My Dad is awesome.

In honor of Father's Day, I thought I'd post this picture. My dad just returned from Ixtapa and apparently had the time of his life! I love this picture of him showing off! He's awesome.

The new house

Here is a picture I took last night of the new house and my charming husband. The other one was an attempt to get us in front of the house, but that didn't really work out. So it's just a really close up shot of our faces.


FYI...FInd out how many days notice you must give to your apartment office in order to move out and not be penalized. Here, at the Fabulous Equinox, we have to give 60 days notice. Now, to me, the logical way of conducting business would be to have your tenants sign a lease for a specified amount of time and then assume that at the end of that specified time, the tenants must move out or give prior notice that they intend to staty longer. But apparently, it's the other way around. They are assuming you stay unless you tell them differently (60 days in advance.) But if we started asking "Why?" now with regards to this place, we would never come to a stopping point.

But it all works out, as usual. We had a deluge of rain that had us giving thanks for the Noahic covenant so that slowed up progress on the house. So our new move-in date is the 2nd week of July, which is fine, because
we are paying for another month here anyway (thank you, Equinox Moving-Out Clause)

As if I needed a quiz to discover this...

You Are Mexican Food

Spicy yet dependable. You pull punches, but people still love you.

What Kind of Food Are You?

Thankful Thursday

Ten things I am thankful for...

1. My amazing husband who I love with all my heart!
2. Being given ears to hear and eyes to see the truth of God's Word
3. A church where the whole counsel of scripture is boldly proclaimed
and getting to hear the gospel each Lord's Day
4. Air conditioning
5. Getting paid during the summer, but not working
6. Supportive parents
7. Knowing how to read
8. Cars that work
9. William Tyndale's commitment to English speakers having the Bible
10. God giving what we need and withholding what we don't


I want to cultivate and attitude of thankfulness. God's goodness is all around me in numerous ways and it is to my shame that I am so lax in returning thanks for it all. I am truly the recipient of "grace upon grace!"


On a totally unrealted note, my new favorite joke...

What did the presbyterian say when he fell down the stairs?

"Glad I got that over with!"

Summer Time!

I don't know what I would do if I had a job that didn't follow a school schedule. Since August of 1985, when I entered Mrs. McLemore's P.M. kindergarten class, I have had a week at Thanksgiving, 2 weeks at Christmas, a week for Spring Break, and the summer months off. I hear that, in most occupations, you have to work all year long! No thank you. Teaching definitely has it draw backs, but they come to my mind less quickly during June and July.

I'm looking forward to this summer. We are, God willing, moving into a new house at the end of June. Our current apartment situation leaves a little to be desired, so we are excited about becoming homeowners. I think we are officially grown-ups now. Kris assures me that this actually happened already, but I still feel 13 most of the time so the fact that we are buying a house really seems weird. It's a cookie-cutter house with zero character, but it will be ours!

Reflections

We only have 2 days of school left. I'm glad. Some people assume that teachers have it so easy because we get 2 1/2 months off during the summer. Well, after 9 months of being in a room with crazy, needy second graders all shouting "MRS RIVES, MRS RIVES!!!," I feel entitled.

This has been a crazy year...truly the best of times and the worst of times. A lot has happened--things that are so easy to be thankful for and things that I know I need to give thanks for, but sometimes I just don't want to. John Newton said that everything is needful that God sends and nothing can be needful that He withholds. Confessing that I "needed" the hard stuff is very humbling. I'm learning to give thanks, as one of my favorite hymns says, "even when my heart is breaking."

i'm so not original

Ok--here it is. Not that anyone was waiting with bated breath for this. But I felt I could put it off no longer. It finally overcame me...the lure of checking other blogs to see if they have been updated, the satisfying sensation of eavesdropping with none of the guilt, the winding rabbit trail created by following one link to another, not remembering whose blog you were looking at first, all contribute to the inception of my own.

Modern day ebenezers. The ability to trace where you have been and the outline of God's sovereignty steadfastly highlighting it all. That is what this will be.

So, on with it. This is our last week of school. This week, I am basically a babysitter with a degree. Today is "Pajama, Movie, and Game Day." Can you say "over stimulation?" As I am packing up my classroom, I am struck by how much teacher crap I have. It is amazing the things that are "required" for an elementary classroom. The longer I teach, the more I am sure that my children, should God grant them, will never, as long as He is willing, set foot in a public school. Parents raising their children to fear the Lord and keep His commands--that is what is missing and as long as it remains this way, no amount of testing or tutoring or fancy teacher crap will make it better. So, having said that, I do this job the very best I can, and I end each day grateful that I will not have to relinqish the privilege of educating my own children to the state.