Change it up!

Is that really a hockey term or do they just say it on The Mighty Ducks? It's actually D2: The Mighty Ducks when Coach Bombay isn't there and that teacher lady is coaching and she says "they're getting tired. We need to switch places." and then Charlie tells her to yell "Change it up!!" I suppose this really has nothing to do with anything except that it happens to be what I chose for the title of this blog.

Anyhow, I'm not one who's usually much into change. In fact, I'd say I'm generally opposed to it. I very much enjoy the comfort of familiarity but I'm slowly learning that change is a good thing and I'm trying to embrace it. So here are some things that have been changing around here:

1. Spring is here!! I can hear the birds chirping in the mornings and the frogs croaking in the evenings and the cherry trees are blooming! It's been over 50 degrees for the last week or so and the days are definitely getting longer. March was an insanely busy month for us and I am so looking forward to starting a new month on Friday and welcoming even more springy weather.

2. I'm going to start splurging on yummy/healthy foods every now and then. Steven and I were at the grocery store together today and we decided to buy salmon for dinner (even though it costs about 3 times as much as chicken, which we already had at home in the freezer anyway...). We had salmon and rice and zucchini and an orange and it was SO good! I'm thinking salmon should be a once a month treat -- I'll keep watching for sales. (We also purchased the Tangled DVD and watched it this afternoon. Still just as cute as when we saw it in the theater. I love it.)

3. Here's the big one -- we're making some huge changes in terms of our jobs. Steven has been somewhat miserable at his job for, well, the entire 6 months he's been working there. He would really like to focus more of his time and energy on volunteering at the fire station and working on getting a firefighting job. So we're finally doing something about it. Steven gave his two weeks notice at Rural Metro on Monday. He will still be working for them part time but that might be as little as two shifts per month. His stress level has decreased significantly since we made this decision earlier this month. It definitely helped to ease the tension during this busy time. We're so looking forward to having a normal work schedule that allows us to actually eat dinner together more than 5 times a month and attend church together every week instead of just every other. I'm trying my very best to substitute teach as often as possible. I am currently employed in 4 school districts and have submitted applications to 4 more. It's a little late in the year but my goal is just to get two solid months (averaging 2 to 3 days a week) of teaching in before the summer starts. I also got a tutoring job at the Sylvan learning center in Maple Valley. It's only 6 hours a week but it's something I can continue into the summer, so that's good. Steven had an interview at US Bank on Tuesday and is hoping to get a part time job as a teller. The pay is pretty close to what he was making with the ambulance company and the commute is only half as long. We'll both need to find something more over the summer but we're feeling good about what we've got going on right now.

4. The blog has a new look, did you notice?

5. I'm growing up! I'm learning how to say "no" and set healthy boundaries and not just be nice all the time. I read a book last week called No More Christian Nice Girl and I'm feeling rather empowered. These kinds of changes are particularly difficult but I'm working on it.

6. Steven got a new helmet. The new helmets actually came in a while ago but I just took the photo recently. He's pretty excited about it so I thought I'd show you. How crazy is it that I'm married to a firefighter? Pretty darn.

7. Speaking of firefighting, Enumclaw is in the process of hiring 3 firefighters. We haven't really heard when they're going to start testing or doing interviews. Right now they're putting together committees and just getting ready. I don't think it's too early to start praying that Steven gets hired though. Feel free to join in.

8. I think I'm finally ready to apply for a real teaching job! I've been working on the online applications so that when the job postings go up over the next few months I'll be ready to submit my applications right away.

9. Steven and I are ready for quadruplets!!! JUST KIDDING! No way am I ready for that but we have been enjoying our time in the nursery at church every Sunday morning. We work in the 12-16 month room and so many of them just want to snuggle. It's really sweet.

10. Well, I can't think of a tenth thing that is changing so I guess that's just a perfect example of something that isn't changing -- I still have some OCD tendencies, like how I couldn't just end my list at 9 and be satisfied :)

That's all that I have to update you on this evening. I would love to hear from you though! Leave me a comment or send me an e-mail if we haven't had a chance to catch up in a while.

take care!
Steph

p.s. happy 23rd birthday to Lena!

Drinking From a Fire Hose.

Doesn't life just feel like that sometimes? Like all you want is a little sip of water and all of the sudden a deluge comes blasting out at you at the rate of 7 gallons per second. It just doesn't seem fair does it? How can you possibly take in and enjoy any water at that rate? Doesn't seem helpful at all. I can't wait for things to slow down.

Lucky for us, it seems that as life gets crazier it also gets more exciting. Jeremy proposed to Ronnie on Friday evening and we were so blessed to be invited to the "after party," which, of course, was a huge surprise for Ronnie.

Yeah, I know, I can't believe Jeremy's engaged either :)

I know this picture is dark but they're just so cute and happy it doesn't even matter. I had to include it anyway. There were probably about 25 of us, friends and family, waiting in the dark when Ronnie opened the door to her house. I don't think I've actually ever been part of a flip-the-lights-on-and-jump-out-and-yell-surprise type of a party but it was so fun!! Ronnie just had this deer in the headlights look and stood there staring at us for a good three seconds.

There was lots of hugging and congratulating and then we all circled up for story time. They told us about their lovely evening and we all ooed and awed and laughed and it was just beautiful. Ronnie has typed up her account of the events if you want to check it out: http://www.facebook.com/#!/notes/ronnie-glazner/slow-dancing-in-a-burning-room/507082641811


I think my favorite part was that both of their families were there. It made my heart so happy to watch Ronnie share her joy with her mom. There was so much love in that room.

It was a wonderful evening and I'm so glad we got to be a part of it.

Contrary to my personal nature, Steven and I drove down to Portland Friday afternoon with absolutely zero plans of where we were going to stay or anything like that. We spent the afternoon roaming around Powell books and having dinner at Sushiland and then to the party of course but when it came to the sleeping portion of the day... well... we just didn't have a plan. We had thrown sleeping bags and pillows into the car hoping we could just crash at Ronnie's but we decided that wasn't the best option for us and maybe we would sleep better in a bed. So at 11pm we booked a hotel from Jeremy's computer. I was a little nervous to be staying in a cheap hotel in Portland but it was actually quite decent. We had a two room "suite" (suite meaning that it has a smallish kitchen and is meant for extended stays, not meaning "fancy") because that was all that was left and it only cost $75 so that wasn't too terrible and the good news is, they had a complimentary deluxe breakfast in the morning! Oh wait, you mean, the monochromatic counter-ful of sliced bread, toaster waffles, cheerios and frosted flakes with the toaster, grape jelly and styrofoam plates? Oh, yeah, that deluxe breakfast. Haha! Good thing I LOVE frosted flakes and the toaster waffles were actually really yummy but watch out! They melt the styrofoam, which I'm sure causes cancer. That styrofoam stuff is a thing of the devil for sure.

We were up bright and early Saturday morning to enjoy that deluxe breakfast and hit the road! We were on our way to Steven's interview with the Hoquiam fire department and had a two and a half hour drive ahead of us.

Interview. Check. Change back into street clothes. Check. Tour the fire station. Check. Make bagel sandwiches for the drive. Check. Put gas in the car. Check. And we're back on the road again. When we arrived back home at 1pm Saturday afternoon we had barely been gone 24 hours and had driven approximately 450 miles. We spent the rest of the day laying in bed watching movies, eating grapefruit and drinking tea. We were both very near to falling asleep around 7pm but I knew that would mean we'd be waking up at 4am so we forced ourselves out of bed and made some bagelbites to enjoy while watching Backdraft.

Sunday was a very big day and one Steven and I are both very happy to have over with. The Stairclimb. I left home around 7:30, as usual, to get to church. I serve in the 12-16month room and I love it in there and we have really great volunteers so that makes it even more fun but recently all of our kids seem to have moved up to the next age group and we got a whole new flock of little ones. So all of the sudden most of our kids in there are just barely one year old and all they want is to be held. First service just happens to be nap time for pretty much everyone and it's just tough for them to stay awake...

... so sometimes they don't. I had these two little ladies sitting with me the entire time we were in there. They were both fighting sleep like crazy too. For the first half hour we were sitting on the floor but I just couldn't hold us all up anymore so we moved into the rocking chair. But every time Addison (on the left) got close to sleep, Grace (on the right) would touch her face or kick her or something and then they'd both start crying... finally we moved to the bean bag and by the time their parents walked in, they were both fast asleep. I could have done with a nap myself.


Steven was supposed to be sleeping in while I was at early service but I don't think that was very successful. He was feeling pretty anxious but for absolutely no reason because he did an amazing job!!! Steven climbed the Columbia Tower (all 69 floors) in 17 minutes and 49 seconds. He finished 298th out of the 1,338 finishers. I'm so proud of him. It was his first year and he's been so busy and hasn't had much time to train or anything and I think he surprised himself a little with that time.

When he came home Sunday night I expected him to be absolutely exhausted but it was quite the opposite. It was like a huge weight had been lifted off of his shoulders and he was in such high spirits. So we had dinner and watched Schindler's List, haha, not to bring him down or anything, just because it was due at the library the next day so we had to watch it.

I figured we needed to celebrate a little so I made lobster ravioli (okay, that bit is from Costco) with an absurdly rich sauce that my family is all too familiar with thanks to my genius of an uncle, Scott, he's the best with the food. And I even got out one of our bottles of sparkling cider that was left over from the holidays. And Steven brought me the flowers that were on the table at the stairclimb :) I was really touched that he had thought to bring them to me. Tulips and Gerberas are two of my favorites!

And now back to the work week and guess what, I actually get to work this week. I have a new tutoring job, so I've been training for that, and I get to sub at Westhill on Friday. yay! I think the tutoring is going to go well but right now it definitely feels like I'm trying to drink water from a fire hose. I trained for a couple of hours yesterday then did two training modules on the computer for an hour today and then they threw me to the wolves. I had my first two math students this afternoon. It really wouldn't be all that difficult except that you have two or three students at once and they're working on completely different lessons... I think it went okay but I wasn't too impressed with my performance. I'll get the hang of it though.

And here I am sharing my thoughts with you and waiting for Steven to get home from work while eating a ginormous bowl of pasta and broccoli. I made way too much but it's just so hard to cook for one. I think that's why I usually have cereal for dinner when Steven is gone. And now I wish I wasn't so full because cereal sounds absolutely lovely right now. So glad tomorrow is Thursday! Steven has the day off (as do I) and then Tim and Annika are coming over for dinner. Should be a much needed day of rest and relaxation and fun.

What's Going On Here???

Steven has the day off today and we have plans for the day so I'm not working, obviously, so OF COURSE today is the day that I have gotten 16 calls to substitute teach!! I'm not even exaggerating. Isn't that just dumb? One of the few days that I don't want to slash am unavailable to work and I get a zillion calls (this time I am exaggerating). **Steven wants to know how many is a zillion. Just to clarify, it's loads.** There are so many days that I'm available to teach and I just can't because there aren't any opportunities. You would think those contracted teachers could try to spread their illnesses out a bit wouldn't you? Just thought I'd share that with you along with these random photos from the last week of my life.

This is my sister Tara. I think she's super cute. She and Mom and I went to California Burger last week and Tara got another peanut butter bacon cheeseburger. Yum.

Steven and I had a fun little date on Wednesday. We stopped by Blue Highway and found that they already have a copy of the new Days of Wonder game Cargo Noir that isn't supposed to be out until the end of the month.

I'm sold. It was really fun and not nearly as complicated as a lot of the other board games that we have. Hopefully Steven will get it for his birthday...

Um... yeah... while unloading the mountain of Costco groceries from my car the bottom of the box that was holding the oranges decided to just flop open. And the oranges kind of went everywhere. Fortunately I found this rather amusing and just laughed when it happened. Probably would have been a different story if it was still pouring down rain or hailing like it had been all day yesterday. Now my oranges have dirt all over them. Which is kind of nice, you know, nice to spice things up a little.

Who remembers this cereal? Steven and I were SO excited to find some at the Grocery Outlet last week. It's just as tasty as we remember it being. I love cereal.

That's really all I have to report -- happy weekend everybody!!!

Marching Into Spring -- Ha!

Today was the first day of March and I am very, VERY glad to see that it finally decided to stop snowing around here! I hope we shall see no more of that at least until we roll the clocks back again next fall. Speaking of which I read in the newspaper today that we are just two short weeks away from "springing" those clocks forward an hour. Woohoo!! I can't wait for the longer days! I can already tell that it's staying light out later and it is just such a nice change. Plus, it's so much easier to get up in the mornings when it's actually light outside. It was fun having all of this snow this year but it's time for spring now. I'm ready.

Things are busy here, oh yeah, I know, I do mention that in pretty much every blog post, but only because it's true. Some friends contacted us about getting together for dinner sometime this month so I sent them the list of evenings we would be available to do that. There were only 5 dates out of the entire month of March that I could offer to them as potential hang-out nights. FIVE!!! As in that's literally all of the free evenings that Steven and I have together for the next four weeks. It's just ridiculous. Steven's at drill right now actually. I just had a lovely phone chat with Lena (almost two hours of catching up, it had been a while) and now I'm drinking my second mug of sleepy time tea and waiting for Steven to come home. We're going to watch one of our library movies. We currently have Schindler's List, Backdraft and The English Patient. One because it's a firefighter movie and the other two because the characters on Seinfeld watched them in the movie theaters and there were whole episodes based off of them so we decided we should watch them too. Pretty silly.

Not much else to report. I've been working hard on filling out applications so that I can hopefully start substitute teaching in a few more districts. I figured that way I'd be more likely to get work more than just three days out of each month. I worked today actually, which was really nice, and already have three more days scheduled for the end of the month so I'm off to a good start. I've also been offered a position as a tutor at the Sylvan Learning Center in Maple Valley. I haven't decided yet whether or not I'll take the job. The center is really nice and they have a lot of great materials! I was really impressed with the resources they have and all of the lesson plans and games and math manipulatives and everything. It would be really nice to work in a place that is so well equipped and where the parents are obviously invested in their students' education (clearly since they're will to pay so much for the tutoring) and I really like the idea of getting to consistently meet with the same students and watch them grow and progress. I think that my abilities as a teacher would be valued and put to use in a way that just doesn't seem possible in the subbing world. I'm just not too excited about the idea of giving up those evening times with Steven since the hours would be 3:00-7:00pm. I told the director of the center that I would make my decision about the job by Thursday evening, so who knows, I might have a new little very part time job by the end of the week.

Steven and I have a crazy weekend coming up including spending Saturday driving to and from Hoquiam for an interview with the fire department and the Stairclimb on Sunday. Well, let's be clear, Steven has a really busy weekend and by extent I have a very busy weekend because I'm either tagging along and taking turns driving or trying to find other fun things to fill my schedule with since Steven will be unavailable to me on a weekend that we would normally spend playing games and drinking tea :)

Here We Go Again...

Well, it is snowing yet again! Almost March and we're getting more snow...? This is getting a little ridiculous. It's been snowing off and on for the past 24 hours or so, we'll just have to wait and see what happens from here.





I spent last night at Great Wolf Lodge in Grand Mound. Ummm, has anyone ever heard of Grand Mound? No? Me either. Why in the world the GWL people chose to put their Washington State location of the lodge in Grand Mound I really have no idea. It was my first time staying there and it's a pretty cool place but I think probably best if you have smallish children.





I went with Christina and a family that she works for. The family has 3 boys and one of them brought a friend along so there was lots of work to be done. I spent most of my time following the four year old around. He's so fast! And never runs out of energy either. And he's quite stubborn. And loud. But very, very cute. This morning he came out of his bedroom and sat on the couch with Christina and I and said "So how did you guys sleep last night? Pretty good?" And it was just adorable. We spent some time in their indoor waterpark both yesterday and today.






Sorry I didn't get a better picture of it. I guess you can't really tell anything from this photos but basically everyone walks around the lodge in their swimsuit and flip flops and just goes in and out of this indoor waterpark. They have waterslides and a wave pool and a swimming pool and a hot tub and a kiddie area. I only did one of the big slides with the tubes. It was really crazy to be in there this morning because it was 80 degrees and we were all playing in the warm water but just outside the window the snow was coming down!





Christina and I hadn't had a sleepover in quite a few years so that part was really fun. We went down to the gift shop and bought a pound of chocolate and some diet coke and talked until pretty late last night -- quite reminiscent of many many sleepovers over the course of many many years. I'm a bit tired though. A night away from my husband spent on a hide-a-bed in a cold hotel room left me somewhat sleep deprived. I think I'll cozy into my bed with a mug of tea and watch a Harry Potter movie.

My mom bought me those flowers for Valentine's Day. I hope they don't mind the snow too much... maybe I should bring them inside with me where it's warm. It's so nice to have a little patch of spring in the midst of this seemingly endless winter :)

"My Husband is in the Caterpillar."

Steven and I work in the nursery at church on Sunday mornings and yesterday we were in a different room from normal because they didn't have enough volunteers. I figured Steven was really going to like the new room because we were with two year olds. Steven much prefers the ones that can run and talk and giggle and play. Understandably so. It makes sense why this would be more fun for him. Anyway the two year old room has this big plastic caterpillar tunnel type thing for the kids to crawl through -- oh, wait, you mean, you know where this is going? let me tell the story anyway -- and I had a feeling it wouldn't take long for Steven to check it out. Sure enough he was chasing kids through there and they were crawling in after him and laughing and shrieking and just having the best time ever. Then during snack time he had crawled through but everyone else was at the snack table so he just sort of layed there waiting for someone to come back and play. At that time someone came by to take attendance and she said "oh my goodness! Is it just the two of you in here?" and I said "Oh, no, my husband is in the caterpillar." It just rolled off my tongue as if that were a completely normal thing. I found it rather amusing :)



Things have been busy around here as usual. We've seen two shows in the past couple of weeks. The first was Vanities a new musical that was showing at the ACT as part of our 5th Avenue subscription. It was a musical performed by just 3 women and showed snapshots from different stages of their lives and friendships. I really enjoyed it. Of course, a show filled with singing and all about relationships - perfect. It's not my new favorite or anything but it was unique and so fun to hear the whole thing done in three-part harmonies. It was also my first time at the ACT. I really like the intimate setting of the theatre. It's nice that it's so small.



Then last week we saw The Odyssey at the Taproot Theatre. It was pretty good. Steven and I definitely prefer musicals to straight theatre but it was still entertaining. Josh Smyth is in the show and it's always fun to see a familiar face on stage. That whole evening was rather stressful actually. I had worked that day up in Bothell so I had to race home so that Steven and I could eat dinner and then drive into Seattle... where we discovered we had a flat tire. We decided we would just change it after the show since we didn't have enough time before but... sadly, everything had been screwed on too tightly so we couldn't get it off with our wimpy wrench. We were so annoyed that we had to call for roadside assistance for something we are both capable of doing ourselves. So we sat in our freezing car with it's sad little flat tire in the Bartells parking lot until someone from Seattle Auto Rescue, or whatever, came and fixed it for us sometime around midnight. And then the long drive home, during which Steven fell asleep, good thing I was driving... it was all very exciting. Fortunately, when I took my car to Costco on Saturday morning they fixed the tire for me at no charge! Another reason I'm glad I purchased my tires at Costco. You can shop while they fix your flat tire for free. Simply marvelous.




Valentine's Day was really fun. Steven had to work but I bought pink champagne and baked some spritz cookies and made cream cheese frosting to dip strawberries into and Steven and I played a board game and enjoyed our treats when he got home from work. Then the next morning I made us some mini-doughnuts with the mini-doughnut maker my mom bought for me for Valentine's Day and we put the cream cheese frosting on those. Yum! Cream cheese frosting makes everything taste better. Well, I'm sure there are exceptions to this, but it was really good anyhow. We had a little day-after-Valentine's-Day date that evening starting with a shopping trip to Borders books to spend up our giftcards before they go out of business, dinner at Olive Garden and then to the SuperMall Cinema to see The Kings Speech, which was truly wonderful. Colin Firth was fabulous and it was nice to see Miss Helena Bonham Carter playing a normal human being. I was worried I wouldn't be able to watch her play anyone other than Bellatrix but she was quite convincing in this role. Geoffrey Rush was pretty great too. Quite the switch from his role in the Pirate movies.



Our new small group got together for the first time tonight!! We'd been hoping that someone would start a group a little bit closer to our house but it just wasn't happening so we decided to just go for it and we started one ourselves. We had a feeling we weren't the only people from our church who live in the southend and we were right! Eight people signed up for our group and there were 7 here tonight! We'll only be meeting every other week because of Steven's work schedule. The plan is to share treats and play games and just try to make friends who don't live so dreadfully far away. It went pretty well. They liked the lemon bars I made so that's always a step in the right direction. We played Catchphrase and Bang and talked about where people live and why they live so far from civilization. I think it's going to be a really great group. I'm excited to get to know them all better.

It's mid-winter break so no subbing this week but I've got a couple of interviews for tutoring jobs so let's hope for the best! Have a great week and happy birthday to Whitney by the way ;)

The Stairclimb.

The Stairclimb is exactly 3 weeks from yesterday! Steven will be climbing the 69 flights of stairs in the Columbia Tower in full gear with a whole bunch of other firefighters. And in case it didn't already sound like loads of fun, allow me to also mention that it's a race. Doesn't sound like fun to me. I think Steven might be getting a little nervous. He mentioned when we were driving into Seattle last week that all of the sudden he finds even just the sight of the Columbia Tower to be very intimidating. Steven's been squeezing as much physical training into his schedule as he can this past month. There isn't nearly as much time for that as he would like but they just got a new stair machine at the fire station so he's hoping to log some miles on that in the next few weeks.

Steven still has a long ways to go in terms of fundraising! All of the money goes to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. As a team, the Enumclaw FD has set a goal for themselves of $5,000. They do some fundraising together but most of it is up to the individual team members. Every little bit helps! If you think you would be able to donate even just $5 then please use this link to sponsor Steven http://www.llswa.org/site/TR/Events/General?px=1464073&pg=personal&fr_id=1161

THANK YOU!!!