NEW (SCHOOL) YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS

Happy Labor Day! Or as I like to think of it...the last day of long nights and sleeping in. Yep, his is the last official day of summer break. The first day of the school year is tomorrow! I love that we start after Labor Day so that my last day gets to be a full day off with my husband.Yay for lots of Hubby Quality Time!  

Meet the Teacher Friday night was awesome. I am getting a few boys who were in my very first class I taught in Kindergarten which is always fun. And the rest of my boys and parents seemed just as excited as me about this school year. Awesome parents are always the biggest blessing for a teacher and it looks like I got a class full! I also have a class of BOYS this year! As in, literally ZERO girls! Which made me even more excited to introduce my new theme this year....

My classroom got a SUPERHERO makeover! I have been excited since the end of last school year about this. Superheroes is what I would have originally done when I began teaching 3 years ago, but since I found out pretty last minute, I had to go with what I could easily find at the teacher store (though I will miss all my pretty owls I've been given over the years, all packed up safe and sound for future use). 

Since the summer moved way faster and ended up being way busier than anticipated, I didn't get to make some of the stuff I wanted to and wasn't sure how it was all going to turn out. But I'm pretty happy with it! Scratch that...I kinda LOVE it! 

The boys seemed pretty excited about it so that's really what it's all about. I love when my kids are excited about their class and about coming to school. So this brings me to the next point...

Anyone who knows me well knows that I am NOT a morning person. Like in any sense. At all. My summer schedule pretty much consists of going to bed around 2-4am and waking up around 10-11am. That is my natural sleep cycle. Natural in the sense that that is just what it is when there is no reason for me to regulate it, i.e. work. (*making myself go to bed at a decent hour tonight is going to be interesting*) And when I am working, and therefore do have to mold myself to "normal" standards, I have always been one to set my alarm for the very last possible second I need to get up. Wake up, get ready, go to work. No extras. No time for surprises. WELL....not this year!

  I have a New (school) Year's Resolution... 

This year I am not going to take advantage of the fact that I now live about 3 minutes away from my job. I am not going to take advantage of the fact that I no longer need to leave earlier to pick my niece up for school. I am not going to take advantage of that extra 30 minutes or so and set my alarm accordingly. No, this year I am going to become a (semi) morning person! I am going to use that extra time to have a cup of coffee, sit at my kitchen table in front of my new pretty bay windows, and I'm going to spend time with God doing my bible study. That is my goal.

People always say how important it is to wake up and start your day with God, but I have always argued that my time was better spent at night when I am more awake and alert, since I am after all, NOT a morning person. Admittedly though, I have found it hard the last few months to stay faithful to bible study, with life getting so crazy that when I am finally done for the night I just want me time. Selfish I know. That has to change. I have to change it. Obviously, since I am NOT... (say it with me) a morning person, nothing is ever planned for the morning times except sleeping. And on occasion, more sleep. So there is no excuse, nothing "more important" (I know nothing is actually more important than God's word) to do, nothing to distract me, and hopefully no snooze button to be hit.

I am actually pretty excited about having the time for my coffee and to get into this new study over the book of John that we just began in our LifeGroup.

The journey to becoming a morning person (or at least a semi one) starts tomorrow! 

ART JOURNALING AND CUTTING DOWN MY TIME WITH GOD

I'm not sure if I mentioned it here on my blog or not but one of my goals going into this year was to study the Word of God. Not only with the quick daily devotion where I devote a whole 2 minutes to God out of my entire day, but truly STUDYING. I decided to start with Genesis and just work my way through the Bible, chapter by chapter, dissecting as I go and seeing what God had for me to learn. I am not following any sort of "Read your Bible in a Year Plan" or anything because I do not want to feel rushed or that I absolutely had to get "this much" done. No time limits, no skim reading to finish, just God teaching me. So with the excitement that comes with all new goals, I promptly got started on researching different methods of study, bible marking, etc and came up with a system that works for me. I created my own color-coded Bible marking key (to pacify my OCD before making random marks every where and "ruining" my bible in my mind), pulled out my awesome NLT Parallel Study Bible and trusty KJV, and made the goal to do my study at least 3-4 days a week (on top of an actual daily devotion). In addition to the reading and marking, I decided to take notes on each chapter I read, as any good student would do. Because I learn visually and by writing things down, my note taking has morphed into a Bible art journal. I write, I doodle, I color. I am not an artist by any means but I love it! 

The whole process usually ends up taking a couple hours at least, and with that being said, I have not been as faithful to it as I wanted when I excitedly set my goal. In all honesty, I just picked it up a couple days ago for the first time in probably a month. I'm only on Genesis 13 and we are 3 months into the year, to give you an even further idea of how much of a slacker I am. I found myself thinking "If I could find a way to cut down the time, then maybe I could be more consistent". But the more I thought about my "process", (For those of you wondering...I read the chapter in my NLT and then my KJV. I use my coding key to mark my KJV. Then I read the study notes in both bibles for that chapter. Lastly, I do my journaling for my study.) the more I realized there's not one part of that I want to cut out because it all fits into the way I learn and retain. Then another thought slapped me across the face- How SELFISH am I? I easily spend 2 hours reading, watching TV, etc almost every day. But my first thoughts when it came to God's time were "How can I make this take less time?".

As I did a friend's hair this week, I was listening as she talked about dealing with the transition of being a parent to young children to being a parent of adults who no longer need you to "mother" them. She explained how frustrating it can be to only be in the loop of things when your child needs something or even just calling to vent their frustrations and hard times. Not frustrating because she doesn't want to be there for them in that way,(Let's be honest, we all just wanna call Mom when we have a rough day) but because her desire is to be included in all the happy, every day occurrences too. She went on to say how she wanted their time. Not because they stood to gain anything from it or because it felt like an obligation, but simply because they wanted to enjoy time with her. As I thought about the conversation later, I thought about how great a comparison that was to our relationship with our ultimate parent, God. 

God just wants a little of our time. Not only when we are going through a hard time and need his help, not only when we need a favor, not only what we have left over at the end of the day week month- in my case. He wants us to talk to him about the good things. He wants us to spend time with Him, not out of obligation or fulfilling some "Christian duty", but because we WANT to. 

Too many people think "God has the entire population to worry about...He doesn't care about my little day to day things". Wrong. The Bible calls him our Father for a reason. He does care. So instead of thinking of ways to cut down my study time, of getting it "out of the way", I need to enjoy that time with my parent because I love him. Because He loves me more than I could ever fathom. And because I am honored and humbled that He cares a whole lot about spending time with me.

UPDATES

Man, it's been almost 2 months since my last post! Life is just flying by. I am not even sure where to begin to update you. Here's the highlights of the past couple months, in chronological order for your reading pleasure. First, and most importantly, THIS happened!

I am an aunt (10 times over)! My sister had her fourth baby, and first girl! Her name in Peyton Lee and she is absolutely perfect. I am so in love with her and have decided that maybe having a baby girl one day wouldn't be so bad. The cuteness of bows and clothes and all those fun things may just make up for whatever extremely emotional teenage years she might have.

A belated, blog-official "Congrats" to my beautiful sister Sarah and bro-in-law Mark!

(I took this series of pics as she was sleeping on my chest. so amazed at the range of emotion I captured. What do babies dream of???)

And then...did my first big (ish) home DIY project. My dining table.

Before

After



We also canceled our cable, officially decided on TBT for our home church, searched and searched and finally found an apartment, I learned to shoot a gun, had my very first jury duty, and started running. And that brings us to today. I think.

I had something I wanted to write about, that is actually the reason I finally picked up the ol' computer, but after the updating, I think I will save that for...tomorrow? Two days in a row? We will see.