This Chaos We Call Life

Okay, so it's been FOREVER since I've blogged about anything because my life has gotten CRAZY!  I officially became a second grade teacher last Monday.  The week before that was teacher back-to-school week with meetings and convocation and such.  I have to admit, I was quite emotional about the whole thing.  At convocation they had a slide show of pictures from the previous year and my choir was on the slideshow from our time singing at the Royals in May.  I was completely shocked by my reaction, but I immediately started crying and BARELY escaped the ugly cry.  Apparently, I was still adjusting to leaving my first love - teaching music.  

But I'm thrilled to say that as soon as my wonderful class arrived on Monday morning, the tears were gone!!  I mean, seriously, I had 23 second graders staring at me.  I was a little too preoccupied to start crying.  :-)  And, God bless their beautiful little hearts, I've had my old choir students come to say good morning to me EVERY day since school has started!  Oh, how I love them!!

So I was going to take a picture of the new classroom and my new team --- but this past week was SOO busy!  I took my camera to school every day and every day I forgot to take the pic.  I'm crossing my fingers that I'll remember to take the pictures next week so I can share them with you. Bri, if you're reading this, help me to remember to take our picture!!!

So, in the mean time, lots of other things have been happening besides school starting.  For one, last weekend my laptop got fried in the thunderstorm.  I forgot that it was plugged in the wall and it got zapped.  DANG IT!!  Fortunately, a dead laptop was just enough excuse for me to go buy a brand new MacBook Pro!  LOVE IT!!  Seriously, I think I have a crush on my computer.  Is that even possible?  Look how beautiful it is!!

Grad school started this week, too.  It's Research Problems which poses a serious problem for me -- I have to write a research paper.  I don't know about you, but the last research paper I wrote was in high school.  Surprisingly enough, neither my undergraduate degree NOR my master's degree required a research paper.  I am NOT NOT NOT looking forward to that.  But I think I've picked my topic - Fine Arts Education in the Public School System.  Shocking, I know.  :-)

With school starting and grad school starting and everything else that went on this week, needless to say, by the end of this week, I was absolutely exhausted!!  My mom emailed me at school and wanted to know if I wanted to get dinner with her Friday night.  She already knew the answer.  I rarely say no to free food.  So we ventured out to Houlihan's and ran into some of my favorite people in the world - the Snyder's!!   Alicja (who's really now a Carter, although I still call her a Snyder) was home from Oklahoma for the week and she just happened to be enjoying a night out with her parents at Houlihan's!  They invited us to eat with them and we completely crashed their party for the night.  We had so much fun!!

PS....Little makeup to start with + a long day at school + a sweaty recess duty does NOT equal a good time to take pictures.  But we did it anyway.  :-)


Okay, so my bedtime has come and gone, but I want to leave you with a beautiful reminder that I received this week of how good the Lord is!  My friend Courtney is such a blessing in my life and reminded me of some very important things in the middle of the craziness that was my week.  I'll just use her words:

This week God reminded me very distinctly of a conversation we had here in February. I had a memory of your face--it was adament and hurting. I realized it was your ugly face post Texas boy #2. Then God reminded me of your countenance sitting at Custard's a few weeks ago. It was full of peace and contentment. And I realized HOLY MOLY, you are RIGHT....He has brought you SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO far in these six months. I just swelled up with this sort of big sister pride of you and thanksgiving that He has shown Himself so good and faithful and your trust and belief has GROWN SUBSTANTIALLY and MATURED!! Amen! Hallelujah!
You are now headlong into a long stretch of committment and schedule, I hope to remind you and encourage you to stay in the Word of LIFE and TRUTH this school year. 

Thank you, Lord, for these words.  They are so TRUE and such a testimony of how GOOD and FAITHFUL you are!  You've created a pathway through my wilderness and a river through my desert.  Jesus, don't stop your work in me!  Help me to continue to be faithful to you through this chaos we call life.  I love you, Lord.