Feel Good Friday

I haven't done Feel Good Friday in a while, but I have a lot to be feel good about! For those that are new to the blog and don't know, Feel Good Friday is a great idea from Erika over at The Girl Next Door Grows Up. Every Friday you list five things that made you smile this week. This week I have LOTS to smile about, but sometimes it can be hard. That is the best part of Feel Good Friday to me! Looking for something to smile about, even those weeks where everything goes wrong and you don't even want to get out of bed. Thankfully, this was not one of those weeks. I have a ton of things to feel great about!

1) My niece, Claire, turned one month old this week! Claire was very tiny when she was born (5 lb and 12 oz) and while she is doing great, she is having some trouble gaining weight. I know we are all envious of her problems, but if you could keep her in your thoughts it would mean a lot! I want big plump baby cheeks to pinch when I go out to see her.

2) I'm going to the barn right after I finish this post to ride Trouble! It's a little windy, but that's certainly not going to stop me from going. It is the best way to end a week.

3) I have a date tonight! I'm doing dinner and a movie tonight with a guy I'm pretty excited about. I have high hopes for our date and hope you hear about him again in next week's Feel Good Friday.

4) I got to teach one of my favorite units this week in history, the rise of dictators after World War I. It definitely helps that the kids seem to love learning about it as much as I love teaching it.

5) This marking period is almost over, which means I only have 2 more marking periods until the end of school. I can't believe how fast this year is going!!

Days When I Love Teaching

* When I can have fun with my students and they pinkey swear me they will get their homework in tomorrow
* When they're actually mildly interested in learning about historical figures like Miguel Hidalgo and Simon Bolivar
* When 75 % of them turn in their homework
* When I have a clear plan of where the week will go
* When students say hello to me at the door without me prompting them first
* When almost everyone in my class got A's on this week's quiz
* When I forget about how far behind in my pacing guide I am
* When students share with me how much they liked the new Harry Potter movie (knowing I went to the midnight show)
* When I realize my honors government seniors are smarter than the average citizen and can recall which amendment provided for direct election of senators (17) and which one the Lame Duck amendment is (20) three months after we learned it back in September
* When I can come home and curl up with a glass of Merlot on a cold rainy day and not have to worry about grading 40 essays

Sadly the last one is not true today as I have a ton of papers to grade. The good news is all the other ones are!

Feel Good Friday

Today's Five for Friday, courtesy of the Girl Next Door Grows Up!

1) I ran 7 1/2 miles! That is the most I have run in probably 4 years and I felt great. (The downside to this is I have been unable to follow-up this performance as I have a bad muscle strain and can't run until Monday).

2) I'm going to my first UVA football game of the year tomorrow! AND I'm meeting a boy at the tailgate that my coworker has set me up with (or his wife has). What better place to meet someone than at a tailgate with cold beer, food on the grill and football!

3) I booked my spring break vacation to Disney World and Harry Potter land! One of my old friends and I from high school decided it would be a fun to just kick back and be a kid for a few days.

4) I have raised almost $500 for Team Fisher House with only about 3 weeks to go until the big race. Donate, donate, donate!!!

5) I made it through the first 6 weeks of school without any meltdowns (on my part), calls to a parent, or all-nighters (which I had more than a few of last year). All in all this year is shaping up to be immensely better than my first year.

Feel Good Friday

1. Jon got his new leg!! It has been a long road since June 24, but seeing that picture of him standing made me smile like no other.

2. My high school marching band, which is one of the most underfunded and underappreciated programs in this school, won a national essay contest. The grand prize? $40,000!!! This is to a band full of some of the most hardworking kids ever. They are not very big and don't even have uniforms. Through fundraising efforts they have managed to raise enough money for new uniforms, but they have marched the past two years in matching jeans and t-shirts. This is huge news for our tiny school and our exceptionally tiny band aI am so proud of my kids!

3. I ran 6 miles and felt pretty awesome! With 6 weeks to go until the 10 Miler it makes me feel like I am in pretty good shape.

4. I am officially registered for the 10 Miler and can now start raising money for Team Fisher House!

5. My sister had her second sonogram and my little niece/nephew looks healthy and strong! I can't wait to meet him/her (although not knowing the sex is driving me INSANE)!

Five for Friday

1) I didn't have to send anyone to the office in the first week of school. :O)

2) I ran 6 miles.

3) My fish is still alive! I got a fish for my classroom and am happy to report after 2 weeks Napoleon is still kicking (even after all my students harassing him).

4) I had dinner at the restaurant across the street and they returned my favorite sweater, which I left there over 2 months ago. I thought I had lost it forever!

5) I have become the official 'unofficial assistance coach' of the cross-country team and managed to recruit two kids to our tiny team this week, which gives us a top 7 for the first time in 10 years.

Feel Good Friday

1. I went running this week and it felt awesome! I'm very slow, but feeling better each time I go out and I hit the hill at the end of the run hard. Hitting the hill hard always helps me end the run feeling awesome about the effort I put in. Ten Miler, here I come! Speaking of...

2. I got my bib for the Ten Miler! I was starting to get frustrated with my inability to secure one, but am so happy I got it all sorted out. The circumstances of the woman I am getting it from makes it all that much more special.

3. I'm going sailing tomorrow! One of JC's classmates in the Navy is taking us out tomorrow afternoon. I have never been sailing before and have really never been a big fan of the ocean (Shark Week hasn't helped much with that), but I am so excited to go.

4. My mom and sister are having an awesome time together painting the nursery out in Wyoming. They have always had a bit of a strained relationship and had a big blow-out this June that I helped mediate the hard way (i.e having them scream at me so they wouldn't scream at each other) so it makes me so happy to know they're out there spending and enjoying this time together.

5. JC and I cooked dinner together three times this week and had a blast doing it! Neither of us are very good and we weren't too adventurous, but we have fun. I'm looking forward to grilling out some steaks tonight for my farewell dinner and hope the weather cooperates.

Feel Good Friday

1) I'm going horseback riding tomorrow!! Yes, it's only going to be a plodding nose-to-tail trail ride, but I'm going to be back on a horse. AND I managed to convince JC to come too!

2) I finished my religion class (see previous post) and really enjoyed it! It definitely had its highs and lows, but I got much more out of the class than I anticipated when I first signed up for it.

3) I went to the beach yesterday and really enjoyed just walking along the shore. Between living in Wyoming and central Virginia, that is definitely something I haven't done for the longest time.

4) This goes along with number three, but the weather here has been beautiful this week. It has been very cloudy and grey here for most of the summer. Most days I can barely see the ocean from the back porch (that Wordless Wednesday picture was taken from the porch). This week the clouds and fog have been burning off by noon and the weather has just been perfect in the afternoon. Not so hot that I'm sweating through my clothes (like the whole East Coast), but I definitely don't have to bring 3 layers with me when I go out. Nothing like a month of clouds to make you appreciate the beauty of a blue sky!

5) My sister officially made it to her second trimester! That is probably more her good news than mine, but it makes me so happy. I am so excited for her! She has been wanting a baby and saving for a baby for a long time and I know her and her husband are going to be the best parents. And, let's face it, I'm going to be the best aunt EVER!!!

Feel Good Friday

I'm changing up my Five for Friday to Feel Good Friday! I got this from my fellow bloggers, Abby and Jamie (who got it from The Girl Next Door Grows Up). All you do is make a list of 5 things that made you happy this week. Easy enough, right? Here goes...

1) I found out my teaching schedule for the year and I have a study hall! AND it is first period AND I have 2 classes that only have 12 kids AND my largest class is only 18. I love teaching in a rural school district!

2) I got another A in my religion class! Even though I only need to pass it to receive credit, I'm obviously doing my best and am pretty stoked I'm doing so well. It is different from any class I have ever taken before and philosophy is really not my thing. Go me!

3) A friend of mine, who lost part of his left leg in a bad IED blast 3 weeks ago, took his first steps (sans prosthesis) yesterday! Read his story here. He is such an inspiration and I am so proud just to know him.

4) I got to see the Golden Gate Bridge on Sunday, which is something I've been wanting to do for a loooong time. It capped off a great weekend in San Francisco with the boy.

5) I heard from so many wonderful friends on my birthday and turned 27! Let the countdown to 30 begin (at which point, according to my favorite quote ever by author John Grisham, I'll finally have to be taken seriously).

My Favorite Place in the World

I've been MIA from this blog for just about a month and an awful lot has happened. The school year ended and I have been officially hired on for next year. I'm out in California for the summer with the boy and have been having a blast relaxing and doing a bit of sightseeing (but mostly just relaxing). I have been meaning to blog for a while, but wasn’t quite sure where to start.

I think one of the reasons my blog was on hiatus for so long is because I wasn't quite sure what I wanted it to be. Most blogs have specific niches - a wellness blog, a teaching blog, a running blog, a baby blog. I didn't really know what I wanted my focus to be. So from here on out, I'm just going to talk about me and my life in general, however uneventful it may be.

I figure a great place to start would be with my favorite place in the world, a place that if you spend any time with me you will find comes up in conversation an awful lot and that I simply refer to as “the Ranch”. I have to admit that I’m a bit pleased that while I am enjoying my stay in California it still doesn’t hold a candle to “the Ranch”. The Ranch is Triangle X Ranch, a guest ranch in Moose, Wyoming (just north of Jackson) that I first journeyed to on a family vacation back in 1997. My family of six returned every year, though the number of people dwindled each time. First my oldest brother opted not to return, then my dad decided a week of horseback riding just wasn’t his thing, then my sister went out there to work (she never left and is now married and about to start a family there), then my other brother could no longer take the time off. All in all, I came to the ranch as a guest for seven years before I started working out there myself my junior year of college. I was a glorified toilet scrubber and bed maker, but I loved every minute and returned after I graduated. I loved it so much that I stayed out there through the fall, winter and spring.

Pushing out the herd in the summer (photo courtesy of John Schairer)

The herd moving across the pasture in the fall

The ranch in winter

That summer I was promoted from toilet scrubbed extraordinaire to "teen wrangler" whose job was to teach every teenager that was a guest on the ranch (like I used to be) how to ride a horse and to make sure they had a fabulous week. I had always been a horse lover, but never rode seriously so it was a dream. My biggest problem of the day was whether or not to take my ride into the mountains or down to the river to swim with the horses. I stayed out there for two full years after graduation ‘living the dream’ before I decided to move on and go to graduate school. Sometimes I wish I’d stayed a few years longer, but I’m grateful for the time that I had out there. I look at my boyfriend who went right from college to his job in the military or my friends who went right to a full-time job and I realize how lucky I am.

This horse was my best friend for 2 years

The Ranch is and will always be my happy place, my own personal paradise. I know if life were ever to get rough or I were to get fired from my job that I could return to the Ranch and have a place there. I have family out there now, a sister and brother-in-law (and soon a niece or nephew). Just last week I received a phone call from my former boss offering me my old position. I turned it I down simply because of logistics, money and the fact that I already planned to spend my summer out here with the boy. We won’t get many opportunities to spend time together like this so I have to take every opportunity I can. It’s nice to know that after almost 3 years they still remember me. To this day they say I was the only teen wrangler who ever enjoyed being around teenagers that much. I talk and think about the Ranch all the time so it is comforting to know they think of me too.

And the worst new blogger of the year award...

...goes to me!! I hate how little I have posted lately because so much has been happening with the end of the school year and I love writing it all down.

For starters, my kids all made me a celebrity at the school because every single one of my kids passed their World History SOL.

I am so proud of them I could almost burst. My kids had to learn 500 years of history (from the Renaissance to NAFTA and the Bosnian genocide) in about 8 months and there were VERY specific things not just broad, general understands for each standard. For example, they didn't just have to know effects of the Protestant Reformation, they had to know: the effect of the Edict of Nantes in France, the leader of German unification, how Jomo Kenyatta helped achieve independence in Africa. To gauge their "understanding" of all this content, they are given a 60 question multiple choice test and if they don't pass, they do not receive credit for the course. In addition, the results reflect very poorly on both the teacher and the school in both state and nation-wide assessment regarding its accreditation and success rate.

I think I was more stressed than my kids were on SOL day! I was so stressed and averaged about 4 hours of sleep a night making review sheets and prepping my kids for the test the two weeks before. I went in with the utmost confidence that MOST of my kids would pass, but I had a handful of VERY weak students. I was hoping for at least an 85% pass rate (the average is between 85%-94%) and in my wildest dreams never believed I could get EVERY kid to pass. I had a couple kids that have gotten D's and F's on almost every single one of my tests and seem so lost every day in class. It's hard enough for veteran teachers to get a 100% pass rate, nevertheless someone in their first year.

They took the test at 12:15 and I was a nervous wreck from 12:15. My 5th period seniors all had a good laugh at how nervous I was. The principal came in after an hour to report back that 15 kids (out of 55) were still taking the test, but was thrilled to tell me that I currently had a 100% pass rate. I knew exactly who those 15 kids were and just sweated it out for the next hour and change waiting for the final results to come in. Then finally, the last class of the day, the principal and guidance counselor were beyond thrilled to come to my room and tell me that 100% of my kids had passed their World History II SOL. Not only that, but almost half of them received an "Advanced Pass" and seven of those got a perfect score! I'm sure the principal was thrilled, 'cos it makes him look great for hiring me. The guidance counselor hugged me and handed me the print-out with their scores so I could tell them all.

I was so proud and excited, it's a feeling I honestly can't even explain. Knowing I made it to the end of my first year teaching is quite positively one of the BEST FEELINGS EVER! I sometimes have to pinch myself that I made it. To know that I also achieved a 100% pass rate makes it all even more amazing. It makes the stress and anxiety and late nights all (well almost all) worth it.

Anyway, I dropped $40 at Sam's buying up brownies, cookies and Capri Suns for a party for each class where I told them how proud I was and we played history charades. When I told them we had a 100% pass rate they went NUTS! They were slapping each other five and congratulating each other and shouting how awesome they were (which they are, for the most part). My joy in their results and their own excitement made me realize, if I can get this pumped up about the results of a standardized test, maybe teaching really is my calling. The amount of support I got from my fellow faculty and the smiles and fist pumps I got from those kids makes me honestly never want to leave this school (for all the headaches it has caused me). I felt like a CELEBRITY after the bell rang. Math teachers, science teachers, janitors, even students I barely knew were all congratulating me! It was a truly wonderful feeling that I don't think I will soon forget.

The news of my pass rate was followed up by a call from JC to tell me that he found out where he is PCSing to, but I suppose I will have to save that for another email.

Track season isn't over yet 'cos we still have 9 athletes going to regionals so I will still be busy until the end of the school year, but the end is very near so hopefully better blogging habits will resume. Until then...