Pumping Gas...

For those of you that know me well, you know that if there were anything in this world that I would be it would be a wife and mother. However, at this point in my life I am far from that. I'm really excited about moving out and getting my own place and I know that in God's timing, I may have my hearts desire fullfilled. Until then I am enjoying every day of singlehood. At this point I'm sure your saying, "and what does this have to do with pumping gas?" Fair question, so let me explain.

Tonight, on the way to work, I had to stop and get gas. I do appreciate when a guy knows how to be a gentlemen and for the most part I don't stand around waiting for a guy to come along because "I'm a helpless girl." But tonight I was thinking I would really have liked to had a guy around. I know, my husband won't always go fill the car with gas for me, but tonight, when it was cold, windy and rainy I was wishing "Mr. Right" was there to pump the gas. Go ahead, call me names and say I'm just a hopeless romantic, but there are times when I girl needs to be a girl and wish that there were a desent guy in her life.

Kisses, cacoons and homemade butter...

You may be tempted to ask about the title of this blog and I wouldn't blame you at all for saying, "huh, what???" The connection? They were all a part of my day in Kindergarten today. Let's start in order.

Kisses - Today we celebrated one of the students birthday. She has a summer birthday, so we celebrated today. This little girl is one of the sweetest little girls I have ever met. She is more giving than most adults are, has a smile that lights up the room, and is thankful for the smallest, most insignificant things that most people wouldn't even think a thing about. I've never seen a child's eyes light with such joy because of the gifts she got today. They were small items: a book, a few birthday coloring sheets, a pencil, a sucker and a birthday certificate. After she "opened" her bag of presents she came over to me, gave me a huge hug and a big kiss on the cheek. She was even excited about the tissue paper her gifts had been wrapped in.

Cacoons - Today was also show-and-tell. I had no idea how much kids like show-and-tell. Not having ever really gone to a real school when I was a child, I wasn't real familar with the great awesomeness of show-and-tell. There were some interesting things brought in today ranging from a rainbow colored slinky to a cacoon. The cacoon was really cool. As the teacher, I got to hold it and while I was holding it I felt it wiggle and heard this rubbing sound from the inside. I didn't know you could really feel a caterpillar changing into a butterfly. It was a really neat teaching moment because the students got to come up and listen to the rubbing noice and hold the stick to feel the movement.

Homemade butter - As you know, we have been talking about the farm. Because we had already talked about cows, I thought it would be really fun to make something out of milk. I had actually gotten this idea from one of my college classes. All you do is take whipping cream and put it into some kind of sealed container, with two clean marbles and shake. Unfortunately, the plastic containers I had brought (so we didn't have to use glass ones that have been known to break during this activity) cracked while they were shaking them. Dumb Ziplock twist and seal! We were able to finish the project and enjoyed our homemade butter on some cinnimon raisin bread.

I hope you've enjoyed your glimps into Kindergarten kisses, cacoons and homemade butter. Have a great day and try something new, you never know what you might learn.

I Miss the bike...

For those of you that know, I used to ride a motercycle. As I was walking home this evening, several bikes drove by. I miss riding. You may ask, "why do you say used to?" Well, I'm glad you asked, I'll tell you:-) This past fall I was driving to work, on the motercycle, when I had a minor accident. Thankfully I was wearing a helmet (which is basically ruened now) so my head wasn't hurt, but I smashed my hand quite badly (you can still see the marks on it) and ruined the bike. I haven't been brave enough to go out yet, but I'm hoping to sometime in the near future (if I get the courage).

Carrots...

Have you ever really wanted something? I mean REALLY wanted it? I'm talking about when you were a kid and you really wanted that super cool slinky that could go up and down the stairs!!! What would you do to get that thing? You would really have to love it to do anything for it, but would you be willing to do anything for it? I was thinking of that tonight as I was sitting here eat carrot sticks (hence the name of the blog) and working on my lesson plans for tomorrow. What lessons am I learning from these kids? It's the lesson of really wanting something. For instance, there are several student in the class that have just learned how to tie their shoe. They want to have the independence of tieing their own shoe so badly, that I really think they would kill me if I even offered to help. That got me to thinking... (scarry I know) the things I want, how badly do I want them?

Where did they get this idea...

As most of you know, I am student teaching right now. I am currently in Kindergarten (no, I'm not in kindergarten I'm teaching in kindergarten, actually, saying that I'm teaching is a stretch and I don't have time to go into that right now) Anyways, back to the story. Well, we have been talking about the farm and the other day the animal we were learning about was the cow. We were going to make cows out of giant peices of paper and use scraps to ad spots, legs, feet, tail and utter. During our discussion, one of the students asked what the pink part on the cow was and before I had time to answer another student blurted out, "It's the utter!" After I reminded him that he should not be talking without raising his hand, the student that had asked the question said, "His udder (kindergarten speach for other) what?" After I explained that this was where the farmer milked the cow, the child responded by saying, "Oh, I thought it was a pig that got stuck under the cow and those were his legs sticking down." After a great laugh I reminded him that only kangaroo's carry anything near there tummy and even then it's their own baby. Needless to say, I had a great laugh about it.

Isn't God Great...

The title of this blog is a phrase that is often way over used, but I have a truly grateful heart right now and want to share it with you all.

As you know, we (Kate Woodby) and I, are moving to Schaumburg this fall. The Lord has really opened some doors for us in how our apartment situation worked out and it was really as if our apartment just fell into our laps. (For all you jokers out there I don’t mean to insinuate that either Kate or I are the wicked witch of the west with a house falling on us.) Well, since that time, that Lord has really blessed us with some wonderful things. To be perfectly honest with you, I thought we would be using furniture like in the picture, basically my grandparents old, worn out lawn funiture that they are too embarressed to even use any more. Yes, I know, it is possible to survive with minimal to no furniture for the first little while. In fact, I was planning on going to St. Vinnies to look for the cheapest stuff possible at the end of the summer. But God, the awesome provider that He is, has literally given us a living room set, a dining room set, lamps, a microwave and small kitchen type things too numerous to mention.

I’ll admit, I was a little faithless when it came to having a super cool, furnished apartment, but isn’t it great how God can give wonderful blessings even to the faithless.

A blessed people...

This is more indepth than usual and mostly just rambling, but I hope it lets you see my heart and you know how truly blessed I feel I am to have such a great God.

I have been recently been reading about the children of Isreal and their wandering in the wilderness. That topic is the typical Sunday School felt board lesson. Every good Sunday School going child could tell you the stories in their sleep. I, like most of you, could also tell them without thought or reminder. As I've been reading however, they have really touched my heart. Yes, there have been jokes told for years about the Isrealites wandering because Moses wouldn't stop and ask for directions, but what was God really teaching them? I have been guilty one more than one occasion of assuming they wandered because they weren't obeying God, and yes, I do believe that may be partly true. I also have believed that God was using this to teach them things, again, I believe this to be true. And yes, I know it was God's plan for them to wander all those years. But I really believe that God was using this time to show them his greatness. Everything God does is a reflection of his awesomeness. Many times I have thought to myself, "Wouldn't it have been cool to be alive during Jesus' day or in the OT when God was performing great miracles through his servants!!" Well, yes, that would have been cool, but there were people that were seeing these truly powerful works of God and yet still did not believe. One of Jesus' own beloved followers denied Christ after watching him for years. What makes me think that I would have any more faith in God if I had been there to witness these awesome events? Then I think about the awesome works God is showing us each and every day. It's awesome that we can breath and live every day. It's awesome that we have a Bible to read and study and look to for guidence. It's awesome that we can talk to God any time we want. There are some many things that we do every day that God allows. Yes, we all have our "wandering in the wilderness" times, but God makes himself known even then. Yes, we all wonder if God is really at work in today's world. I can assure you he is. He is more today than he was yesterday or even when Moses lead the children of Isreal. Yes, they saw great miracles, but did they believe because they saw or did they believe because they knew God was at work. We are blessed more today than ever before, not because we can see, but because we believe God is at work and we know he guides us each step of the way through our day.

It's been forever...

Ok, so it's been forever since I've written on here. There are a couple of reasons for that. 1) I've been totally busy with a million things unrelated to student teaching. 2) I'm student teaching. 3) I sort-of forgot about keeping this up because there's like three people that even look at it and see them all the time anyways. So this message is for you three.

Things are going fine. I'm not too fond of my new supervising teacher. She is very nice, but has some really strange rules and proceedures for me to follow and I've spent the first two weeks only observing her. Much different than my last placement.

I have also been trying to get out my graduation invataions/announcements!! Woo-hoo!! I'm super excited about being done with college. Although, the really bad things is that the Monday morning after graduation I have to go back to student teaching for another four weeks. Oh well, I guess life could be worse.

Other than that, everything in my life is about the same as it always is. I do have tomorrow (Mon.) and Tues. off of school so that will be nice and I may get a chance to see some of you up at school. Well, I need to get to bed and take advantage of the extra beauty rest (I need all the help I can get). Have a wonderful day!!