sardines

can i tell you how much i love my job? no? too bad. i'm going to anyway. because this is my blog. not yours. i win. - can you tell i've been teaching elementary classes today?

yep, that's what i've been doing. filling in for eric teaching sacred studies to 4th, 5th and 6th grade today. it is so fun. the saint for today is aelred - the patron saint of friendship. so i gave each of them a piece of paper with their name on it and then they had to pass them around and everyone had to write something nice about everyone else. we talked about how there are friends that we love and that even people who are not our friends are loved AND blessed by God so we should love them too. it was good. and they did a good job coming up with good things for eachother. i was impressed. it has been a good day so far.

we don't have SFC this friday. (superheroes for christ) and i find myself bummed. sure i'm very excited to just spend time with my husband but i have so much fun with those guys. they are so hilarious. sometimes i wonder if i was that funny when i was that age.

grant and i are really struggling about being in miami. some days it is just so hard to be here. other days i'm too tired to even think about it. i love my job. i love my husband. i love school- but i wish i was taking classes just for fun instead of having to worry if they count or not and all that crap.

i finally admitted that i wouldn't mind moving back to tallahassee when our three years are up. i don't know why that was so hard for me to admit. probably because i complained so much while i was there. hindsight = 20/20. but we've also been pushing around the idea of grant going federal. all we know is that God wants us here right now so here we are... but we are willing, God, we are willing.

Swedanish

sometimes i am an idiot. i really try hard too.

working in miami causes me to constantly come across people who do not speak english. spanish only please. this often happens with the grandparents of my youth group students. so when the kids grandparents come to drop them off or pick them up i try my hardest to speak spanish with them- especially if they try to fumble through some english for me.

so. last friday one girls grandma came to drop her off. she was speaking in stilted english while trying to figure out what time to pick her grandaughter up. so i tell her the time in spanish and she stares at me weird. i'm thinking 'my spanish is not great but it's not that bad either' and finally we figure out 8:30.

later the girl tells everyone her grandmother is visiting from Sweden.

ba da da.

oh my.

naps

naps are so fantastic. i took one today. 2 hours. i have been so tired recently. i realized that last week i worked 28 hours. but i get paid for 20. and i'm taking 5 classes this semester. it is a good thing that i love my job.

okay. back to cooking dinner.

baby fever

some friends of ours became parents for the first time on saturday. katherine lindsay was born on saturday, november 6 at 1:30. 6lbs11oz 20inches- and incredibly adorable! grant and i went to see them in the hospital on sunday. she was so precious i just wanted to cuddle her all day. grant didn't even want to put her down. what is it about the sight of a grown man holding a tiny newborn that is so beautiful? he was so good with her. he is going to be a great father one day.

we actually had a HUGE discussion about kids this weekend. sometimes i feel like i am so ready. i look on adoption websites all the time checking out the policies and looking at the kids ready for adoption. most organizations require that both adopting parents be at least 25 and if you want to adopt from china (which i do) you both must be between 30 and 52 and your ages added cannot go over 104. i know that we will know when God calls us to follow that path, i just wish my maternal instincts weren't shouting so loud.

defensive tactics

grant and i went to bed not talking to eachother last night. it was so stupid too. we had been joking around all night practicing defensive tactics on eachother as we often love to do. and then suddenly the trash talk got too serious and i told him to shut up and then he told me i had just bought myself a whole night of silence. and that was the end. we brushed our teeth and went to sleep. at least tried. i can never sleep if i can't at least touch him. this morning we both stumbled blindly into the bathroom at the same time, saw eachother in the mirror and started laughing. we are such idiots. sometimes the frustration of living here really gets to us and we take it out on each other.
it's sad because i kind of like it here. i have a job that i love. a job that changes as much as i do and that has so much room to grow. i'm finishing school. not that i love school but i love being challenged. it makes me feel smart, which makes me feel good. it isn't cold here. we live 10 minutes from the beach.
but grant really doesn't like it at all. the traffic sucks. there are so many people that it's hard to be alone, but we tend to constantly feel lonely because we don't have many friends. it is hot as a griddle every single day. it rains so randomly all the time. our rent is twice as much as in tallahassee. groceries cost more. both of our families live far away. the public schools are not so good so raising kids here is not an option.
so what do we do? we have to be here almost 2 more years. i am definitely in favor of optimism.

traffic woes

i am so over traffic. driving an hour to an hour and a half each way is not my idea of a pleasurable morning or evening. grant and i figured out last night that if we lived in the same neighborhood as where we work we would be able to spend over a week and a half more together in teh course of a year. craziness. if you are reading this and you have an idea of how i can keep myself entertained and sane in my car please post.
thank you. thank you very much.

chopstick

so in a moment of creative genius this weekend the name for our new car came to us. Chopstick. the perfect name for our little japanese baby.

Newness

so grant and i bought a new car last night. i was on my way to school yesterday and callie the cavie just died in an intersection. i eventually got her started again but by then grant was done with me driving this unreliable in the middle of miami so now we are the proud new parents of a honda civic ls. .. very nice machine. i'm pretty sure it's a girl but i'm still waiting for a bit more personality to show...then we will decide on a name. it was an awesome blessing to get the payments down to something we can afford... just barely, but we can. we haven't been saving as much money as we thought we would by now but we see that God is totally giving us just what we need and no more... as soon as we save some up we get stuck with an unexpected bill or something... reminds us of manna in the dessert. don't save up more than you need or it will just rot. yeah, definitely rotting here.

i got a b+ on my harry potter paper... not bad but not what i was going for obviously. gives me some room to improve i guess.

holy crap. my sister is going to be 18 in like 13 days. i can't handle it. i can't even imagine what it will be like to be a parent and watching my kids grow up... now when stevie turns 18 i probably will freak out.

my aunt misti had a baby last night! at 5:08 PM little (7.1 lbs., 21inches) David William Presley made his first appearance to the world. they are both doing fine and my family is ecstatic!

i forgot globe and gob and glob and robe

so i drive an hour or an hour and a half to and from work every day. i'm either a freak or i love my job. thankfully it is the latter, although i don't completely rule out freak.

i have 3 papers due for school this week. one on harry potter- so fun... one on fried green tomatoes- so fun... and one on henry VI- gag me with a spoon til christmas. who am i that i thought i wanted to be an english major? freak...yeah. 21 books this semester. gotta love it. i cannot wait until i am finished with my undergrad.

blogger: log, blog, bog, gob, lore, bore, gore, leo, geo

i think that this is going to be good for me. get out of my head. words drift around there like leaves on a fall day in chicago. chicken in the car and the car won't go. forwards and backwords and everything in between. good to express myself and to type with abandon. i love it. actually i got the idea to blog when i just so happened to fall into my good friend holly's blog earlier today. and i asked the air "where the heck has this been my whole life?" so now i am here. blogging. it's a good word.