Thanksgiving

We were able to have family over to our house for Thanksgiving dinner. Yummy food and lots of fun games!

Nana brought Christmas cookies for the kids to decorate.

The day after Thanksgiving, the kids had a blast climbing up Nana's really tall ladder and decorating for Christmas!

They were so proud when they made it all the way to the top! 

 And I had a fun "Friendsgiving" at a friend's house. Love these ladies!

Peace and Pictures

 We went out to the Pineries, this newer area near us with a nice trail. PC likes to run/bike it multiple times a week. He took Goofy, Minnie, and Bucko around the whole trail, while I walked some of it with the little girls. They love to have their picture taken, and we had a blast being in the woods. I need to find more time to do things like this. 

And then that evening, my friend took our family pictures. They turned out so well! Here are a few of them. She needed certain things, like mother/father with older teenage daughter/son, but I thought they all turned out great! We took them at Palmer Park, and I love that you can see Pikes Peak in the background.

Happy Halloween!!

 We helped out at the school's Fall Festival. Tink and her friend helped run our trunk in the trunk-or-treat. They dressed as Dorothy and the Scarecrow with a Wizard of Oz themed trunk. There was a fun run, hot dogs for lunch, and photo opportunities. They did a costume contest as well, and Rosie won second place in the K-3 category as a cowgirl riding on a pegasus! 

We carved pumpkins in the afternoon and baked the pumpkin seeds. 

Minnie had her Homecoming dance that night as well. She had a blast and looked so pretty!

 

Trunk-or-treating in the evening was fun as well. The little girls went as zombies, but I forgot to take a picture! Goofy and Bucko went out with friends. It's weird having a bunch of teenagers!

Cross Country Season

One thing we were really excited about staying somewhat normal, was cross country season. Minnie and Goofy were able to have a full season and their school was even able to get set up for some competitive meets. Bucko started off the season at the high school, but during his annual sports physical, we discovered he has Hashimoto's disease (hypothyroidism) and something going on with his heart. We are still figuring those things out, but he was unable to continue with cross country. (His heart rate is low, and he has arrhythmia. He gets light headed all the time and often blacks out.)

But Minnie had competitions at Peyton and Widefield, plus two "home" meets. Goofy was only able to compete at the home meets, since the others were high school only. 

They ended the season with a lovely sports banquet. They catered Olive Garden and recognized all the kids' hard work. It was great to see, and I'm so happy they pushed through and had a great season.

 

Serve One Another

We had the amazing opportunity to help out a member of our Church from the Limon branch. She runs this ranch all on her own, and we were able to go out and help with several friends/fellow members to help her prepare for winter. She is the sweetest lady, and we felt so good helping out with some good manual labor. We helped reinforce fences, winterize her home and chicken coop, and even help out with some daily chores of feeding the animals. Minnie even got to ride the horse a bit. Nana and Papa watched the little girls for us and then had a yummy dinner for us when we got home. It was a beautiful day and felt so rewarding to help out someone who really needed the help.

 

I'm a Teacher?!

 Today, I started working as the 7th grade English teacher at my kids' school. I'm still trying to wrap my head around it all, but I'm so excited (and exhausted). A couple weeks ago, I mentioned to the vice-principal that I am all registered to substitute teach for the school district. She tried to convince me to come work as a Teacher Assistant there full time, but I told her I just couldn't do Tuesdays and Thursdays with my schedule. She messaged me that evening saying that if I wanted to work just Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, they would hire me because they really needed the help. So the next morning, I went in for an official "interview" where they told me I would be working with Upper School and helping out the teachers. I was a bit shocked how it all fell together and during my interview, the principal noticed on my resume that I have a minor in English. She asked if I had ever considered teaching English, and I said something like, "Well, yeah, a little. It would kind of be like a fun dream job." Then she asked what grades I would like to teach, and I told her how much I enjoy middle school age students. She looked at the vice-principal with a look like, "Are you kidding me?" and then told me they might have something opening up soon. I was confused because I knew they had already hired all their teachers for the school year. The next week, I started working on Monday as a T.A. The head English teacher asked if I could sub her class that Thursday afternoon. I checked with the VP to make sure that was okay since I wasn't planning on working Thursdays, but that I actually could work in the afternoons. About an hour or so later, the principal came to find me and offer me a teaching job to teach two seventh grade English classes. The current teacher needed to cut back and was asking for someone to take over those two classes. I really couldn't believe it! The principal and I both felt like the Lord had prepared and placed me where I needed to be, but I told her I would discuss it with PC and pray about it. Of course, I just couldn't deny the feeling that this was what I should be doing. It felt like the Lord had wrapped up a present with a little bow and said, "Here you go. This is what you need to do." So I jumped in and took the position. 

This was the sunrise this morning:

I thought it very fitting to remember the dawn of a new adventure for me.

However, this is an accurate portrayal of how I felt at the end of the first day. 

Edit: I've now been teaching for three months, and I really do love it! The stress of figuring things out and feeling like I have no idea what I am doing have been overwhelming at times. I often feel like I've taken on more than I should. But I love being at the school with my four younger kids. I love having 56 "other" kids. They are amazing, and I'm learning so much. I absolutely love teaching them English and working with the other English teachers at the school. They are inspiring and a wonderful support system. I love the mission of the school, to teach the values of our Founding Fathers and instill those values in our students. It is wonderful to be a part of it all (and pretty cool that we are one of the only schools still doing in person learning through all this COVID-19 mess).