Summer 2015

My first year of teaching has ended. It went by so quickly. The 3rd graders were great and I am so happy that I had the chance to learn with them this year.

I asked the students on the last day, “What was your favorite thing we did this year?” Responses were varied from “everything” to “angry birds math towers” to our “marshmallow challenge” even to “learning cursive writing”. I learned soooooooo much of what to do and what not to do in the future. So days were great and some days were a real struggle. Our classroom dynamic changed so much over the course of the year from my maternity leave to adding three students at semester to having our first experience with state assessments, what a year!  I know I have a busy summer of planning and organizing to prepare for next years lovely bunch of 3rd graders.

I am so excited to spend this entire summer with my little guys. They are growing so fast and in the fall Nolan will be starting preschool. I cannot believe he is old enough for such a thing!  He is very excited about going to “school”, he often tells me about all of the things he learns in “high school”. I love that little precocious guy!

Callan is also growing faster than I can believe. Callan went from kind of rolling around at 5.5 months to cruising along furniture at 7 months. Aaron called him a little wind-up toy the other day because if you start him at one end of the living room he just goes all the way across the room to get down the hallway. Then we pick him up and set him back and he does it all over again. Callan has started to show some of the same superpowers that Nolan had at his age including locating all cords in a room within the first 5 minutes of arrival, tasting them and refusing to play with any object remotely resembling something child safe.  Aaron’s mom has talked about how Aaron loved to play with her hair for hours when he was little. Nolan never really did this, Callan on the other hand constantly is “playing” with my hair. So it is basically impossible for me to keep my hair looking decent. If I took the time to actually do my hair in the morning, then I spend time with my little sweetie, my hair resembles someone who has been rolling around on the ground for an hour. So please don’t judge me next I look ridiculous. Last night Aaron asked, do you like that Callan does that, isn’t it like of neat?  Like it….no he is pulling my hair it hurts, do I think it is neat that he shares some sort of trait with his father…yes that is awesome (and pretty inevitable), but it could be a less painful trait and I would be perfectly happy.

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Since April I have been looking forward to the beginning of summer. Nolan and I made a giant check list of SUMMER FUN 2015 things to do. We have been checking things off already. Our list includes trips to visit family, baking cookies, tye dying shirts, fishing, gardening, story hour, playing with friends, swimming  and so many other fun things I cannot wait to do!

Next weekend we are looking forward to traveling to Northwest Kansas for my paternal grandparents, Marvin and Ruby Poe’s 60th wedding anniversary!  It is sure to be a fun time visiting mom and dad, Holly and Luke and seeing the rest of the family that will have traveled in from several states.

I am still trying to get into a schedule for the summer. I know that for me to not lose my sanity I have got to get on a schedule of when we do certain activities during the day. I am working on it but the only consistent thing so far has been when nap time is.  I do feel like I have won a little challenge each time they are both napping at the same time. It is awesome!

I am so happy that I get the summer to connect with my boys, it helps me to feel better about the guilt of being a working mom. I know I am making the right decision working, but I am choosing to cherish the summers with my boys. I love that Nolan is able to help me make this list and check things off. He enjoys it about as much as I do.

My other new adventure for the summer is a garden! I have never in my life grown a vegetable, but this year I think we will have quite the crop. I am truly living up to being a farmer’s wife.  The rain has certainly helped me not kill everything…yet. Thanks to my brother Craig I have about 8 varieties of peppers, broccoli, red cabbages, onions, tomatoes, okra and eggplant and we also have zucchini and yellow squash. Currently we have one red pepper growing everything else is still deciding if it wants to produce any fruit. Nolan loves to help garden; mostly he likes the worms!

I am looking forward to sharing many memories of this summer on her to document our fun in Summer 2015!