So much to do. I feel like I have accomplished a lot today, but I'm so exhausted now. I really need to get my lesson plans completed and papers graded, but lord I'm tired. I had so much to type out on this earlier today and now I can't think of a thing.

I guess I can start at the beginning of my day. I got everyone up and off to church this morning, which for this household is an accomplishment in itself. I was really proud of getting us there in time, of course the service was running a little behind, so I guess God was looking out for me. While in church, I stood up to sing a hymnal with the congregation and while standing I just started to feel dizzy. I mean dizzy and nauseated. I sat down and my husband of course was worried. It passed but then I felt tired. Really tired. It was very weird. I had never felt like that before. We got home and I realized I hadn't taken my iron or vitamins that morning. So I went ahead and took them. I didn't feel that way the rest of the day.

Then I spent the day cooking dinner, doing dishes, finishing laundry, making chicken salad, making playdough, and making a coffee cake. Not to mention the lesson plans, and caring for my 3 year old.

One thing I can say, is that I def. have baby brains. I made two batches of homemade play dough, and both turned out sticky. I couldn't figure out what had gone wrong. I called my mom over and read the directions to her. Of course she could figure out over the phone that my mishap was that I was using sugar and not salt. I swear until I heard her read the recipe my recipe totally said salt. Then she read it and suddenly the word salt changed to sugar! LOL. Oh how stupid can you feel?

I hope everyone has a good week!

Teaching is Hard!

I would love to find a job that wasn't so personal. I think it's hilarious when you have had a bad day teaching and when you are talking to people, they respond with, "it's just a job, don't take it personally." Really? It is personal. That's why teachers teach. It's personal! Go conference with a parent sometime and say, "Don't take this personal, but your kid isn't performing." I dare you to say that to a parent!! They will take that personal. They should! It's their kid you're judging! We chose this job because of the personal. It's because we don't want to sit behind a desk filling out paper work. We love to learn and try new things and be driven to work harder. However, with all of the rewards of learning and the love you feel from the kids, there is so much heartbreak for teachers. When a kid says they are happy to not be in your room anymore because you are "mean," your heart breaks. I don't care what people say, it breaks and hurts. Someone telling you that doesn't make you laugh. It's not funny. It hurts. I know I'm strict, I've accepted that. I know I push my kids. I've accepted that. But it still hurts when little kids don't like you. It's not the same as wanting to be liked by your friends when you were in school. It's striving to be one of those teachers that kids want to work for, it's wanting to be one of those teachers that kids would do anything for without you even trying to get them to do anything for you. How do I become one of those teachers? I want to be one of those teachers! I wish I was like my dad. He teaches and his kids look up to him. When I was in school my friends looked at my dad like their own father. I have friends that still call my dad for advice. He is one of those teachers. He doesn't try to be. He just is. He is respected and kids want to work for him. Even when they are arguing with them kids would say I hate your dad right now, because he's right. I just want him to not be mad at me. REALLY!?! How does that work? Why can't I be like that? Is it something you can learn....or does it just come naturally like singing? Everyone does it, but only a very few actually should do it in public.

Appropriate Title?

Journaling One Day at a Time??? Um...maybe I should have named this one day a month at a time. LOL. I think about sitting down and journaling all the time, but actually doing it is a different story. Recently, my hubby and I have started this new thing to improve our financial status. It's called budgeting...apparently it's been around awhile and no one thought to tell us about it. Okay, so we just made enough money and always made ends meet every month but never seemed to have enough to save. Funny how that works. So now we are making up for lost time. Paying off some debts that we accumulated, and and putting money into savings for rainy days. Funny thing is, since we have been saving, it's like rainy days have been dropping out of the sky. In one day, our water heater, and toaster oven both quit working. Fixed the water heater, but things aren't looking to great for the toaster oven. Oh well, that's why we're saving right? Our biggest goal has been to fill back up the savings whenever we have to dip into it. We've done well so far, but we are honestly only on like Month 2. We shall see how well we do. In two months, I can say we have paid off $600 of one debt. So I guess we aren't doing to terrible.

What have I learned from this process? I have a spending problem. I never did before but over the years I have gotten very free with my spending habits. I realized I was spending like 90$ a month just in Starbucks coffee!!! Seriously! Now my husband and I get $25 of spending money for the month....aww...I feel like I am about to burst. However I have done okay. My hubby has been keeping me sane somehow.

Of course, then there is the pregnancy. I did tell you guys that I am pregnant right? Anway, I'm pregnant. 5 Months now. It's amazing....more amazing that we have had two ultrasounds and our baby refuses to show if it's a he or she. So we are going neutral and not by choice. :) Oh well, life throws curve balls sometimes, and this is one curveball I can live with. Other than that the pregnancy is going great.

I have recently started these new crafts to keep myself busy. I have taken up crocheting and been making headbands for my daughter. I thought about trying to sell them for a few dollars. I'm not looking to make a fortune, but they are handmade and some people might enjoy them. Also, I know people are adding some cute oversized bows and ribbons. I may look into embellishing them before selling them. We will see. Here is a picture of an example. You can tell me what you think.

I've made more with different patterns, but this was my first. I will add them as I continue making them.

So I teach and four years ago i intentionally took a job at a low-income school in order to be eligible for the loan forgiveness program that the government offers. At the end of last year I found out that my school would no longer qualify as low-income because some of our students were re-districted. Are you kidding! I have to work at a low-income school for five consecutive years. I just lost my 5000 dollars. I was so upset. My mom convinced me to call the customer service of the program and see if they would forgive this year since it was not a change of job on my part rather a county descision. Luckily, they said I was grandfathered into the program since I worked four years in a low-income school and remained at that school my fifth year. I'm so excited! It's great! It is going to help us get further out of debt so much faster! I'm so geared!

To add to my joy today, I made this awesome dinner. I used Asian spice packets and made fried rice, and honey glazed seaseme chicken. It was really good. I was so impressed with myself. It was great. My daughter ate it up, my husband ate it up and I look forward to a filling meal tomorrow at lunch.

Day Two

I had so much planned that I was going to do today. I didn't really get anything done. Since it's Martin Luther King's Birthday I had today off. I was going to finish report cards, reorganizing our bedroom and clean the house. Ummm, okay maybe it was a little much for one day.

I woke up to my 3 year old running around downstairs.....that's right folks. She got out of bed and was running in circles downstairs. I came out of my bedroom door at the top of the steps and she was starting to walk up, tears streaming down her face. I asked her what was the matter. She crawled up the stairs crying and said..."I thought you and daddy left me. You weren't downstairs, and you didn't read me a book last night." Bless her heart! My heart ached for her. I asked if she checked in our bedroom first and she said no because I was downstairs when she went to sleep. Oh my. What could I say. I just hugged her and told her we would never leave her alone. She asked me if I promised and you know I did. I even pinkie swore. :)

On a positive note: We have reached Day 4 with no pee peeing in our big girl bed!!!!! YAY! I'm so proud of her. I can't believe changing rooms and beds has made such a difference. It's as if it was just the motivation she needed to wake herself up when she needed to go potty.

Later on, my hubby and I went grocery shopping. We had to stay within 75 bucks on our groceries. You know what, we did it! We have budgeted out all of our money for groceries, gas, "blow money," bills, and savings. For the first time in 5 years we have actually managed to stick to the budget. We have put money away for summer cash, and for our daughter's college fund. I am so proud of my husband and me.

At the same time, it has been very hard. We have limited ourselves to $25 a month in blow money. We were spending almost $1000 dollars of our income on blow money about a month ago. We weren't saving anything and we were only paying minimum payments on everything. Now we are saving our $500 a month so I don't have to work during the summer and we aren't relying on a tax refund to cover our bills. We also managed to put $100 in our daughters college savings this month, and set aside $900 for an emergency fund. I wish we could manage to do that every month but this month my husband got paid his bonus money from work which made a huge difference.

My husband, who used to be the spender, is doing better at this than I am. It's frustrating. I wish I had more strength. I want to pay off our debt so much faster than what we will be able to pay them. I know we are getting there, but I want to be there now!!!! I know it took us some time to accumulate the debt, but it feels like it is taking so much longer to shake ourselves from under it.

In regards to the teaching side of things. I need to get my report cards finished....or started. I guess I have to start them to finish them. I have such a bad habit of procrastinating. I have been doing so great at staying on top of my work. I can only hope I stay motivated enough to keep it going. It seems to come in swings. I do really good at things for a while and then I slow done, just before I stop completely. I get so behind that picking it back up to finish seems like an impossible task. Until I am finally feeling pressure from so many directions that I explode into a frenzy of work and finish the job. Then I think, I'll do better next time, knowing that's not true. What causes people to be like this. I wish I could tell you. I've heard all the theories; fear of failing, laziness, lack of skill, etc. I just procrastinate. No reason, no rhyme.

Here's to no more procrastination. To anyone reading this....wish me luck.

Day One

I guess I can start out this blog with a little background info. I am 26 and I will have been married 5 years in June of '05. I have a little girl that just turned 3 and I am pregnant with number two, which is due June 19th. I feel like I started a new life five years ago. The first year looked something like this; I graduated from college in May of '05, I got married to my high school sweetheart in June of '05, I started my first year teaching in August of '05, we bought a house in January of '06 and finally found out we were 3 months pregnant in February of '06. We were due to have our first child in November of '06. Let's say I went through all of those changes with a lot of ups and downs. Did you know there is a statistic somewhere that says you shouldn't have more than one big change every couple of years. I don't know where that statistic is, but people tell me it every time they learn about our first year of marriage. Looking back, I think we did great!

Now I will fill you in on what's going on in our life today. So far I am 18 weeks pregnant. I am showing so much faster this time than last time. I thought this pregnancy was going to be "normal." Like the last one. I didn't feel the drive to read all those books this time. I haven't felt the need to seek out mommy groups. However, it's not the same. This time it's completely different. I was nauseous the first-trimester, eating twice as much as usual, exhausted, having leg cramps, and dry skin that itched like CRAZY!!!! Despite it all I have loved being pregnant again. I know I'm insane. I know there are some of you out there that hate me for saying that, but it's true. I love it. I love that I just started to feel the flutters of the baby in my belly. I love that when everyone looks at me right now, they look at my belly instead of my boobs. :) Sorry but when you are a size 2 with D cups (yes natural) the boobs are where guys and girls eyes go sometimes. Until you have kids. :) Then they are saggy D's. So those of you with smaller boobs gloat in the fact that those of us that were "blessed" have to have them hang to our belly buttons long before we reach our thirties if we have kids in our twenties. Talking about boobs, I love that being pregnant can make saggy boobs firm and perky again...and so does my hubby. ;-)

As for my three year old. I moved her out of the baby room and into a "big girl room." It's so cute. We found an awesome deal for a Queen....oh yes, I said Queen....size bed, a dresser and mirror, chest of drawers, and a night stand for $699. We couldn't pass it up. Brand-new it was mispriced in the sales ad. How lucky are we!?! The room is painted orange...it was meant to be more of a Tuscan and we bought it a little to bright. Oh well, it's kind of orange now, and we put polka dot decals all over it. It looks wonderful. When we potty trained her she did great during the day but we couldn't get her to stop wetting the bed at night. She has slept in her bed two nights in a row and hasn't wet her bed yet! We are so excited. She gets up and goes potty all by herself now. Of course her new bedroom is closer to the bathroom which might help, but it's great! Tonight she asked me if I could close her bedroom door. I know that seems minor, but she usually wants her door at least cracked open. Not now. She's a big girl! I'm so proud of her!

We shall see what tomorrow brings.