Thursday, March 17, 2011

As promised.



I talked incessantly about the Christmas gifts I made my family, but never shared them. I didn't get pictures of all of them, but I do have pictures of many of them.

One of my favorite gifts I made was a diaper and/or wipes case for my sister-in-law who just had a baby girl at the end of December. I found a tutorial for this project here and after much frustration (and some help from Kevin's mom) here is my masterpiece! {Please excuse the poor picture quality}



I even made my first fabric flower. I was attempting to make a ruffle to place across the entire top of the flap, but the flower worked too.


I am not someone who sews. I actually haven't sewn a thing since my 7th grade home ec class (until this past november). Now I am in love with sewing and inheriting my mom's old machine!

Anyway, this diaper case was even more exciting because I "repurposed" an old skirt of mine. The skirt was my absolute favorite but the elastic had given out. I had high hopes of saving the skirt by just taking some inches off the elastic, but I learned you need to make better measuring plans before you start cutting things apart...

Over the next few days I will continue to post all of my creations I made for Christmas. Hopefully that will cheer this place up a bit!

Stupid flu.

Ugh. I was super inspired and had all of these wonderful things to blog about. I was pumped about running and pumped about my meal plan...

But life always always always has other plans for you.

Monday night I slept from 7:30 pm to 6:30 am. Yes...11 hours. That's when I knew something was up. Tuesday at school was okay, but I had this killer cough. All my coworkers would stare at me in worry. Tuesday night I couldn't keep my eyes open and it was only 8 pm. My body feels hot...what is a fever again? My body aches so much...it has to be the running.

Sure enough when Wednesday morning came around, I knew I had to call in sick.

And goodness gracious, let me tell you, this is NOT the week to call in sick at my job. Some crazy things are going on in my wonderful classroom right now and my staff could really use an extra set of hands.

Instead, I have been in bed for about 48 hours.

I am officially sick of Greys Anatomy. I have finished the series of Friday Night Lights. And I have taken 2 bathes and 2 showers because I don't know what else to do. My meal plan has gone to waste (maybe it'll still be okay next week?) and I'm bummed I've missed days of running (still strongly considering the Seattle rock n' roll 1/2 marathon June 25).

Ugh. Life always has other plans. Is this God trying to stop me from yet again trying to take control of my own life? Most likely. I'm kind of a control freak. I get it already.

I get it.


Okay, okay. I obviously don't get it. At all. Here's to all of you out there who are currently waving your white flag. I'm right there with ya.

Monday, March 14, 2011

I don't know what I want

So don't ask me. Cause I'm still trying to figure it out. Don't know what's down this road. I'm just walking. Trying to see through the rain coming down. I'm just a girl, trying to find a place in this world. {Thank you, Tay Swift}

As you can see from that rambling of a post yesterday, I have a lot of thoughts rolling through my mind and lots of change coming my way. I hope you join me on this journey as I begin to explore running, dive into deeper relationships with my kiddos at school as I seek to give them the best education possible, and as I try to figure out how I got to where I am.

I had a beautiful run through Magnolia yesterday. I live at the bottom of Queen Anne hill, but babysat this weekend on the other side of Magnolia near the water and found a spot I am in love with. The area over near the water reminds me of places I would spend time with in Australia and I absolutely fell in love.

I ran as the rain fell on my head and Taylor Swift sang in my ear. I found a little nook to walk out on the cliff and look over the Puget Sound. It was such a perfect movie-moment. I cleared my mind and concentrated on my breathing as Taylor Swift kept singing,

"Never wanted this, never wanna see you hurt.
Every little bump in the road I tried to swerve.
But people are people,
And sometimes it doesn’t work out,
Nothing we say is gonna save us from the fall out."
- Breathe

I couldn't believe how those silly words fit what I was feeling so perfectly. I have been trying to swerve away from the difficult decisions in my life. And this past week I have been excessively trying to talk, talk, talk, and fix the mess I made in order to save it all from falling apart.

I realize this is a lot of inside information into the confusion of my mind, but this is therapeutic for me. I am fully embracing the concept of giving things time to process. As I quieted my mind, {desperately cried out to Jesus that I was done taking control}, I know I am being told to slow down and wait. Something that is my BIGGEST weakness. I plan to blog a lot as I continue this process and begin to live in my biggest weakness. I plan to focus on running, my new meal plan, and on becoming a better teacher.

Join me if you please. But caution, the oversharing is no where close to over. You've been warned.


Sunday, March 13, 2011

I just became a runner.

I went on a run today for the first time in a long time and I am officially calling myself a runner. To those of you who have been dedicated to this sport for a long time, I'm sorry if this offends you that I am taking on this title after one day, but hear me out...

I have never gone on a run in my life and felt like I never wanted to stop or like it was refreshing or like I wanted to do it again and again and again. I just went on the best run of my life and I am calling myself a runner because it is officially something I want to do every day (as often as I can). I feel exhausted and refreshed and bustling with energy (which is a huge deal to me right now).

To be fair, I am also a quitter and a mess.

I am a quitter because I don't push myself beyond my limits in things that I am not confident that I am good at. I push in relationships, push with my kids at school, push on my school work. I give up on most other things. Take running for example, I run a little bit one time about once every other month. During that run, I always slow down and convince myself that running is just not for me. I quit.

For those that know me, you are probably thinking "you don't give up, you take risks, ect ect" But let me promise you, I am a quitter and just hide it really really well by my incessant "busy" schedule.

Next, we have the "I am a mess" statement to clarify. Take a stethoscope into my thoughts or listen to a story about my past week and you will be more than satisfied with that label on my life. I have made such an ugly, sticky mess this week of the relationships in my life. I am now single and officially trying to stop picking up the pieces. Why? (You ask) Why am I stopping? Oh, that would be because I pushed and pushed to fix my relationships and made them a bigger mess in the process.

I am reaching the end of one of the hardest weeks in my life and I am still breathing. (which is a success I would like either a gold star or maybe a smelly sticker for, please?) Although this has been one of the hardest weeks emotionally and personally, this has also been one of the sweetest weeks with my kids at school. I have been hyper-focused at interacting with my kiddos at school in effort to force my mind to stop thinking {I literally didn't take my 1/2 hour break all week because I didn't want to stop...like I said - I'm a mess}.

From all this rambling, I will leave you with a beautiful story of one of my sweetest moments this week. Ralph (name changed for confidentiality) is a 6-year old child in my kindergarten class. Ralph is known around school for his shrieking (cry/yell/shout) he often does in the hallways when he does not get what he wants or cannot communicate exactly what he wanted--yes, the WHOLE school can hear. Anyway, one day at the end of playcourt, as I turned around to help another child exit the playground, Ralph--in full force--took both fists and hit me in the back because I had removed a toy from his hands before he was ready. After taking some time to recompose, the day continued.

Later, during free choice time, I was determined to ignore Ralph because his hit actually hurt and had damaged my trust for him and our relationship. I was in charge of "floating" around the classroom to make sure kids were engaged and getting along, when Ralph walked up to me with picnic basket in hand..."Do you want to go on a picnic?" he asked in his cartoon-like voice. I wanted to say no, I wanted to tell him how I really felt, I wanted to tell him I couldn't take it anymore. But, in my kindergarten-teacher-has-it-all-together voice, I sighed, "Of course." And he proceeded with, "Okay, follow me!" We enjoyed a beautiful picnic together as we lounged on our sides on the comfy grass (aka: gross carpet). We ended up having to clean up because (in Ralph's words) it was smelling like rain.

That's grace, folks. The adult in me was ready to ignore, be angry, and carry around the weight of the hurt relationship. Meanwhile, this beautiful child was over it and ready to move on with life and enjoy our relationship again. Thank you, Ralph, for teaching me to let go and move on.

Oh, and also...thank you for the delicious plastic pineapple. I had a delightful picnic.