Wish Me Luck!

I will (hopefully) be finishing my first half marathon in about 11 hours!

Remember this post?  It's my first post announcing I was going to try to run a half marathon.  It also includes a picture of what I wanted to look like across the finish line.  Here it is:

Um. Yeah. I will include pictures.  But don't get your hopes up.

Goodbye ;-(

Easter Family Photo

Easter morning, my brother, Derek, his girlfriend Kim, her daughter Baelee, my sister Bryana, Josh and I all went to my dad's church service.  

Something I Would Like to Share With My Teacher Friends

So I had to give a standardized assessment to my 5th graders today.  They had to come up to me one by one to perform some rhythms and I had to grade them on their accuracy and sight reading.  Yes, it was lame.

Well, this was a magnet class, which is essentially just like "Gifted and Talented" or something.  They are pretty intelligent.  While I was giving this exam, I didn't know what I could do with the other kids who weren't performing at the time, so I gave them a little survey asking some random musical questions.  I MUST share some of these answers!  I will quote exactly... spelling and everything!  Keep in mind: These are 10-year-olds.

1. Who is your favorite singer/artist/band?  Why?

"none"
"Lady Gaga because she is just out their"
"Eminem because I love Rappers"
"I like all of them but not all of them.  I like all music, exept hip hop, pop, and modern rap"
"Lady Gaga because she's like the madona of our generation."
"Bruno mars because he is a inspirational person with Real life situations."
"I despise the music that plays on the radio alot (hip hop, rap, and pop).  That music sounds awful"

2.  What is your favorite instrument?  Why?

"I love the horn because I love how people hold it."
"The violin is very respectful"
"recorder because it is the only one I can play"
"guitar because it is a smooth sounding instrument and it's so compelling to me"
"The bassoon because the instrument is most popular in music"

3. What would you like to do in music class by the end of this year?

"play outside"
"Dance around with music then we all have lunch with our teachers"
"karioki"
"Dance to Mrs. Mengels music"
"Dance outside on a warm day"
"Have a No-Shoe Day"
"I can't think of anything musical to put in Miss Mengels room because its the biggest collection of music I ever saw so I cant really come up with anything"
"Nothing."

4.  In your own words: What does it mean to improvise?

"Add your own flare"
"to play notes without a paper"
"Play off top of your head"
"you are not reading anything"
"do anything/note you want"
"Make up a song with no practice"

5. What is your favorite song that we have done so far in music class?

"I liked the song we performed at the PTA night" (We didn't perform any songs at PTA night)
"none in particular"
"None in particular"

Easter

We spent the last few days in Cumberland, MD visiting my family for Easter/Spring Break.  I intended to do a lot of grad school work while I was there, but, you know how that goes...

We basically did nothing except visit, watch home videos, and eat.  That's what I usually do at my mom's house.  It's great.  Except: On the way home I started experiencing serious, serious tooth pain.  This has happened before in another tooth and it turned into a root canal.  YIKES!  So I am taking a sick day tomorrow and having an emergency dental appointment to (hopefully) get rid of this pain, which is almost unbearable.  (Anyone who has ever had an infection in the roots of their tooth know exactly what I am talking about--literally the worst pain of my life thus far)

We came back last night because we had a busy day today!  We woke up early, got some Dunkin' Donuts, watched a little TV, went to meet with our lender and applied for our mortgage which took forever, had sushi for lunch, went to our home inspection which went pretty well and also took forever, went to the mall for a haircut, came home and worked on my project for school, went to the gym, and now I am getting ready to make dinner and meet on Skype with my group from my grad school class to discuss our project.

I have been alternating Tylenol and Advil all day long and I am already well over the 24-hour dosage limit, but I have no choice.  On the other hand, a 5-day Spring break turned into a 6-day Spring break!

IT'S SPRING BREAK

Oh yeah!

Spring Break is the greatest!  The past three days of school my students have either been preparing for our Spring Program, taking county-wide music assessments or playing Just Dance on the Wii with the gym classes.  That's right.  I was feeling burnt out so I literally spent the majority of my last 3 days dancing to Just Dance.  It was AWESOME.

We have lots of days off for our break.  I just finished my grad class for the night, so we are packing and leaving for Cumberland in the morning.  We will probably be there until Sunday evening.

Monday we are meeting with our lender to apply for our mortgage and then going right to OUR HOUSE for the inspection.  We are still soooo excited about our house!  I love absolutely everything about it.  Everything!  I wish I could move in today!

Have an awesome Easter and a great weekend!

Great News!

WE BOUGHT A HOUSE:

After many crazy trials and tribulations, we finally bought a home!  And we love it :-)

Our closing date isn't until June 15, so even though it's pretty official, it's not like we have the key or anything yet.  But we can't wait to move in!  It is absolutely beautiful inside and I love everything about it.  Maybe there will even be a place for my tree wall mural!

OH! And the best part: There is a huge front and back yard and in the back yard is a beautiful wooden swing set with a slide!  Yes, that's right, a swing set.  Do I have kids? Nope.  Do I want kids soon? Nope.  Why is the swing set the best part then, you ask?  Because I can swing on it!

Mural My Wall, Please!

I always thought I hated murals on walls.  I generally like really clean, simple, plain things.  A beautifully painted solid colored wall with one pretty picture frame makes me happy!  But lately, I have been watching a lot of HGTV and doing some research online and I have fallen in love with wall murals! 

This is what I thought of when I thought of murals before:

While it looks kind of nifty, who in the world wants this in their house!?!!??!

This one cracks me up.  It's beautiful, yes.  But REALLY?

Well, I have been doing some research and found some classy and well-done murals.  They don't all look silly and they aren't all of faces or landscapes (believe it or not)!!!  And I seem to be attracted to trees...

See?  It's simple, modern, and it has clean lines!  It isn't overdone... although the bedspread could probably go.

How cute for a nursey!



I am really liking this in conjunction with a headboard.

Does anyone out there have a mural in their house?  The only thing that worries me is that I might like to change the furniture around a bit sometime.  Then what do I do with this mural?!  It seems like the mural has to be painted with the furniture placement in mind or else it won't really make sense.  Maybe someday this will be on our to-do list...

UPDATE:

The paper was returned with an 'A' on it.

No cockroaches were harmed.

Would You Like to Know...

...what drives me crazy?  I mean... absolutely nuts.  Psycho.  Like nails-on-a-chalkboard.  Certifiably insane.  Biggest pet-peeve of all time?!?

When professionals are not professional.  When they say they are going to do something and they don't do it.

My professor assigns enormous assignments and expects a lot of work from us.  I worked super-super hard on my last assignment, which was due on March 31.  I submitted it on March 30.  He promised a 10-day turn-around.  He said, "It will be back to you by April 10."

Well, during my class on April 13th(!) he said he was sorry it took so long but that we should have it back within 24 hours.  Well, it's now the end of the day on April 16th and I still don't have it.

Ugh.  I would rather eat a live cockroach than wait patiently for this guy to return my paper.

Friday Fun Day!

Today is a great day for the following reasons.

1. It is Friday
2. It is F-Day.  My school system works on a six day cycle (A-Day,B-Day, etc.).  Each day is a different schedule for me.  F-Days are my favorite days because, although I am very busy, I have all of my favorite classes.  So I have named it F(un)-Day!  It is even better when F-Day happens on Friday because then it is called "Friday Fun Day".
3. It is Pay-Day. 
4. Friday, Fun Day, and Pay Day have never happened on the same day before now.  This is great!

Tomorrow Josh and I are going to view 5 more properties.  We are really excited to see them and I think that at least 2 of them are good prospects.  Our lease is up in mid-July, so we need to get on the ball.  We really don't want to live in our rented town house again.  While we like it, we feel like we are wasting money in rent checks.

Next week we only have 3 days of school before our Easter break.  I am excited to be going to Cumberland to visit family because I haven't been there since the Christmas holiday.  Unfortunately, we don't get a Spring Break here, it's just a long weekend for Easter.  But I will take it any day! 

Have an awesome weekend :-)

It's Official

I am registered for my first Half Marathon!  EEK!

Here are the thoughts that are going through my brain:

• I have run 11.5 miles at most so far.  The race is 13.1.  I can do that.
• The time clock officially stops after 3 hours and 15 minutes.  I could walk the last 5 miles and still make it in that time.  Phew.
• I really hope I don't twist an ankle or something.  I don't want to be picked up by the loser bus. 
• It feels weird to say that I will literally run from Ocean City to Assateague Island.
• It starts at the OC inlet and I will immediately cross this beautiful bridge:

• There is an enormous and very steep bridge at the end to get to the island.  Now why would they put this bridge at the END of the half marathon?!?!  To mock me?  Maybe.  Seriously.  Look at this thing:

• But it will be worth it to say that I ran my first half marathon and it ended up here with these beautiful wild ponies:

• Here is the official map:

• Josh's dad and brother are registered for the half marathon.  Josh is registered for the 5K that day in OC.  Josh's mom is assigned to cheerleader/camerawoman/pick-me-up-from-the-hospital-girl in the case that I don't make it up that bridge.
• I have no interest in a full marathon.  Ever.  

The Washington Wizards

Last Friday after school I went on my first field trip as a teacher!  Our PE teacher has a program at our school called ACE.  I'm not exactly sure what those letter stand for... Anyway, it's a program for 4th and 5th grade boys who are borderline behavior problems.  It's essentially to help "push" them back over the borderline to the nice kid side.  Once per week, our PE teacher has a two hour meeting with them.  The first hour they have a Character Education lesson where each week is focused on one particular character trait, like honesty, self-respect, responsibility, loyalty, etc.  Then they practice one hour of basketball and try to apply that character trait to the sport of basketball.  They even get to play a few games against a few other schools in the county.  They won for the first time on Wednesday, then on Friday evening, we took them to a Washington Wizards game.  It was awesome!  Some of them had never even been out of Salisbury before(!), let alone a professional basketball game.

They were soooo excited!   Every single white building that they saw they were all screaming, "That's the White House!  There it is!"  And to every black man they yelled, "There's Obama!  I saw the President!"  Unfortunately, they weren't kidding.  They have no concept of big cities and stuff like that so it was pretty weird. Also... on the way there... every tiny bridge that we crossed, whether it was over a creek or a river or whatever, they would yell, "Oh my gosh!  This is my first time on the Bay Bridge!  It's awesome!".  They had no idea.  Their jaws dropped when we actually went over it!

So, needless to say, it was a great experience for them.  They didn't care that the Wizards (the lowest ranked team in the NBA) played against the Cavaliers (the second lowest ranked team in the NBA).  They were just excited to see that many people in one place and to witness a professional game and buy a souvenir.  Most of them only had a few bucks from their parents so they just bought a small sweatband or something.  But they were happy!  And they will never forget this trip!

Boys will be boys...  Click on this photo to enlarge it and see those crazy kids' faces.

My Second Race

I ran yet another race!  It was another 5K and was sponsored by my school's PTA.  I beat my old time! My last time was 30:45 and yesterday my time was 29:54!  That was my only goal!

Josh's parents came and Brian (dad-in-law), Josh, and I all ran the race.  We all beat our old times.  ANNNDDDD we all placed in our age ranges!

Brian crossing the finish line

ME! crossing the finish line

Josh crossing the finish line

Me getting my GOLD medal for placing 1st in my age range! (Women ages 20-29).  It also turns out that I was the only runner in this group, but that's not important...

The three of us with our medals.  Josh got a silver medal and Brian received a gold medal!  (It's also not important that he was the only one in his age range!).  I am holding a basket with a coffee mug and a gift card to my favorite local, organic coffee shop that I won in a raffle :-)

Overall, not a bad day!  I also ran an 11.5 mile run today when Josh's parents left!  And I ordered new running shoes that should come in this week sometime!  YAY.