Around Here 21: 05/20-05/28

A glimpse into what it is like to live in our home just this very moment.

Intentional Outdoor Hours: 134+ hours (of 1000)
Up 41 hours (!!) this week mostly due to our Memorial Day weekend visit to Pine Creek with the Stankans - read more below! It is definitely spring now and some days even feel like a touch of summer with the heat and mugginess. It was a long wait for these blue skies and we are all feeling grateful to be outside and warm again. Rusty loves being able to go outside and play in his Little Tikes car and I have loved having to call the kids in for dinner and explaining to Violet that even though the sun is still out, it is still time for bed (hah!) #nobedtimesummer is on the horizon, thank goodness!

Reading and finishing My Husband's Wife by Jane Corry which I thought was decent - it had a similar feeling to Gone Girl in the sense of you know something is shady but not quite sure what it is, but then there isn't any real huge shocker at the end so it's slightly anticlimactic.

Hanging in there as we get through this month. I was laughing while looking at the wreck that is my planner right now for the month of May. For the past three weeks straight Brandon and I have said, "okay, let's just get through this week" - between work and spring sports seasons and end of school year events (CV Sports banquet, CV senior banquet, kids' field trips, early dismissals), and holidays and celebrations like baby showers - this month has been wild; fun and blessed, but wild for sure.

Honored to give out our Studer Scholarship again this year (our 10th year!) This year our two very deserving winners were Haley Rygel and our personal Mary Poppins, Hannah Labar. So very proud of those girls and grateful to read about all the incredible ways young people are making a difference in our communities. The most amazing moment of the senior banquet was when another alumni family got up to give out their scholarship that they started this year and thanked Brandon & I and the Masser family (another young alum family) for being the inspiration for starting a scholarship! It was so sweet and I love that they decided to go for it (you guys are awesome, Jess & Matt!) If you are interested in starting a scholarship in your family name or in honor of a loved one: speak to your alumni organization or the high school guidance counselor to get started! 

Camping with the Stankans in Pine Creek and visiting the PA Grand Canyon for Memorial Day weekend. Loni and the kids and I headed up on Saturday morning to Wellsboro and their campsite. The husbands arrived late on Saturday night after the High Ridge Jamboree. We spent the weekend fishing, laughing at the kids and their silliness, and settling into that calm, don't got a darn thing I need to do state of no service camping. Also picked up big time outdoor hours and Violet fell hard for riding her bike. I'm going to be honest, I'm not a huge fan of camping but I have found, the people you camp with make up for any mosquito bites, flies, and perpetual dampness that usually bothers me.  Thank you Stankans for such a fun weekend, we love youns. Crossed off two items from my 100 small things list!

So grateful for our surprise when we arrived back home from our camping weekend trip. While Gigi and Pappy were at our house to let the dogs out on Saturday, Gigi cleaned the whole house and Pap purchased & put together a new (much needed) bed for Greyson! We could not get over it especially as the house was in the particularly terrible shape of last week of school-spring sports-season shambles before we flew out the door for our weekend. Thank you so so much Gigi & Pappy! And thank you Chum & Abba who came out on Sunday to let the dogs out and folded laundry. Total fail on my part that I didn't book the kennel, but we are blessed with the most incredible parents who pick up all the parts we drop in the chaotic life (thankyou! we love you!!)

Teaching our last week of school! Our Duolingo challenge ended and we had a 2nd and 1st runner up and a champion, We had a little gala for my students who earned over 102% for the final marking period, and I had my students fill out a student feedback form. I got some thoughtful responses on that which will help me make small changes to my plan next year on what to change or keep. (84% of students want more fiesta/food days - hah and multiple students requested more vocab lists on the open response). I gave students an opportunity to choose one word that was most true to describe me and 26% chose 'school mom' while another 23% wrote in their own answers including hilariously, "the embodiment of a wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube woman (in the best way possible of course)" which had my dying laughing for a solid 3 minutes. We finished our weightloss teacher challenge too and I came in second place!

Making old bay shrimp and tacos. we whipped up a batch of cake box mix cookies for camping. We are still in an unhealthy rotation of regular Silver Bell ice cream stops and concession stand dinners. I'm chalking it up as a season of the year and vowing to be better at meal planning in June. so shameful but also I don't even care - survival at this point. LOL.