Hectic!

Ben and I both have found ourselves to be the busiest we've been in years. Ben is currently working on an installation job down in Brighton at a newly renovated theatre. It's a huge task and Ben's pretty much flying solo on it... needless to say, he's been a 5:30am-8:30pm worker for the past few weeks. We will both be glad when he's done and he can put his feet up!

I started my 4th year teaching 8th grade math in August. It's been great so far! My students are as funny as they get and I'm teaching honors kiddos for the first time since my first year teaching. I really do feel blessed that I get to work with these kids every day.

I am officially a Colorado State Ram! (Although I think the Missouri Tiger in me would win the battle anyday...) In addition to beginning teaching, I alsoo began my fall semester of full time grad school in August. I'm taking Monday, Tues, and Wednesday night classes for 3 hours each. At this point, we're just beginning the reading and writing for each class, and I'm excited because I have already gotten into some great books. I love reading about education, it rejuvenates me.

Here are two of the books I'm reading for my classes. Walking on Water is about changing the way we view education. The first chapter is a powerful message about how schools are inventing a "nation of slaves" to the teachers opinions and ideas. Jensen encourages teachers to encourage and appreciate students to think on their own.

Other People's Children is about power imbalances in the US society and how they are reinacted in the classroom. It discusses dealing with imbalance and inequality in the classroom.

And with all of the reading I'm doing for Grad classes, I can't believe I'm finding time to read for pleasure too... But here are three books I'm either currently reading or have read recently that I highly recommend!

Summer Lovin

Geez...I've realized I'm not so great at updating this blog. Maybe I will set a reminder on my new IPhone to help me remember. :)

Since the last update, we've had the end of school, weddings, buffalo, and lots of paper writing.

In the beginning of June we were lucky enough to make it home to St Louis to watch Ben's step-brother, Jake, get married to Jennifer. It was a beautiful wedding and Jake and Jenn seemed really happy. Jake and Jennifer have two cutie-pa-tootie kiddos, Madilyne and Ryan. They were so adorable all dressed up!

Ben and I had never made it to the new Busch Stadium, so this trip we made it a point to go see a game. Lucky for us, they were playing the Rockies!

Joan's Dad has a brick dedicated to him, and the guys found it.

We love making it back home and spending time in this great city with this amazing family!

When we got home from St Louis, it was time to start Grad School for me. I began my program in Educational Leadership for Curriculum and Instruction. I took 6 hours this summer and will be taking 9 in the fall. I have Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday night classes for three hours. It'll be a hard semester, but I think I can do it! I'm no longer doing Student Council at Kinard and will have at least a little bit more free time.

In July, we went up to Montana to see our good friends Katie and Paul get married. The wedding was at Chico Hot Springs in Pray Montana. It was a beautiful ceremony and reception and Ben and I had so much fun. Katie and Paul are an amazing couple and we spend most of our free time with them. We both felt very luck to spend this day with them!

Our good friends Kara and Rolin came up for the wedding too. The boys all had a great time together!

They looked so happy!

Oh the way back from Montana, Ben and I decided to drive through Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons on a whim. It was an amazing trip and we both are so greatful we did it. It was truely one of the best trips we've ever taken together.

While we were in Yellowstone, there was a herd of Buffalo (or maybe bison) that passed in front of our car. It was the coolest thing. They were beautiful animals. We even saw babies feeding on the side of the road. It was really neat.

Updates

I've come to the realization... i'm not a good blogger. Sorry!

Here are my attempts to give you a catch up :)
I've decided to go to grad school. I begin this summer (June 15) and it's a year long program. When I graduate, I will have a masters in Educational Leadership with an emphasis on Curriculum and Instruction. It'll be a hard year, but well worth it.

Ben and I have been working more on the house. We painted out kitchen "asparagus" green. I think it's a little to bright, but Ben doesn't want to paint again :). I think I'll have to take a summer day when he's gone to change it. While I was in Chicago recently, he suprised me by hooking our refrigerator up to water, so now we have a working ice/water dispenser. I still haven't used it since i'm so used to going to the faucet and using ice trays... But i REALLY appreciate that he did it.

We've begun saving to get the rest of our projects done this year. By the beginning of next summer, we hope to have both bathrooms remodeled, new kitchen countertops, and a few other cosmetic things done :)

Ben has started softball again... but he has cut back from previous seasons. He currently plays Tuesday Nights, Wednesday night double headers, Thursday nights and weekend tournaments (sometimes traveling). And yes, this really is cutting back :) Timberwolfs busy season has definantly hit, so he's pretty tired right now. He's on his way in with our salmon burgers... so dinner is calling my name :)

Flooring Extravaganza

Once we had all of the cabinets painted and re hung, we were so much happier in the house. The kitchen has been brightened. The first week of working on the house we had the AC guy come out and now we have a brand new central airconditioner, furnace and touch screen thermostat. It was definantly worth it.

We did run into a couple of minor injuries the second week of renovations. Beyond just the typical bumps and bruises, cuts and scratches, I hurt my pinkie on my right hand somehow... I think it's the tendons in my hand that are just not used to being used as much as they were that week. It's been a little under two weeks now and It's feeling much better. It's still not healed, but at least I can grip things again.

This past week has been a flooring adventure. After one MAJOR trip to home depot, we had our tile, laminate hardwood, and carpet purchased. The carpet is going to be installed sometime next week. (Cross your fingers for us that it comes in early.)

Our tile adventure came on Saturday. Our good friends Katie and Paul (who were just engaged on Friday, CONGRATULATIONS!!) came over since Paul has some tile experience. The boys ran into some difficulty with the stairs. Our tiles are 16''x16'' and we have a lot of weird angles they had to work around. The stairs needed to be reinforced and the lip of the stairs had to be evened out. Then we ran out of the stairnosing around 9:30 and home depot closes at 10. We hurried to the first one and they were out, so we had to book it across town to the other one and HOPE that we got there in time. We did. When the tiles were finally done, it was 4:30 in the morning and we were all exhausted.... but they looked fabulous.

Katie and I came back in on Monday and grouted the entry way and yesterday we finished by the back door. On Sunday we started laying our laminate hardwood. It was much easier than the tile BUT it does burn through the saw blades really fast. We finished last night after going through 6 saw blades.... good thing they're only $5.50 a piece... Our finished product is beautiful and I finally feel like it's coming together. We've moved small things over already and we're going to hopefully finish all of the small things today. We are very happy with the results.

It's finally feeeling like a home for us. We're both exhausted, so I'm glad to see the light at the end of the tunnal. It'll be great when we have our home all set up.

Next we'll be looking for window treatments, rugs, and art....

Getting out the dirty.

After we used the flooring as our drop cloth... we were ready to get the nasty pee smell outta there. Our friend Rolin came over and helped us (Ben) remove all of the heavy stuff (that I couldn't help with...)

They ended up having to throw the carpet out of the master window... rolling it down the roof... and onto my car. A minor casuality...

After the guys removed all of the carpet and heavy stuff, we were able to start cleaning up our kitchen, starting with the cabinents...

Painting

Once we were able to pull off the popcorn ceilings, it was onto cleaning up. We had soo much dust and debris on the floor, you couldn't step in the house without ingesting about a pound of dry wall dust.

After the dust was up, we started our painting adventure. Here are a few before and after pictures. Here is the living room, the kitchen and the master bedroom.

And here they are



now...

Popcorn Ceilings...

So as soon as we pulled off all of the tobacco covered wallpaper, we scrubbed down the walls and decided we needed to get rid of the popcorn ceilings. My mom came in town to help for a week and my good friend Katie came over to help.

Scraping popcorn isn't the most fun. First you have to spray down the popcorn which is annoying in itself. You have two choices: 1. Carry around a squirt bottle and get cramps in your thumbs from spraying the whole ceiling or 2. bring in the garden hose. We opted for number two. Then you have to scrap every inch of the ceiling down, getting covered with popcorn while you do it. Once that all dries, you come back in with a sander and you sand everything down making the ceiling very smooth and you covered in dry wall dust. It gets everywhere and in every part of your body you never want dry wall to be.

After everything was scraped, we started priming and painting. Our living room and family room are a light tan color and our kitchen and bathroom are yellow. Upstairs we have a sage green bedroom, a teracotta bedroom and a brown master.

Even Kira helped with the taping!