making now.  He said that they guys he works with now are not Christians and not good influences, and the guy he's going to work for is a good Christian man, and it's just a better environment.  And what struck me most is that he said he was inspired by Tim and me to do it!  Because of the sacrifice we've made to come here, it helped him to make this decision.  Wow!  I inspired someone??  Who'da thunk it!  :-)  I'm just glad God can work like that.  Use a decision we made as an encouragement to someone else.  I know it was a leap of faith for us to come here, take the pay cut, and trust that we would survive, but it didn't feel too difficult because I wanted to come, and the people have made us feel so welcome, it's been a blessing!!
I hope everyone has a great week!

Happy New Year!

Happy 2011!  I hope everyone had a fun and safe New Year's Eve.  Tim and I went over to Shelley's house (the preacher at Hillside) and ate some really good enchiladas and played Hand and Foot, Speed Scrabble (which I very much prefer over regular Scrabble), and Win, Lose, or Draw.  It was a lot of fun.
Yesterday afternoon Tim and I went exploring.  We were told of a market called Green Dragon that is open every Friday, so we went to check it out yesterday.  It is a huge flea market with all kinds of things for sale, including food made by the Amish.  It was pretty neat.  Definitely somewhere we'll want to go back to when we actually have money to spend. 

I don't particularly like to make official new year resolutions because I typically don't fulfill them.  A few years ago I made the resolution to become ambidextrous, and I actually worked at it for several weeks, trying to do things with my left hand, but eventually gave up.  I do have one goal (besides of course losing weight and reading my Bible) of growing out my hair and donating it to Locks of Love.  I would like to be more generous and not so focused on myself but make a better effort to give to others.  I think it's good to reflect on your life and think about what you need to change.  We are told by God to examine ourselves, but we need to remember that we should be doing that on a regular basis, not just on the first day of each year.
So, happy new year, and I hope everyone takes time to think about how you can improve yourself, and maybe help others.  God bless!