Washington D.C.

We are visiting Amy's stomping grounds this weekend. I love being with her. She's the best. 

I love Joshua.

My husband is the best one. 

And not just because he got me a piano. Although, that was pretty great. 

A week of summer

Ok. I realize that technically summer is a season and technically it lasts the same amount of time, regardless of what I am doing in life. However. I have not had a summer. As a teacher, I should get a summer break, and be able to relax at least a little during these summer months. 

Not this teacher. Too many classes to take for licensure. I have finished my last class for the summer just now. Six classes. Not a summer vacation. 

I also would not consider my trip to Haiti as a summer vacation either. I would call that trip: stress, confusion and guilt, mixed in with some friends making it worth it. 

But we get to go to London to visit the parents this Friday. One week of summer. I guess it's enough. 

Last Post = April 9th???

Yes.  There is a reason why there has been no blogging for me since April 9th.  I believe that was the same week that I started my ARL Social Studies class, which has been followed by Science, Math, Literacy and Transition to Teaching classes.  Oh, and the end of the school year, with testing, grading, conference, end-of-year data, classroom clean-up and next-year-prep.  Oh and Josh's birthday and graduation and trips to Oregon, and Amy coming to stay, and remodeling of the parents' house and dance competitions and performances, broken air-conditioning, family yard-work, very little house-cleaning and very-little pondering time.  It's very lucky that I've been keeping up with life, let alone a blog.
Don't worry.  I will post more, and a few people can at least be a little interested in our lives as of late.

My life as a teacher post

Student: Mr. Brown hates correcting our paragraphs.

Me: What? No he doesn't.

Student: Yes, he does! He's like, 'I would rather be sleeping than grading these paragraphs! Sleeping with my wife!'

Me: .............

Awesome.

My bed.

I told a student once that I daydream about my bed.

It's true.

He was telling me that he was too tired to do his homework. I told him I was just as tired as he was. More so, even. He was being lazy. Then I told him I daydream about my bed while I'm working.

It's true.

There's just a quality about a bed. When the sheets are clean and smell a little like fabric softener, a little like me. When the blankets smell faintly of coconut lotion and are cool and cuddly.

It's true. I do daydream about my bed.
I daydreamed a lot about it today.

Nothing really exciting to report

This Spring Break has been wonderful.  Incredibly lazy.  Refreshing.  Helpful.  And only slightly productive.

That being said, I will not write the particulars of what I've done this week, as I'm sure to be judged over my complete lack of motivation to do anything.  Seriously.  I was maybe productive about ten percent of the time.  But I say it was well earned lazy time.  And now the impending doom of Monday is hovering over my sleepy-brain, shouting something about work and students and science.  I'm trying my best to ignore it.

But Josh graduates in 26 days.  That's something.  At least one of us was productive this week.

It's 8:00 in the morning.

Yes.  It's true.  It's the first day of Spring Break (I capitalize it because it's so important to me.  I've been counting down the weeks til this week...) and I am awake at 8:00 in the morning.  In fact, I woke up earlier than I normally do and couldn't fall back to sleep.  LAME.

So here's some pictures of life lately...

My life as a teacher post...

So a few months ago we had an early day at school.  It was an awkward early day.

Let me explain.  We normally get out of school at 3:25 pm, with our second dismissal getting out at 3:50.  We have a super small parking lot and not a lot of space to get in and out, so they stagger the carpool by having two dismissal times.  The extra half hour is just homework time for the students who are there.  On Wednesdays we have early days.  The day ends at 1:25 with second dismissal out at 1:50.  Then there are early early days (like half days for times before the end of the term or for staff development, etc.).  On those days we get out at 12:15 with second dismissal at 12:35.  Nice.

So this awkward early day.  We got out at like 2:15 or something weird and that threw the kids into this frenetic bedlam because the day was so "different."  This is one thing I've learned about children.  They survive on structure and routine.  Take them out of it and they go crazy.  Anyways.

We were let out early because a certain Ron Clark man was coming to our school.  I had heard of this man before.  During training they talk about him and how he inspired our teachers to do cheers at school to help the kids move and get excited for a couple seconds before going back to teaching.  There's also a movie made about him.  Matthew Perry (or Chandler, as I like to refer to him) plays Ron Clark, I think.  I haven't seen the movie, obviously.  Other than this little knowledge of him, I knew nothing.

So Ron Clark just got up and talked to us.  It was amazing.  He's mesmerizing when he talks.  He's walking all around the room, looking in your faces and jumping on chairs.  He talked about motivating kids, among other things.  It didn't seem like he had anything specific prepared, he just got up and started talking.  Telling stories and giving ideas.  The fact that he was hilarious could have to do with it.  Or maybe it was his southern accent, ya'll.  Whatever it was, those two hours went by in a flash, and I found myself wishing I could just listen to him talk the rest of the night.  He actually made me want to do cheers in my classroom (which I only really do when a coach is in there, the mandatory "A maaaay ZING!").  That's motivation.

The point of all this is that my sister sent me this email the other day with the link to this article:

http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/06/living/teachers-want-to-tell-parents/index.html

It was written by Mr. Ron Clark himself!  That made me excited to read it.  Plus the topic caught my attention as well.  Turns out he is an excellent writer as well.  If I wrote this article, it would end up being a complain-fest.  Ron Clark tells it honestly and positively.  Good for him.

Read it.  It's perfect.  Maybe I'll print it out for some of my parents...

Newness

The past month has brought many new things to the Park household.

New foot-pedal-only elliptical for our new exercise regimen. Neat.

New emptiness in a house that has held more than one family in it for over a year. Jenn and Iain bought a beautiful new house and now the Parks are empty nesters.

New car! XTerra sold in two days and the stork brought us a new Honda Pilot. It's white. We may have swindled the owners out of it a little. We call it the Storm Trooper. You have to admit it- the white Pilots really look like the vehicular versions of the Star Wars robotic armor. Admit it.

Spring!

It's coming. I can feel it.

26 Years Old

In the month that has passed since I last posted, I had a birthday!  Not gonna lie- it was a pretty good day.  A pretty good week.  I had been telling my students my birthday was coming since before Christmas.  Needless to say, they were pretty excited when the day finally arrived (what am I saying? I was pretty excited when the day arrived).  

The fact that it was Teacher Appreciation Week at work was also a really big plus.  And the best part about working at APA is that for as long as I work there, it will always be my birthday during Teacher Appreciation week.  Love having a birthday on Valentines.  Love getting fed breakfast and lunch every day by awesome parents.  Love getting prizes and gifts from students (because let's be honest here.  Sometimes just the fact that the students are learning is not enough to keep me going.  I'll be the first to admit that sometimes I need a little giftage and verbal pick-me-ups).  Love putting off grading during the whole of my birthday week (although, I did regret it a little the next week).  

The fact that my birthday was on a Thursday, however, was a bit of a downer, because Thursdays are the longest days at school (no specials for the kids.  They get me all day.  Ugh), and because I have rehearsals on Thursday nights, which means I kiss Josh goodbye in the morning and then see him when I get home from rehearsal (usually around 10:00, if I leave on time).  So I was a little sad that I wouldn't see Josh until late.  But when I got to clogging, bless Jen Garrard- she had gotten me a birthday cake (pictures to follow in a future post)!  And Oreos (my favorite), which were unfortunately ripped into by the team.  Oops!  

The weekend following my awesome day of birth just continued the awesomeness.  Josh and I got couples massages, manicures and pedicures.  Super relaxing.  And then a birthday party for me!  Loved hanging out with friends.  Loved the yummy food.  Loved the Wii dancing.  Loved that my husband made me an ambitious four layer cake:

Josh's Creation

Overall, being 26 isn't too bad.  It's been a pretty good first month of this twenty-sixth year.  And in just one more month Josh will have a birthday too!  Now I just have to see if I can make his birthday week even better than mine was....

Blog Blitz

I'm not the kind of person who is really good at anything. There's not one thing I really excel at. I'm more of the kind-of-good-at-a-few-things type of person.

I wish I was really good at something. Anything. Piano. Modern dance. Cleaning. Writing. Being a wife. Clogging.

Blogging is one of those things I wish I were really good at. To write about my somewhat monotonous daily life and make it interesting to others is one thing I want to be really good at. I not-so-secretly want to be one of those bloggers that people read perpetually because they find my life even remotely entertaining or artistic in some way. It has been a while now that I've realized that desire is most likely not going to happen. Which is probably why I haven't written in so long (along with the crazy-busy times that have been going on lately).

I guess if I want to be really good at something, I just have to do it. Do it and try it and not stop just because its never going to happen. Sometimes I think to myself, 'Yeah. I could be a freestyle finalist for MVP at Nationals.' Or, 'Yeah, I could write a book.' Or, 'Yeah, I could actually teach these sixth graders something.' And then I get all down on myself because I am realistic in my knowledge that I am too lazy to achieve any of those things, and realistic in my lack of expertise in any of those things I really want to be good at.

But I will keep trying. And in this first free weekend since January, I will catch up the few readers of this sadly-underachieving blog on the life and times of Joshua and Emily Park.

Sometimes when I feel sad I look at this picture. It makes me feel a little better.

The state of life in the Park household

I realize that I'm actually the only contributor to this blog. I also realize that if Josh were to post things as well, his attitude would be much happier than mine is sometimes. I do tend to complain. He doesn't complain very often.

I don't want to be one of those people who constantly complains about every little thing that happens. In fact, those people bother me. A lot. I've unfriended people on Facebook because of perpetual complaints about every little thing that goes wrong. I think they want pity, which is something I want sometimes too. But I like to think that I don't inform the world of my pity-party incessantly.

I do try to be positive. And maybe I am. I just don't always feel like I am. But in my pseudo-positive spirit, I will list (as per my favorite way of informing) the state of my (or 'our', if you still consider this a blog about both us Parks) life:

- Christmas tree still up. Josh says its fine, as long as we don't have it up in February still. It does look nice, though.
- We have learned that maybe it's not such a good idea to pay our bills earlier than normal...
- I've also learned how much easier picking an outfit can be when you can look at everything on hangers (hangars?) instead of digging through the pile on the chair.
- Choosing a week before the end of a term to try a body-detoxifying-cleanse was not helpful to the mental state of yours truly. Josh says girls have more psycho-emotional attachments to food. It's possible. When was the last time you saw a guy drowning his sorrows in a bowl of ice cream?
- Science fair projects were due yesterday. I gave students the weekend without penalty if they needed more time. I still got many diva parents complaining about it. If you didn't like my timeline for the projects then speak up when I handed out the schedule at back-to-school night (which was BEFORE school started in the Fall). I could go on, but that would ruin my effort at staying positive. I did get a lot of feedback on how I should do it next time. That's a positive way to look at those novel-length complaints.
- Josh has begun his last semester of school. His classes are all at night. At least I won't feel bad about working until 7:00 if he's not home to be with.
- New church time: 11:00!!!! This one I don't even have to try and put a positive spin on- it's already great that I get to sleep in more.
- New Sunday School runts to teach. It's nice to have a fresh start with new kids, and it's nice to have a new program that makes me feel like we are actually having a spiritual experience, rather than a babysitting wrangle. And I get to teach 12 year olds six days a week.
- Mom and Dad are doing great work over in England. We Skype. But it still feels like another year without them will take an eternity's amount of time.
- When enough people ask me if I'm pregnant, I get a lot of motivation to eat healthy and exercise more.
- The blizzards have made the mountains look pretty, and give us a chance to use our four-wheel drive. We love our X-Terra.
- I only have to teach for four days this coming week. Friday is off, and even though I will be going in to work that day (for end of term grades and prepping), it will still feel like a four-day weekend.
- I get to become a better clogger because I have to know all the pro-level solos in order to keep my spot in my favorite team dance.
- I have a handsome husband who loves me even when I complain or am stressed (so nice of him to put up with my laziness and lack of motivation too)...

I guess some of that list was not so positive. I tried. And having written it, I find myself feeling more optimistic about everything.

That's something, right?

Lately...

This is what we've been doing. In our small amounts of free time.

Snow!

We love the snow.

Soy Sauce!

So this one time, we ordered sushi takeout from our second-favorite local sushi dive and Josh ripped his soy sauce packet open just at the right angle to squirt right into my eyeball.

It burned. And my eye was brown for a bit. But the sushi was still worth it.

My life as a teacher post

I have to read/teach this sinfully boring book in my reading class. There is a minstrel in the story named John-go-in-the-Wynd. He's also a messenger. My students were trying to come up with some kind of combo name for him... Messenstrel, minger.... The best they came up with was...

Menstrual.

Awesome.

We're ready to sleep

When I was a student, I came to a point (as most overly busy students do) when I didn't want to do school anymore. I would get brain-overload and stress build-up and kind of just give up. I never had the willpower to muscle through the last couple weeks of school. Hence, my grades were just ok. I was a normal student, but not a great one. The end of the semester was just too monumental for me, I guess.

Fast forward to my life now. Maybe being a teacher is too similar to being a student. I have a mere ten days left til Christmas break, and I want to just lay in bed, watch Project Runway and Drop Dead Diva (introduced to me by my sister. Sorry, Janet. I kind of blame you for my determination's demise), clean the house and play the piano.

I guess some things will never change.