Losing Steam.

I tell you what, this teaching thing is tough stuff. I'm enjoying it but we have reached that point in the year where we are all just ready for summer. I know I've only been here for two months so it doesn't seem like I should be feeling that as much as the teachers who've been working all year but there's this whole different feel and mentality about school at this time of year. The kids are distracted and uninterested and I'm too tired to keep reeling them back in. This whole week (yes, all three days that I've been at work this week) has been a constant battle. It doesn't help that my kids are acting more and more like typical middle schoolers with each passing day -- not my favorite. As you may or may not know one of the biggest reasons that I prefer teaching younger grades is because I like to stay away from all of this obnoxious pre-teen stuff. They're getting super sarcastic and sometimes almost mean with one another, and every time any of them says anything the other four follow with a chorus of "Oh my gosh! That's so wrong!" Really?? REALLY? At 11 and 12 years old they really think everything is a sexual innuendo? Is that actually what's going on here? Seriously, it is beyond irritating. I really don't remember it being like that when I was in 5th and 6th grade. And I went to public school...

We have a lot of fun stuff going on at school so as long as they're busy with work and projects, they're pretty okay to be around. In fact, they get really excited about some of the lessons I teach and activities I come up with and that always makes me feel really good. They really are sweet kids...

We're still studying Ancient China and loving it! Today we learned about paper and printing and we made our own stamps. I'm hoping we'll use the stamps to decorate our poetry books but as we just started poetry yesterday, I can't guarantee that there will actually be a poetry book. We only have two weeks left in school. We're also planning a China themed party for our last full day of school. We're going to make decorations and dress up and make all of the food together and everything. It should be a blast!

I picked up a 5 pound bag of fortune cookies while Steven and I were in Chinatown a couple of weeks ago. The kids loved them! Steven and I did too. They are completely gone.
School is keeping me very busy and this last week and a half I spent most of my free time filling out applications. I don't currently have a job lined up for next year so I've been working really hard on that. I have completed 6 applications and there are another two on my list. After I've finished those, I'll look back through all of the websites again and probably try to find some other schools with job openings that I might not even know about yet. Not sure what I'll do if I don't get a teaching job but we'll deal with that when (if?) we get there. I'm choosing not to worry -- or at least that's what I tell myself :)

Steven and I spent Memorial Day weekend out and about. Saturday morning we drove down to Vancouver to spend some time with Scott and Kristen. Unfortunately, we left the sun in Seattle and completely missed the beautiful weather. On the plus side -- we did have a ton of fun in Vancouver. We met up with Scott and Kristen and a few of their friends at a park along the Columbia River. The boys took off for an afternoon of rock climbing and the girls spend the rest of the day on the boat. We travelled along the Columbia River and then up the Willamette into Downtown Portland. At some point we found a little pocket of sunshine and stopped to soak it up and enjoy some snacks. Around 7pm a crazy storm rolled in. We got off the boat and into the cars just in time. It was pouring down (does it count as down if it's sideways?) rain and crazy windy and then there was thunder and lightening and hail. The streets were so full of water and it happened very quickly. Is this the kind of weather I can expect any every time I leave Seattle from now on? It's happened the last 3 times I've left town! We spent the evening making dinner (eggplant zucchini tomato mushroom feta casserole -- loving this recipe!) in Scott and Kristen's beautiful kitchen -- always a treat to cook in a real kitchen :)

After a morning of french toast, games, and an estate sale (S&K found a new dining table with 3 leaves and 10 chairs, I got a super cute little sugar shaker - NBD), Steven and I made the drive back home just in time for family dinner. We celebrated Grammi's birthday over Northlake Tavern pizza at Uncle Scott's house and then crashed at Mom's for the night. We don't like to make the drive home if we don't have to. We spent most of Monday on the couch watching the last few episodes in Season 2 of The Voice. I love that show. What an incredible opportunity that would be! I would definitely choose Adam as my coach. Well, actually, after watching the entire season, I wonder if maybe I would choose Blake. Hard to say I guess. Most definitely NOT Cee Lo or Christina. Congratulations to Jermaine Paul! Definitely a well deserved win. I can't believe Steven and I didn't accidentally hear who the winner was before we had a chance to finish watching the season -- so thankful for my mom's DVR!

On a not so happy note... It has been a bummer of a week (month?) in Seattle. Seven people have been killed in as many days. It's really pretty frightening how many shootings there have been and all of them totally random. The news is somewhat horrifying these days. I would suggest steering clear of it. And it seems like it isn't just Seattle either. There's scary stuff like that happening all over the country. It's just really sad and I felt like it needed to be acknowledged. So there's that.

Not much else to report... we made homemade pizza tonight (pepperoni, mushrooms, ground beef, jalapenos, and cheese on whole wheat crust -- yum!) and watched a movie called Everybody's Fine. It was very good but also very very sad. Too sad maybe. Robert De Niro plays a character whose wife has passed away and as she was his only link to his children, he's trying his best to get to know them for himself. Meanwhile they're all trying their best not to disappoint him with their imperfect lives so they only tell him what they think he wants to hear and their dishonesty continues to widen the void between them. I don't do well with movies about people who are old and alone and have lost their spouse and have kids who don't want to have a relationship with them. I kept the tears in until the very end and then totally lost it. Because I am way overtired all the time these days I couldn't stop crying. We had to get out some chocolate and turn on Seinfeld until I fell asleep on Steven. I know. I'm ridiculous.

Celebrating Steven.

In case you haven't noticed, we really like birthdays around here. We love celebrating and going out to eat multiple times in the same week and exchanging gifts and finally spilling big surprises so we don't have to hold them in any longer :)

Steven's 26th birthday was almost two weeks ago and we had a marvellous birthday(week) full of family, friends, food, and many surprises. The day before Steven's birthday we spent with my mom and sisters. We  had lunch at Red Robin (Steven's favorite place to eat... we've seriously been there 5 times in the last month) and then drove into Seattle for an afternoon of games at Cafe Mox. Steven's birthday gift from my mom was that he got to take three new boardgames home with him. I thought he was going to cry he was so happy. What a treat to get three new games all at once!! Now if only we had space for them... our game shelves are already packed to the max. We finished our afternoon of family birthday fun at Menchie's. Mmm... love that place.


Of course I had to be at school on Steven's birthday, which I was really bummed about, but it worked out really well because he was able to have lunch with his dad and then hang out with his brother for a little while. We had homemade macaroni and cheese for dinner (my first time making it -- oh. my. goodness. I used both cheddar and cougar gold and it was absolutely amazing.) and then took our cribbage board over to The Mint (bar in Enumclaw) to play while we had drinks. It was really fun and relaxing to just be out in Enumclaw and know that we only had a short drive home. Not sure why we don't do that more often. I had picked up a slice of cheesecake from The Cheesecake Factory on my way home from work for our special birthday dessert. I figured that made more sense than me trying to bake an entire dessert for only the two of us. We shared it while he opened a couple small gifts from me (Psych season 5, and the 1910 expansion for Ticket to Ride -- yay for normal sized color cards!).

I had been telling Steven for months how super excited I was about his birthday. Then about a week before he finally asked "so do you have something planned?" Huh. My "big surprise" for his birthday was schedule for Tuesday May 1st, the day after his birthday, and it hadn't really occurred to me that his actual birthday was going to seem like a total dud when I didn't have anything planned or wrapped or anything. So the whole macaroni/cheesecake/Psych thing was totally last minute but it definitely served it's purpose. He had no idea that he hadn't even received his real birthday gift from me yet.

On Tuesday, I left for work around 5:30am, just like I normally do, but showed up back at home at 1:00pm -- more than 3 hours early. I think I freaked him out a little. I gave him a big hug and told him we needed to get going or we would be late for our dinner date in Portland with our friends. He got right in the car. So trusting! If I were on the receiving end of a road trip surprise I would be like "well, what do I need to bring with me? Give me a few minutes. Do we have any car snacks? When will we be back? Should I bring a clean pair of socks?" but he pretty much just walked right out the door and was so super excited about our big surprise trip to Portland.

We arrived at our hotel around 4pm (please, there was no way I was going to drive home that late on a school night) where we took full advantage of the free chai/latte machine and cookies in the lobby. We had our cribbage board with us and it was a perfect way to pass the time before walking over to the restaurant. Jeremy, Ronnie, Sam, Scott, and Kristen all met us at a restaurant called Brix Tavern. Their happy hour was amazing!! Everything we tried was really tasty -- the smoked cheese fondue in particular. We're already planning a return trip. Oh, and Jeremy had a coconut beer that was really lovely. I'm trying to track it down so we can have some at our house. As we were finishing up I could hear Steven making plans with Jeremy for him and Ronnie to come back to the hotel and play one of our new games with us.... time for the second big surprise of the evening.

Cirque du Soleil tickets! This whole big birthday thing started back in February when I bought these tickets. Since the show isn't coming to Seattle this year, I decided we were just going to have to drive down to Portland to see it. I figured Steven had no idea they were even going to be in town. On our drive home from California last month, I noticed the big Cirque tent just off to the West of I-5 and was hoping Steven hadn't seen it. And then since I knew it was there, when we drove down to Portland that night, I was doing everything I could to make sure Steven didn't notice the tent as we drove by. I asked him to get out the GPS when I knew we were getting close but then the GPS was "thinking" so Steven wasn't really paying any attention to it. And then I tried to get him to cuddle me and lean on my shoulder (I was driving obviously) but that didn't last quite long enough so, last resort, I sped up to get next to a semi and kept it between us and the tent until we had passed. Phew! Ridiculous, I know. I was kind of really proud of myself and feeling like "sweet, he has no idea the show is in town, so there's no way he will guess that we're going." But wouldn't you know it, right at the stop light off the exit we took there was a big huge Cirque du Soleil billboard. "Hey look! Cirque du Soleil!!" I didn't even respond. I had no idea if he had any inkling, I just couldn't believe that after all my efforts to hide the tent we got off the freeway to that. Anyhow, he didn't have a clue and was totally shocked when I pulled out the tickets :) He thought dinner with friends in Portland was the big surprise (which it certainly was!! Not often we do that) and was super excited to be going to yet another Cirque show -- our 4th one in the last two years.

(I wanted to get a picture of the tent but you can't see it very well. The yellow and blue stripes were so pretty in the sunset!)

The show was incredible, as usual. We were both asleep within minutes of being back in the hotel room. Wednesday morning we gave ourselves enough time to enjoy breakfast at the hotel, take a walk to Voodoo Doughnuts (bought one of those huge glazed doughnuts for my students to share), and then pop over to Jeremy and Ronnie's for a quick game and lunch, before driving back home. We stopped in Chehalis for Cold Stone and cribbage (nice break from the driving) and made it home in plenty of time to watch a movie, have dinner, and still get to bed at a reasonable hour. It wasn't easy for me to finish out the school week after having that random day and a half off in the middle but it was SO worth it! I just loved surprising Steven with all of those fun things I knew he would really enjoy. We had a blast.  (funky water fountain in Portland, I like it.)

Glad I finally got to write about it! It drives me crazy when I have something to blog about and just can't find the time to do it.

The sun was out in full force today and my pink-y skin is feeling a little toasty. I'll be needing some lotion.

Off to spend the rest of Mother's Day weekend with my beautiful mother!!