Spelling Tuesday

Today should be a sad day for me. It is my last day of teaching kindergarten here at Benton Elementary School, in Independence. I have been here six years, and had many interesting experiences. People are always asking me, "won't you miss teaching?" The answer is, yes and no. I will definately miss all my friends and collegues at Benton. They are the kind of teachers that I strived to be. They put up with so much CRAP and still love those kids and families. They are doing their lives callings- and I really admire that. We have had some fun times together- laughed together and cried together. I will miss them tremendously. I will also miss MOST of the kids. They do say the dardest things sometimes... I love the part of teaching when a kid FINALLY gets it- something you have been working on over and over. I love seeing their special talents and trying to figure out what kind of person they will become. But then there are the reasons for leaving... So much that teacher do is...

I cried three times yesterday! Well, one of the time was because Caleb hit me in the eye, but that is a whole other story. He said my hair looked really "wavy" which I knew was code word for "wild and frizzy", so that set me off. Here is a tip, don't get your hair cut right before you find out that you are pregnant! I am now at the wierd growing out phase and it won't do anything and it looks silly. Add to that the "protective fat layer", and the hormone zits, and you have a serious self esteem complex! Then we watched "27 dresses" and it made me think of our wedding day, six years ago, and how hot we were for each other and how cute I was, and I started wondering "what if I never look like that again???"

am so fat that my wedding ring doesn't fit. I was getting dirty looks at the grocery store so I bought myself a six dollar cubic ziconia monstrosotie which I will wear to maintain my good reputation. Ha!

Yes. It is either a boy or girl. We weren't able to determine the sex, cause baby had it's little ankles crossed right over it's junk. Everthing looked good on the sonogram though. Healthy, and the right size. But I cried when I left the office. I had visions of myself going out and buying little frilly pink dresses or biboveralls with trucks on the front right after I found out the sex. I just kept picturing my baby having only ugly green and orange clothes! Pregnancy hormones... you gotta love them. Caleb felt so bad for me that he played hooky almost an entire day at work. I love that guy. Then I had to go to a summer school meeting- eww. Just a reminder of the fun to come. But when I got home, I had balloons and a card and chocolate. Then he took me out to dinner and my parents and brother met us at the restaurant. So that was fun. The day ended much better than it started.

The last couple of weeks I have been having some heartburn. I hear that means my baby is hairy. Duh, have you seen me? I have a lot of hair. Let's keep our fingers crossed for curls!

My Dad played a "Tribute to Merell Haggard" Concert last night in Liberty. He did a great job, and it was fun to see him on stage again. The crowd went wild (okay, not really, as most of them were over 70, and on oxygen). I remember my dad playing all those songs when I was growing up, so it was a real trip down memory lane! Most kids wouldn't say that their parents sang them the song "Mama Tried" as a lulluby- "I turned 21 in prison, doing life without parol. No one could steer me right, but mama tried, mama tried!

Caleb and I worked in the yard quite a bit this weekend. I say Caleb and I, but really I mean Caleb. I mostly just watched and directed as necessary. We did all the landscaping around our back patio for a joint birthday present to ourselves (my birthday is next week, his is in August). We also got some furniture for out there, so now we need to have a "patio warming" party! Ha. We are having another ultrasound on Tuesday, and hopefully we will be able to tell if we are having a Loralie Bria Lenz, or a Brighley Christian Lenz! The suspense is killing me. The nursery is looking really cute, thanks to awesome presents from my baby shower last week. Caleb and I have been reading to our little peanut baby everynight (laugh if you want, but our kid is going to be a genius!)

I had my first ever baby shower yesterday from my friends at work. It was overwhelmingly awesome. There were a lot of people there and a huge stack of presents. The whole party was kind of a blur. I was trying to open stuff fast, so that it wouldn't take three hours, so by the time it was over, I was just thinking "Did I even remember to say 'thank you' to people?" I got a lot of really cute stuff, but I was exhausted by the end!

Okay, it wasn't technically my first mothers day, but it was my first time to be able to stand up in church when they said "Let's have all the mothers stand up!". And it was my first time to recieve any mothers day presents. Caleb got me a gift certificate to the spa and some perfume from the baby. Awww. It was a fun day, and I was glad that he didn't have to work. After church we got some work done in the yard, and decided that we would landscape around the patio and get some furniture and call it "both of our birthday presents". So we will be able to have some fun backyard BBQ's this summer!

Did you know that the average baby produces 1 ton of trash for every year that they wear disposible diapers? Did you know that a disposible diaper takes 500 years to decompose? Did you know that disposible diapers are the third most common item found in landfills? I know that I am a new mom, and really have no idea what I am in for, but Caleb and I have decided to try out cloth diapers. They are WAY less expensive (500 compared to 2,000, and that is just if you only use them for one kid). Cloth diapers have really come along way since our mothers and grandmothers used them. No more pins (they have velcro or snaps, depending on what model you buy) and no more "plastic pants" (they come with a waterproof layer built right in. It really isn't that I am a big hippie. It just makes sense to me. Our grandparents grew up with the mantra "waste not, want not." They rarely bought anything that they would immediately throw away. Disposible diapers (or landfill ...

So last night, Caleb and I were sleeping away when at about 2:30am we both woke up to really loud wind- REALLY LOUD. It sounded like a freight train pulling through our backyard. Usually, I am the one who is like "shouldn't we be in the basement?" but I knew it was serious when CALEB started saying "get in the basement- now!" We ran down the stairs, expecting the house to collapse on us at any moment! Then we huddled in the basement in complete darkness for a while, listening to our house make really scary noises. Thankfully, my husband had had the foresight to put a murphy bed in the basement, so we were able to sleep down there comfortably for the rest of the night- there was no way I was going back upstairs! Praise God our house had only minor (comparitively) damage. One of our garage doors is totally bowed out, a gutter is missing, our patio furniture is trashed, and parts of our roof may have to be replaced, but considering that the guy across the s...