Welcome to Noah's Book Club

Our son loves books. A lot. He loves when adults read them to him but he also loves flipping through the pages on his own. He also loves taking each and every one off the book shelf. Each month he will pick a book club book with the hopes that all his baby friends out there will join him in his love of high quality literature. We are retroactively posting 10 books for the first 10 months of Noah's life. The hard part was getting him to just choose ten! We are expecting this book club to be even more popular than Oprah's and that your local book store will need to order extra copies of each of his picks. :)

A New Season

 Today was a big day. I feel like today should be marked by something huge. However, the day was quite normal from start to finish. I slept as long as I possibly could until I had to get up to get to school on time. I taught kids. I worried about test results. I tried to give kids my “I’m-totally-serious-about-this-school-year-but-I-am-also-nice” vibe. I tried to learn names and figure out my previous connections to kids. I discovered that a large percentage of the kids in 5^th grade were either siblings of past students or the children of people I went to school with. That happens fast in a small town.

At the end of the day, I got many hugs and best wishes. It all felt very surreal. Part of me still can’t wrap my head around this season of life ending. School is all I’ve ever known. I have been in school continuously since 1986…I was 4 years old. I thrive on its schedules and routines. I basically think the calendar year is actually September to August. I don’t understand how any adult couldn’t know all the words to “My Country ‘tis of Thee.” You could say that I have no memory of life without school and you would be right.

Being a teacher is easily one of the biggest things I draw my identity from. Thankfully, it is only one of the biggest things, with who I am in God and who I am in my family making up much of my identity as well. I will need those more than ever now.

In my adult life, teaching has been one of the only constants. Everything except that has changed. Relationships, housing, cars, friendships, churches…only Middleburgh Elementary School and the fact that I teach there has remained untouched by any of life’s changes. Until now.

One season ends and another begins. Now I trade what I’ve been trained to do for what I was born to do. I trade all I know for the great unknown of motherhood. I give up financial gain for coupons and budgets. I leave a very public sphere of influence for a very private one…a very small one. I stop submitting to a principal and a superintendent and I submit myself to the role of wife and mother.

I am very blessed to be able to make this choice…the choice to stay home for a season and be a Mom. The change is big but it is the right one for my family and me. It comes with sacrifice and a whole lot of questions but I know how fortunate I am.

My whole life I wanted to be two things when I grew up…for the last 8 years I have done one…now…now is the time for the other.

A photo from the 1st day of school this year. 

  

So...maybe I am not a blogger.

I started this blog over a year ago and I have used it 3 times.

Maybe I am just not a blogger.

Plus...if no one...and I mean NO one: 1) Knows you have a blog 2) Reads it
then is there a point to blogging?

I could journal. I used to love writing. I used to NEED to write.
I want to start up and again. Use that part of me.

It may be here...but I may just dig up a blank book and a pen.

Who knows?

I just found my blog!

Maybe I will start to use it!












But not today...today we have 6 hours between wrapping Willy Wonka Jr. and spending all day tomorrow working on Chicago.
So today...I will rest.

Stay tuned.

I could never love anyone as I love my sisters.

I love the book Little Women.
I love-love-love the movie Little Women.

but...

If anyone makes me sit through the musical Little Women ever again, I may freak out.
Let me just say...the production was fine...the actors, very talented.
I think it is a boring, awful, slow musical.

And that is saying a lot...because I love musicals.

I need a place...

I am just trying this.
After years of reading the blogs of women I love and admire.
Picking a title was easy...a song from The Secret Garden that has always rung true for me.

MARY:
I need a place where I can go,
Where I can whisper what I know,
Where I can whisper who I like
And where I go to see them.

I need a place where I can hide,
Where no one sees my life inside,
Where I can make my plans, and write them down
So I can read them.

A place where I can bid my heart be still
And it will mind me.
A place where I can go when I am lost,
And there I'll find me.

I need a place to spend the day,
Where no one says to go or stay,
Where I can take my pen and draw
The girl I mean to be.

------------------------------------

I need a place
where I can come and write...
for writing has always helped me become closer
to the girl I mean to be.