At long last...

Sadly it's been about 2 months since I've updated this, so here's a quick synopsis of the end of summer/ beginning of Fall 2009.

We sold our 1998 Honda CRV via craigslist and bought a 2006 Toyota RAV 4. We absolutely LOVE it!! I would recommend this car to anyone, especially someone with kids.

In late July, we went to Destin, FL for a week with some friends from church and had a great trip! We even went to Tallahassee for 2 days to visit friends and then drove back to Texas. Overall, it was a lovely trip with friends.

Soon after we got back from vacation, school arrived. Mid-August found us being all consumed by paperwork and preparation. To this day, our lives fully revolve around teaching and probably will until the beginning of June. I, Eloise, am a first year teacher with 4 different preps, meaning that I teach 4 different classes [6th grade math, reading resource (6th-8th grade), 7th grade math resource, and 8th grade math resource]. Plus, I'm a special education teacher meaning I have lots of additional paperwork to attend to. As Mary Hanson, one of my amazing co-workers from across the hall, and I like to say "in my spare time." We'll always have a ridiculous amount of work to do and whenever we add one more task to our "to do list," we say we'll do it "in our spare time." :)

Joel, in his 4th year of teaching/ 3rd year at Whitehouse H.S., has finally learned that he LOVES teaching, especially economics. His love of economics has inspired him to pursue a master's degree in business administration. He's taking 2 master's classes and feels a little overwhelmed with his workload at times. But he took his first test in one of his classes recently and got a 98%!!!! Of course, he was upset that he missed ONE question. ;)

As if we didn't have enough on our plate, I've joined an Apples of Gold bible study, which has been AWESOME!! This community of older women mentoring younger women via cooking, marriage, & family has proven to be a beautiful way to fellowship. Our community group and Sunday school class are both great, as always. We're continuously blessed by those relationships. AND last but not least, I've joined an adult hip hop class at Dance N Drill. Every Thursday night, I join ladies of all ages in looking like idiots and acting like we have rhythm. It's a great stress relief and I've met some really fabulous women!!

All in all, it's been a most busy autumnal season and will continue to be...more updates to follow as time allows.

As always,
Eloise