March 2017

It's spring break! After a short trip to MN to visit family, I'm back home in Madison and have a couple quiet days to myself before it's the weekend and we're back to our normal routines. It's hard to believe that the school year only has a quarter left, and 2017 is a quarter over. Let's recap March.

We celebrated Jordan's birthday when we got back from Eau Claire with a giant Matilda-sized chocolate cake from Costco. I'm pretty sure that cake weighed at least 10 lbs. Delicious.  

Noah loves any celebration that involves cake.

This has been kind of a crazy month at school. March is Youth Art month which means we hang a large show in the gallery featuring work from grades k-12 in the district, and attend a school board meeting to share a chosen piece of student art that is framed and displayed at Central Office for a year. At the high school, we hosted our first ever Fine Arts week, which was a big success (and a lot of work!) Lyz put in a ton of time and work to organize a 48-hour student film festival where students were given a prop, character, genre, line of dialog, and two days to create a short film which was screened by an audience during Fine Arts week. Their enthusiasm and creativity was inspiring and I'm so proud of the work they made. All the teachers in the Art department offered various activities to all students during the school day from painting with Bob Ross, to t-shirt and cookie decorating, to henna, to fun with ceramics and painting, which were all packed with students excited about Art! There was a artist reception and music concert one night, a staff 'Whine and Painting' night, theatre performances, and dress-up days for each day of the week.

It was so much fun to see the participation and support from our students and staff, and made me feel very lucky to teach at the school where the Arts are encouraged and thriving!

Another use for the potter's wheel: painting!

We survived Fine Arts week!

I have somehow ended up joining about six different committees this year at school and this month has been a flurry of meetings before school, after school, during school... I'm not sure why but it seems like this month has been especially hectic. I just looked at my calendar and I had at least 7-12 meetings every week this month. Weird. I hope it slows down in April.

I didn't get as much reading done this month, probably partly because of the busyness at school. I think I only finished one book- Big Magic:Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert. I thought it was okay but probably would have been more inspirational to me if I had read it in my 20's. I have liked some of her books and her writing style is very readable. I started reading the third Harry Potter book this week, and I've been perusing Morgue: A Life in Death by Dr. Vincent de Maio and Ron Franscell. I guess I find forensic science to be pretty interesting and this book is about one of the countries best criminal pathologists and the cases that he's studied over the years. Several years ago I read Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach and found it fascinating so I guess this book is kind of in that same vein.

Four other things this month:

1. I signed up for Birchbox which is a subscription mail service that sends skin care/makeup/beauty samples. I gave a gift membership to Carrie and Lyz for Christmas and they both liked it so much that I decided to try it too. This was my first box that came in the mail.

What a bummer.

One of the products opened and spilled over everything. Lame. Luckily they sent me a new one right away. It's been fun to try out the products. I don't think I'll ever be a girly-girl that uses lots of hair and make-up stuff, but it's fun to get new things in the mail!

2. Early in the month I noticed that my foot was bothering me, like there was a bruise on the side which made it painful to walk. After two weeks of just hoping it would go away I finally went to the doctor to have it checked out. Getting to see an x-ray of my foot was pretty awesome and I found out that I probably have tendonitis. Yay. I got to wear a super-cool post-op boot for a few days to see if it would help (it didn't. boo.) and the next step is going in for physical therapy. It's feeling better this week so we'll see what happens. This experience has made me more grateful for my mobility, something I really take for granted.

Looking good!

3. A month ago, we started taking Noah to the Little Gym again on Saturday mornings. He has always been a bit of a cautious person, but he's started taking more risks like jumping (well, kind of falling with help) off of blocks, walking alone on the balance beam, and swinging from the bars. I'm not sure if he has a future as a gymnast yet, but he loves going and trying new things.

Who doesn't love the parachute?!

4. A couple weeks ago I went to see Get Out in the theatre with Carrie and Lyz. If you haven't yet, you need to go see it. It's a little bit comedy, a little bit thriller, and a lot disturbing. I've been thinking about it ever since.

And that brings me to now: SPRING BREAK! I took Noah to MN for a few days to see family and give Jordan a bit of relaxing alone time. We are lucky to have so many people that love our kid so much. My mom and I stopped at the Sea Life Aquarium with him yesterday as we headed back to Wisconsin. It was a fun visit!

Decorating for Easter with Aunt Kelly

Fun with Grandpa Randy

Always ice cream.

Beauty and the Beast- all by myself!

Helping Grandma Lynn feed the animals.

Chalk with the Grandpas.

Cowboy Noah.

Fun at the park!

Jellyfish!

Experiencing the stingrays

Perfect viewing height for a toddler

This was so cool!

Before we left, we had some fun at the park and I had to do a side by side with these two pictures... <3

2016

2017

Last thing: Noah has been really into hide and seek lately. Clearly he's better at the seeking than the hiding. This kid. He makes me laugh every day.

Where could Noah be???