July 2016: Milestone Updates

I am sorry to say this is my first blog post in six months. So much has happened and life got so busy that I hardly had time to stop and pray, let alone blog, but here's a quick rundown of what I consider my current milestones:

FAMILIA

Hubster w/pre-army beard

- My hubster finished his first year at seminary, and loved it. He mastered basic Biblical Greek, is working on Hebrew, and is already planning an academic master's thesis. He just returned from six weeks at Fort Jackson, SC, at Chaplain Basic Officers Leadership Course (CHBOLC), and we missed him immensely.

- We just celebrated our five year wedding anniversary last week. Four moves in that time, seven cars, many weeks apart, one Annabelle, and one precious baby boy.

Birthday boy!

- Baby boy Spartacus turned two today.  He proudly holds up five fingers and will tell you he's two.  He is obsessed with all things Thomas the Tank Engine, and loves going to the zoo and watching the sharks in the aquarium.  He is also learning his alphabet and loves "reading" any capital letters he can find; stop signs are his favorite.

- Hubster attempted a backyard garden this year with no prior experience. We will have approximately 962 pumpkins from our 6'x8' patch.  Who knew they vine quite so insistently?  I also managed not to kill it off in the six weeks he was gone.

- After purchasing our first home in September, we are now in the process of saving and planning to renovate it.  As a 1925 Craftsman, it has lots of...charms...that may make renovating more complex than the average home (for example, the sketchy electric box hanging out in the bathroom wall, or the lack of grounded 3-pronged plugs...). We're limited by budget but hopefully not by creativity!

Thomas, or simply, "Mas!"

PROFESSIONAL MILESTONES

Our 2016 graduates pre-ceremony

- I completed the hardest project of my professional career three weeks ago when I submitted the final pages of my school's 212-page yearbook, which I supervised this past year. I believe it is one of the best yearbooks this school has had in the past several years.  We hit our sales goal, managed to include 78% of the student body of 768 in the book at least three times, and hit every deadline on time.  I unfortunately will not be teaching the class next year (check here for more detail), but I am so proud of the students who put their all in, and also quite proud of my own flexibility; I developed project management and organizational skills I did not know I had.  One difficult part has actually been parents: this year we opted to have a fall delivery book (shipping in July) instead of spring delivery (when kids get it the last day of school).  After doing it one way for so many decades, and despite all the emails and announcements, dozens of parents contacted me the last week of school wanting to know why their kids didn't get the yearbooks they paid for. 


- I began my colloquy program this month through Concordia University-Portland.  This is a series of eight courses on Lutheran doctrine, the completion of which will allow me to be a called teacher in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod school system, in which I teach now.  My students often ask me theological questions I don't have answers to, so I'm looking forward to the education and additional challenge. 

My day job...

- I'm teaching World History during summer school; the first session I did in class, and the second three week "semester" I'm teaching online.  Class ran from 7:30-12:30 every day for three weeks in June, and then I'd spend another four hours planning the next day's class. I couldn't figure out why everyone kept saying summer school was such easy money, and then I realized how different it would be for someone who actually taught what they were paid to teach during the year - instead of my teaching history when my main job is English.  Silly me! But I do love me my social studies...



So that's the bulleted Lizzy update!  I hope to write more as I approach a new school year with new challenges, but if I take another few months hiatus, I promise to report in eventually!

Stay tuned! Family additions coming soon!