Glamping

I know camping isn't for everyone.  Maybe it's the bugs or the park bathrooms, I'm not sure. For me though, camping is a relaxing escape from the real world. I almost enjoy it as much as a beach vacation....almost. There isn't any housework to do, no projects to work on, no running around town from one place to the next. Just relaxing outdoors, enjoying the calmness that nature brings to my soul.

I love sitting by the fire, morning and evening both.  We tend to keep our fire going the whole weekend, as we prefer to make all of our meals over the fire. The cackle sound, the campfire smell...it's all so calming. Sure, my hair and clothes smell like it too, but that's a trade off I don't mind for just a couple of days.

I also enjoy the food we eat.  At home we eat a lot of leftovers or random meals, but when we camp, the meals are all planned out and are generally things we might not eat at home.  Plus, everything just tastes better over the fire.

One of my favorite things about camping, is all of the friendly neighbors, or should I say, happy campers in the campground. Most people keep to themselves, but everyone at least says "hello" as they walk past your campsite. If you'd like to strike up a conversation with someone, there is a good chance they won't mind.

I love being outdoors, but when I'm at home, I tend to spend a majority of my time inside the house. Camping forces me to stay outside. I'm not one to sit inside my camper (I really don't understand the campers who do this). Going to campgrounds with walking/hiking trails and other things to do is my preference. It makes us stay active and gets us away from the campsite, without leaving the park.

I've tent camped many times, but I knew I wanted to have a camper someday.  I did not want to have a "glamper" though...I mean, it's not camping if you have all of the amenities from home inside your camper, right?!?! Well, we just purchased our first camper, and although James disagrees, I think we are now "glamping".  We got a used travel trailer, but it does have a microwave, oven, tub/shower, and indoor/outdoor radio, among other things. We also brought our Keurig with us this past weekend. Totally glamping.

We rented a pop-up camper earlier this year, and while it met our few needs just fine, we didn't like that we could hear the noisy neighbors late at night, nor the time it took to set it up and take it down. After our first time out with the travel trailer this past weekend, we are very happy with our decision

I'm looking forward to spending many more weekends outside in nature with my family. The kids love all the outdoor time and we will make lots of fun memories. In fact, I don't think I ever heard, "I'm bored" either of the times we camped this year!

Playing at the Jester Park playscape area

Jester Park offered a lot to do while we were camping

What I learned from the classroom

Two days ago I received a call from the elementary school I work at, asking if I could sub for an associate this week.  I was hesitant to say "yes" as I was fearful of being with a badly behaved child. When I called back to inquire about the student, I was told it would be an easy kid to be with.  I decided I better give it a shot, so I said "sure" (although I only accepted one of the two days they were requesting me for). I was pretty nervous about today, but it actually went very well.  The kid I was with was pretty easy. He was a cutie, actually. I just had to remind him to stay on task a few times was all.

What I hadn't thought about ahead of time, was that I was going to be sitting in a classroom for most of the day...meaning, I would get to see what class is like these days.  I was pretty surprised.  Extremely surprised, really.

Teaching appears to be a glorified baby-sitting job right now.  I could not believe how much time the teacher spent just asking the kids to be quiet and waiting for them to pay attention.  WOW!!   I felt really bad for the teachers (I sat in 2 classrooms). They had their own ways of getting the class to pay attention and be quiet, but the kids just didn't ever seem to want to obey for longer than 3 minutes. These were 3rd and 4th graders. I did enjoy watching the kids try to get each other to be quiet so they could "surprise" their teacher when she came into the room....of course there was the one kid who thought he was hilarious by being loud...his classmates were not impressed.

Something our school does is combine grades. So, first and second graders are in a classroom together and then third and fourth graders are in a room together.  This is optional, as we also have traditional single grade classrooms.  The multi-age thing is fairly popular though.  We have heard a lot of good things about this program, so I was glad I got to check it out today. I just couldn't imagine what it would be like to have 2 grades together.  It was interesting.  Just by my observations today (and I could easily be way off from the way the program is actually ran), it appears that the students are taught more "real world" applications, rather than traditional reading/writing/math/science, etc.  I watched them share their feelings and then discuss how to help their friends that were feeling down.  I watched them discuss things they did well at yesterday and things they felt they could improve on today.  I watched them sit quietly and read independently (each at their own level of book), and then discuss how to be better readers (read the text and then think about what you read and predict what may happen). I also attended their math class.  Ummmm.............

So, I've been hearing about this "new math" for a few years now.  I finally got to experience it for myself.  W.T.F?!?!?!?  Seriously. The first problem was 44+57. It took 10 minutes to tell a ridiculous story about how to get the answer.  There's no stacking the numbers on top of each other and adding each column.  Now, we count in 10's and then add or subtract the appropriate number from there.  I was SO LOST!!  I wanted to ask, "could you please pause for a second while I got get my phone to record this???  Because no one is going to believe me when I tell this math story...."  But instead I sat quietly and tried to figure it out.  I mean, I took every single math class my school offered and did very well in them; I enjoyed math!  But this new math is just a foreign language.  I will admit that once I figured it out, it did make sense, but still.....I feel like it takes so much longer to do it this way.

Another thing I found interesting is that they do not have desks.  Instead they all sit at tables together. They also do not have their own supplies, as they all just grabbed pencils, scissors, etc from a container on their table.  I guess it really doesn't matter if you have your own things; it's just different from when I went to school. And the kids don't stay in their seats longer than 10 minutes.  The teachers have them moving from chair to carpet and back very frequently.

Additionally, schools are required now to use more technology.  I have heard that they struggle to find enough uses for technology and today I saw them really stretching their ideas to get technology in.  Like, using a blank page on their ipads to practice math problems, instead of paper and pencil. One teacher used the ipad to draw a name at random to come up and help her.

School just doesn't seem the same.  I kept worrying today that these kids are missing out on a lot of textbook items, but probably they are not.  I mean how many things did we learn that we've never needed to know?!?!

I had a very "blonde" moment today that I better share.  I wore flip flops to the school, but because I have to wear close-toed shoes for working in the lunchroom, I brought my tennis shoes to change into.  When it was time for my lunchroom job to start I went to put my socks and tennis shoes on, only to find out I brought my right shoe and Rylee's left shoe!!!  OMG!!!  I could not believe I did that!!!!  Luckily my bosses were cool with it and let me wear my flip flops this one time (sshhh, don't tell).

A few minutes later as I was serving lunch, James came up behind me with flowers :)  I was surprised to see him, as I was expecting him to come eat lunch with Rylee on Friday.  He decided to surprise us both!

All in all, it was a fun day!  I will likely sub again if they call me to.....until I get that one "bad" kid....

Working bus duty after school with my favorite kindergartner! :)

A year at home

As I opened this page up to start a new post, I saw that I have written 218 posts since I started blogging.  I can't believe I've written that many.  I really enjoy writing and sharing my life. Thanks for reading :)

We are coming up on a year since we moved into this house. A year since we've been residents of this town.  It was rocky for awhile last summer, not knowing where we were going to live and which school Rylee would attend that fall. It's hard to feel settled and make friends when you don't know how long you'll be in a place.  I couldn't be happier for the way things turned out for us.  We genuinely love our town, the school, the people we've made friends with, our "neighborhood".  From the first phone call I made to the school last summer, I felt like this town would be our home.  Home is definitely how it feels now.

We are getting to the point of seeing familiar faces around town and having friends invite us to do things with them. I've had a lot more opportunities than James to meet people in town, but everyone has been so friendly and welcoming and we have people we know we can call on.

We hosted a "neighborhood" BBQ this summer and invited all of the people that live within a square mile or so. It was nice to have everyone together and gave us all a chance to get to know each other better.

The kids both have friends here too. It's so adorable when we go somewhere and Wyatt sees one of his little friends.  It's heart melting to see him point out someone he knows by name, or play on the playground with a friend from school. Rylee, being older, gets invited to play at her friends' houses or go to the pool with them.  She even got to go to Adventureland with a friend this summer. James and I love that we have gotten to know her friends' parents well enough to be able to let her do fun things like that.

Being a "lunch lady" has made me feel famous in town amongst the young kiddos. Several times I've heard, "Hey, there's our lunch lady" when I'm somewhere other than the school :)

We also have found a high school baby-sitter we really love. The kids get excited to have her over, so that's a huge plus!  I've always been so nervous about having a high-schooler watch my kids, but we really lucked out with a great one!!  Her mom was Rylee's preschool teacher, so that helped ease my nerves a bit.

Even more than the town, I really love our house and our property. At least once a week I comment that our house is too big, but other than that, I really do love it. I loved the layout from the first time we looked at the house. Sure, there are many things I would have done differently if I designed it, but mostly, I love it.

It's funny. Before we moved in I kept demanding that we get rid of the blue carpet, green countertops and wall paper border immediately.  11 months later, guess what....

blue carpet

green counter tops and wall paper border

I still dislike them all, but there's something about it that makes it feel "homey"....like visiting a Grandma's house.  We did finally decide recently that it's time to start putting our own touches on the house. We started with painting the basement.  With that being where our television is, we wanted to make it feel a little more cozy down there for winter when we are stuck indoors.  The walls had all been white before, but are now my favorite shade of gray. Our next project will be the kitchen I think....remove the wall paper, new counter top and new hardware for the cupboards.

My long front porch and back screened porch are probably my two favorite places of this house. I spend a lot of time on them, usually reading. We eat many meals on the screened porch too. It's nice to feel the fresh air without being outside with the bugs....mosquitos love me!  And the front porch allows me to view our big beautiful yard I love so much!!  James and I have watched a lot of sunsets from the front of our house.

During move-in, I had a fall scented candle on the warmer. When I got that candle back out recently and the wax started to melt, sending the scent into the air, Rylee said, "It smells like when we first moved in here."  :)  I will say, without a doubt, we are finally settled and feeling at home.  We love this place and love our town.