Blueberries!

Here is the first fruit of my blueberry spoils. I made blueberry pie for dessert tonight, and as you can see, Landon enjoyed it!

Great week!

Landon and I enjoyed our very long trip this weekend to my grandma's in Mississippi for the annual Reeves family reunion. Along the way we stopped in Bossier City and spent the evening with Meme and Pappy. It was so good to see them and actually get to spend a little more time with them than usual because we got away from Denton a little early.

Friday morning we got up, ate breakfast with Meme and Pappy and made our way to McComb, MS. We enjoyed our time that weekend with Memaw, my dad and Uncle Ken. Saturday after the family reunion, I picked about 2 1/2 gallons of blueberries! No joke, see the picture of my freezer below. This is about half of what I picked! Sunday we HAD to eat lunch at The Dinner Bell. I wish now that I had taken a picture of what it is like to eat there, but I didn't! You can check it out yourself at www.thedinnerbell.net. Let me assure you, that eating there once a year is not quite often enough! Unfortunately, after eating a very full meal (which included fried eggplant, cream corn, chicken and dumplings, fried chicken, coleslaw, potato salad, purple hull peas, butter beans, bread pudding, etc.) making an 8-hour drive back home was far from what I wanted to do!

So far this week at work has been pleasant...at least it hasn't been as bad as it has before! I've gotten off work early 3 out of 4 days so far this week which is good for the mind and body, but not so good for the paycheck. I'll take it though!

No real plans for the weekend. I'm going to my mom's to meet with her and Jason to plan our trip to Los Angeles the next weekend. Landon doesn't have his truck right now because it is in the shop (finally!) from the accident he had a couple of months ago, so I will have to leave him at home all by himself! Poor baby. Then on Sunday after church we have a new members meeting. We are finally going to be members of a church for the first time since we have been married. We finally found a church we both love! After that I will be heading out to a pool party for a girl I graduated college with. She is getting married 4th of July weekend, so time to celebrate!

Have a wonderful evening! Check out the blueberries:
Each of those is a two-cup container, plus the extra in the bag on top. :) Yum!

Job application after job application

Today I have spent about 6 hours on the computer filling out job applications for school districts. Some of them are districts that I have already applied to, but I have to recheck to see if any additional openings have been posted. I try to do this once a week. This week however, I extended my job search. I've started applying for positions in districts that are a looong drive from Denton.

I counted and I have now put in 40 job applications! That's right, 40! This has been one of the most frustrating and difficult things that I have ever done. When I was graduating 6 months ago, I would have never thought that I would still be struggling to find a job. I was so confident that I would get a job in Lewisville ISD (where I did my student teaching) that I never even considered not being interviewed for a position there and here it is the middle of June! I've got 2 months left before teachers start reporting to work for the next school year.

Please, please, please, keep praying for us. I have got to continue to trust in the Lord to bring me through this. I need the hope that my current job situation will not last forever, and I will be successful in finding a job. I know that someday soon (if it is His will) that the right job opportunity will jump out at me! I need the strength to get through everyday. I have never had a job that I disliked so much than the one I have now. I guess I have been so lucky the last several years to work with people that I enjoy in a fairly positive working environment. This new job has been such a challenge, so I hope I will take from it whatever it is the Lord is trying to teach me, but it is a hard lesson to learn!

Worst pain ever!

So, on Monday night I had finally had enough of the pain in my throat and decided I'd stop by Care Now on my way home from work on Tuesday night. Somebody recommended the Minute Clinic inside CVS to me instead which has a much lower cost than Care Now, so I decided to go there instead. They opened at 8:30 Tuesday morning and I had to be at work at 9:30, so I thought I'd go by that morning instead of waiting until the evening...and boy am I glad I did! I saw a nurse practitioner there instead of a doctor, which was fine with me because that's about all they have at the UNT student health center where I had been going all through college. Anyway, she took all my symptoms and suggested a strep test. I thought that would be good, just to be on the safe side, since I work with kids and all, I would have to let them know at work if I had strep. So when she started examining my throat she said "Wow, yes, you have 2 large ulcers on your tonsils." No wonder I was in so much pain! I had been battling this for 9 days before I went to see anybody about it. She said I was one tough lady for waiting so long to come in. Anyway, she said she did not see any signs of infection, just looked like a virus. The "quick" strep test came back negative, but we sent one off to the lab just to be safe. (Ended up being negative too.) Needless to say, she suggested I take a couple days off to rest and wrote me a note for work. I hated calling in sick, especially since I'm still in my first month of employment there, but I'm so glad I did. I needed those 2 days of rest. I'll tell you what though, the pain I had on Thursday was even worse than the previous 10 days of pain. Next time I have something wrong with my tonsils (when I have better insurance) I want to have them removed. I have tonsilitis and problems with my tonsils biannually (like clockwork.)

Today, I'm feeling much better and have hardly any feeling of discomfort in my tonsils. Yay!

Today has been pretty productive. I think I finally spent the last of my graduation money on a few new things at The Limited. Love their clearance section! I made a late lunch-early dinner of Italian subs and homemade fries. Yum! and the apartment is even clean (except for vacuuming--that will come tomorrow probaby!)

In other news, I did not get the job I interview for in Aubrey. I'm pretty bummed about it, but I wasn't hanging all my hopes on that job. I'm hoping I'll get another interview soon, but I really need to get the next job I interview for because I'm not sure how I'm going to get some more scheduled time off of work...They are not flexible in the least. Ugh. Soon, things will be different! I have faith.

Bike Ride

Well, today Landon went on a 20-something mile bike ride with a friend today. He's getting himself geared up for another triathlon! I'm so glad he enjoys doing that, I just wish he would be ready to ride with me when I am actually home!

I decided to go get myself checked out tomorrow and see if I've got strep throat or some other kind of infection. We'll see! I hope it's something they can give me drugs for and make me feel better ASAP.

Happy Anniversary

This past week on Wednesday (June 3rd) was our 3 year anniversary. We both had to work and it was a loooong day for me! I've been sick all week, so it was not the ideal anniversary. Landon gave me a beautiful card, and some of my favorite candy!

Last night we went out to eat to celebrate! Quite surprisingly it was easy to convince him to eat at Maggiano's (one of my favorite Italian restaurants). He does not like Italian food, so for him to agree to it was amazing. He's such a sweetheart, just wanting to make me happy for our anniversary! :)

We had bruschetta, and I ate gnocchi for dinner while Landon had a steak and mashed potatoes (surprise, surprise!) and I ordered some delicious tiramisu for dessert. YUM!

Interview

Last week on Thursday I had a job interview in Aubrey ISD for a kindergarten position. Aubrey is a smaller school district just east of Denton, so it is very close to where we live! I really felt at home at the school and enjoyed meeting with the principal and counselor. I was very nervous (as I always am for interviews!) but by the grace of God, I think it went well.

The principal also told me the other elementary school in Aubrey is looking for a second grade teacher and a fourth grade teacher and she asked if I would be interested. This seems promising! I hope to hear back from them soon, and if it is God's will, then I would love to work there! Keep me in your prayers and hopefully I will be hearing from either them or another school district for an interview soon. And pray that I can get the time off my current job to go to the interview. It's very complicated when you don't want your current employer to know you are looking for another job!

New Job update

Well, 3 weeks ago I started my new job at the child-care facility and I am already wishing I'd never taken the job. I was hired on as a Pre-K assistant teacher, however I spent my first 2 weeks working in the toddler room. These are babies 15-22 months on average. They are moved into this room from infants when they are either walking or need to be exposed to walking children to get them to learn to walk. Needless to say, to me it was a great shock! I had absolutely no experience with kids this age. I had to learn how to change diapers (blech!) and I was washing my hands a hundred times a day. But, I really enjoyed those kids! They were so much fun! Even when they were crying and fussy. The only thing I did not enjoy was the diapering, but now I will be an experienced diaper changer when the time comes.

This last week I started in Pre-K, so now I'm getting used to a whole new set of kids and new teachers. Compared to my experience in the toddler room, Pre-K is not working out so well. The kids want to challenge me and my authority which I have no problem dealing with as a teacher or substitute, but when you have to do things the way the other teacher does things it becomes more complicated. The other teachers have done next to nothing to make me feel welcome in the classroom and have had nothing positive to say about how I am doing. This makes for an unpleasant work environment.

In orientation, they made it sound like we would be well-trained on all the "rules and regulations" they have to follow (which I am still trying to learn, 3 weeks later.) In orientation they also specifically said they would assign us a buddy to be there to ask questions about anything we need help with, like policies and procedures (asking for time off, scheduling, etc.) or where to find supplies/the bathroom/etc. I do not have a buddy so I have had to figure all this stuff out for myself! I guess I have always been spoiled by previous employers.

I don't know what I am working until the day before, so I can't plan anything during the week, including the interview I had last week for a kindergarten position at Aubrey ISD. So, when I had to ask to come in to work at a certain time in one week's time, I got the feeling that it was not appreciated. Well, what am I supposed to do the next time I have an interview?

To top it all off, I have been sick all week with some kind of cold (I hope!) and could not go to the doctor because I feel intimidated about asking to work it into the schedule.

Wow! I feel like I'm ranting, but that's 3 weeks worth of what's happened at work!

However, I thank God for giving me a job at this time! We need the money and jobs are scarce, so He has provided a way for us. I just can't wait until a better opportunity comes along!