Life Update

Wow, it's been a long time since we put anything on here! Well, here's what's been going on lately:

• Yesterday (Saturday), Daniel and I rearranged our house! It's still in process (aka we have some cleaning to do...), but we will post some pictures soon. =)
• Today church was just really fun. We both continue to enjoy and feel nurtured and loved by our awesome church family at Central Christian. I especially enjoyed our "post-church church" today -- we almost always eat together after the service. We are looking forward to hopefully being able to host "post-church church" at our place sometime soon!
• Teaching is... well, teaching. I would say that overall I've been feeling better about how teaching is going... I had kind of a hard, negative stretch around Thanksgiving there... but I'd say December has gone a bit better. However, I'm still continuing to struggle with discerning whether this is something I'm called to long-term. I know there are a million variables -- it being my first year, there being lots of new initiatives and such, yada yada -- but I still wonder, even though there's no way for me to actually know right now. Questions that I would appreciate the answer to: How fulfilling is your job supposed to feel/be? Is it possible to be both an introvert and a successful middle school teacher? (If so, how do you do it??) How can you tell the difference between God challenging you with hard things to overcome and God making something hard/gross as a message for you to stop it and look elsewhere?
• In slightly less existentially confusing teaching news, I'm excited about opportunities for more awesome collaboration and teamwork with my fellow Language Arts (and other) teachers! There have been a lot of exciting ideas and plans floating around, so I'm looking forward to continued discussions and seeing some of these helpful collaborative ideas come to fruition!
• Daniel and I have been doing pretty well just in terms of ourselves also, I think. We've been continuing to work on things (individually and together), and we're hoping our new furniture arrangement will help us to spend more time together while we're working (moved my "grading couch" up to the office). We are totally also looking forward to being able to spend time with both sides of the S-J family this Christmas! Yayyyyyy! Recently we were really moved by a cool article where a 5-year-old asked why, on Jesus' birthday, we give everyone but Him presents, so we're looking into how we can make this holiday more about doing things for Jesus (via "the least of these") and less about what material things we want for ourselves. (see our "Christmas list" here.)

So that's the round-up, more or less! Plotting Christmas travel and counting down the school days (but only for my kids' benefit, of course...). Hope you and yours are well and wishing you all a fantabulous Christmas!

~Rebekah

My Face Feels A Little Better

Today went well. I was pretty nervous before my "block of doom" (ok... more like my "block of truth"... lol), but in the end things went well today. I didn't even have to be a mean old hag like I've been building up in my brain! Just had to be firm and willing to stop over and over when folks were talking. (Plus it helped that we had plenty for the kids to work on today.)

THEN when I got home... surprise! My fantabulous husband had a candlelit home-made pineapple pizza dinner -- complete with love letter -- waiting for me. Can't beat that. =)

Just wanted to update on how things went. Feeling pretty good, looking forward to Friday.

PEACE OUT!!

Rebekah


p.s. Birthday shout-out to my Momma! Her birthday is tomorrow -- 11/11/11! How cool is that?!?

My Face Hurts

Rough day at school today. I have one class with which I was just struggling today (though this definitely isn't the first time). It did not go well. Now, in my "defense", this is a particularly un-helpful mix of students -- a lot of borderline distractable folks, so once one goes down a rabbit-trail they sort of all go along -- but I've gotta say, when you get evaluations from your students telling you to take control of your class, it's not a good day. And something needs to be done.

So please just be praying for me this week (slash indefinitely...) that I can really be firm in my holding all my kids to a high behavioral standard. I just need to remember that letting them get out of hand teaches them bad habits for their future, so it DOES matter if I let something slide just this once because the bell is about to ring or whatever.

Anyways. Hope you all are well... just wanted to publicly state my struggle and intentions. Witnesses, you know.

Thanks,
Rebekah

In Which Rebekah Devises A Cheaper Method of Earring Obtenation.

I've been getting a little itchy for a new pair of earrings lately. After perusing the jewelry rack at Penney's (no more Target clearance earrings for me here!), I realized that buying earrings gets pretty pricey... so when I was at Wally-Mart today I hopped over to the craft section and picked up some beads, wire, and hooks. I've been contemplating the idea of making my own earrings ever since a couple of my friends in college gave it a try... but today I decided to just go for it! Here are my first attempts! =)

Earrings #1! I figured I'd better start out simple. =)

Earrings #2! Still pretty simple, but less flimsy.

Earrings #2 close-up.

That's all she wrote for now -- tune in next time for more earring escapades! (Actually probably some other sort of escapades... but alliteration is fun.)

~Rebekah

p.s. No, "obtenation" is not a word that I know of. But it follows the general rule of English noun endings and it's fun, darn it, so I'm going to keep it up there! =)

Birthday Camping at Meade Lake

Today (Sunday) is Daniel's birthday, and for his birthday weekend we decided to go camping out at Meade Lake.  It was SO BEAUTIFUL -- it's just this little people-made lake out in the middle of nowhere. It's surrounded by gorgeous trees in fall colors, and it's basically like a tiny piece of Minnesota lurking in the middle of all this corn and cattle. Awesomeness.

We got out there around lunchtime yesterday. Daniel fired up the little stove and I set about figuring out our tent (I still remember how to assemble one!). It was super windy -- nearly blew away the tent once I put it together and before I staked it down! But once we got settled, it was SOOOOO NICE. It was great just to be able to relax and enjoy each other's company with nothing pressing to worry about except whether to nap or go on a walk. (Pressure's on! haha.)

Then some funny things happened. We had planned to arrive in time for a late breakfast, so we brought WAY too much food... and we ended up just having pigs in a blanket for supper instead of our fancy (and healthier) fish-and-veggie-kabobs dinner that we had planned. Then we sat by the fire and chatted and prayed and sang until dark... at which point we realized that it was getting a bit cold and we still hadn't really packed up the food or anything. So we started on that (in the dark, with flashlights) and when we were almost finished we heard some rustling nearby. We shined our lights in that direction and saw -- AN ARMADILLO!!! It was SO FUNNY -- at first I thought it was a possum, but then I saw its little accordion body. I named it Artie. It was just tromping through the leaves, munching on I don't even know what, like it hadn't a care in the world. We started to sort of follow it around, and it ducked through a little culvert tunnel. We got close enough for me to see its cute little ears, and then we took one step too many and it BOLTED! Those things are like little BULLETS, they run so fast! Anyway, we finally got stuff packed up and we decided we wanted to try wrapping potatoes in aluminum foil and cooking them in the coals overnight. So we buried them and went to sleep, setting our alarm for 6:00 so we'd have time to cook breakfast and pack up before church.

It was pretty cold last night -- mid-thirties, I think -- and we discovered that our tent is a much better summer tent than a winter tent, although we combated the cold sufficiently with our blankets, extra socks, and lots of hugs. We finally fell into a good sleep (after some sleep and tossing and turning) at about 2:30am... only to wake up to sunshine and the realization that the alarm had not gone off and it was 7:50 (we needed to be at church, more than a half hour drive, by 9:00). AHHHHHHHH!! So we rolled right out of bed and immediately started breaking camp and stuffing things in the car (which, I forgot to mention, was half-full with compressed cardboard boxes that we've been meaning to take down to recycling but haven't yet). We pretty much got things ready to go when I remembered about the potatoes. I went to dig them out... and I noticed three funny impressions in the ashes... and when I poked a stick around, there was nothing there... and when I walked back towards the tent to tell Daniel, I saw some crumpled aluminum foil. Whoops. Well, I guess Artie at least got a nice hot meal out of our chasing adventures!

Yum, yum, yum... thanks for breakfast!

We booked it back home, ate pop-tarts in the car, and ended up making it to church exactly on time (we almost beat the pianist!). Overall, it was a super fun (and occasionally horribly funny) little outing at the lake. We are excited to go back for attempt number two! =)

Hope you all have had a lovely weekend, and hope you are enjoying the fall colors where you are, whatever stage they're at! (Feel free to call and sing to Daniel -- he loves the happy birthday song!)

Peace out!
~Rebekah

The Long Weekend

Hi there, guys and gals!

It's been a bit since I've written... so a quick update!

• Parent-Teacher conferences were held at my school on Thursday and Friday (hence the long weekend). I was pretty nervous... but in the end, everything went really well, I thought. I got a lot of much-needed Spanish practice, too, as about 75% of my parents were primarily Spanish-speaking. Good times!
• Daniel's parents have been down to visit since Wednesday (and mine were here at the start of the month, don't remember if we mentioned that earlier). It's been super great to have both of them come be a part of our new little establishment here. 
• This morning (while the Jacksons were still with us) we had a really good conversation about "mawwiage" and serving each other. That combined with the other part of the conversation (about my class/school and social contracts) inspired Daniel and me to make a social contract for how we will treat each other! Here's a picture:
  We had so much fun making it together! We're hoping and praying that it will help us to remember to be each other's spouses first before we try to go be teachers and preachers and all those other things we do.

Anyway, just wanted to share a little update. School is going pretty well -- I can't believe we're already more than 1/4 done, and Thanksgiving will soon be upon us. Then it'll be Christmas before we know it, and then spring assessments, and then... it'll be done, and I bet I won't believe it went so fast! But until then, we just keep pluggin' away. =)

Hope you all are well -- drop us a line sometime! We love catching up. =)

~Rebekah

Studiedness and Disagreement

Daniel here.

It's amazing how scholarly most people expect you to be IF you try to disagree with them.

It's funny, but I never have heard somebody with whose position I agree call me out for the insufficiency of the studying and discerning I have done to reach said position. And frankly, I don't think I have done so to others. I only call people to do more more "homework" if A) I have done more "homework" than them, and B) they disagree with me.

It's funny. How powerful are our biases and surety, and our desire that others would see our what we see, how we see it.

It's a funny dynamic, but it sure makes it be really useful to be around people who disagree with you.

Perhaps I should try and encourage even those who agree with me to do better homework, to question the things they agree with me on. It's hard, though, when those things are so near and dear to me. How could I encourage my church friends to question their belief in the Jesus I love?

I can definitely resolve, though, to stay in thorough communication with those ORNERY, LOVING people who disagree with me and tell me to do my homework better!