Keeping the Faith

For the last few years, Aaron has been working towards his lifelong dream of becoming a fire fighter.  It has been a long, sometimes frustrating and most of the time stressful process for us both, especially Aaron. 
Two weeks ago, he found out that his dream will be coming true soon :)  He will be a Dallas Fire Fighter in a few months!  I honestly could not be more proud of my amazing husband.  He has shown so much patience and faith throughout this whole process.  As many of you know, job hunting is a VERY frustrating ordeal.  I cried quite a bit during my summer of job searching here in the Dallas area for my teaching job.  He has been so optimistic and positive the whole time.  I know that this all comes from his wonderful family though.  They were all completely supportive of him this whole time and a GREAT group of prayer warriors.  I know they all did their part in praying and asking their friends to pray as well. 
Trusting in God's plan can be a hard thing to do sometimes.  Especially when it is not quite going at the speed I would like for it to :)  Aaron started testing to get on with different departments about 2 years ago.  It is a very tough field to be getting a job in now.  Most departments were only hiring 5-10 guys at a time and more than 500 would show up for the tests.  Needless to say, it can get discouraging.  If Aaron ever felt discouraged though, he didn't show it. 
When Dallas finally posted that they would be doing their test back in March (seriously, could they have drawn it out any longer?), we couldn't have been more excited.  Dallas was Aaron's dream city to have his dream job in.  He wants to be downtown, in all the action.  He went and took the test (along with 2500 other guys) and a week later, found out that he passed and qualified to move on to the physical agility portion of the test.  They took forever to call and schedule his physical, but they finally did and he of course rocked it :)  Again, much later, they called to tell him that he moved on to the polygraph test round.  He completed that and I assume did well since he was then called back for the interviews.  At this point, we knew his chances were pretty good.  Dallas had announced that they would be hiring 200 new guys.  They were only interviewing about 300.  If you remember, I wrote a blog about 2 months ago requesting prayers for 8:30 on a Friday morning.  This would be the exact time Aaron was interviewing.  We talked that afternoon and he said he thought it had gone well.  Of course, he was not told anything other than that he would be hearing from them.  Thus ensued a LONG period of waiting.  It became especially hard when he heard that others were starting to get their calls.  Finally, 2 Wednesdays ago, I got a text message from my sweet husband introducing me to Dallas' newest fire fighter!  It was one of the happiest feelings I have had. 
I was at school and told my class about it.  They were all SO excited to hear the good news too.  That Friday, their writing assignment was to write a congratulatory letter to Aaron.  We brainstormed all the things you might tell someone when something good has happened.  They did a great job and when I delivered them to Aaron, he loved them!  I even made a big poster and had all the kids sign their names to it :)  So cute!

Back to God's plan...I guess I learned my lesson on timing.  If you can just be patient, it WILL happen.  In his time :)  I wouldn't change a single thing though.  I have the happiest husband alive.  Which makes me one happy wife!

Fall

I absolutely love fall!  I am so happy it is here...kind of.  We had the most amazing weather this week.  Until this afternoon.  It was hot again.  But, I know it won't be much longer until we have some nice cool weather full time :)
To welcome in the fall weather, I had my first salted caramel mocha frappuchino at Starbucks on Sunday.  DELISH!  I also wore my new boots to work 2 days this week! 

I got them at Nordy's....of course.  Also in honor of fall/Halloween, I decorated our apartment.  This isn't much at this point, but we do have some very cute pumpkins on our dining room table and some candy corn in a glass pumpkin dish :)  I bought a few more things at Hobby Lobby last weekend.  I will put up some pics when they are ready!
And lastly, my class and I have done some very cute fall projects the last couple of weeks.  Here are a few pics of their hard work!

The scarecrow faces they made using a hanger and tissue paper.  I love these so much.  They turn out super cute!

 A pumpkin project they took home and decorated with their families.  They also wrote either a made up story about their pumpkin or what they used to decorate it.

 The sign I made to go with the pumpkins :)

 Their spiders!  I love these!  Paint and handprints for the bodies, reinforcements for the eyes.  They wrote a poem about spiders using action words and describing words we had brainstormed together.  I think they turned out awesome and the kids LOVED making them.

 We turned the class into a "bat cave"!  We read Stellaluna and the kids had to write all the characters from the story to put on their bat.

 A close up of one of the bats.

So there you have it.  The kids are keeping me on my toes this year, but I really love this group already.  They are all so sweet and fun to be around :)

Brownie Mystery

Today I had a brownie with my lunch. I left it on my plate while I went to help my students who were buying their lunch from the cafeteria. It took about 10 minutes. When I came back, a bite was missing from my brownie. Nobody would admit to taking the bite. The mystery remains unsolved.

Absentee

I apologize (to my MANY readers...ha) for being absent for so long.  I try to keep up with my blogging, but lately, things have been crazy. 
Aaron is super busy between work, paramedic class, rotations in hospitals and volunteering at the fire station.  Needless to say, our time together has been cut severly.  Last week, we were both at home only one evening.  It has been a hard adjustment for me, but I know it has been harder on Aaron.  He has pulled several all-nighters in the ER after working all day at MetLife only to go straight back into work after he finished up at the hospital.  I know all of his hard work will pay off soon though and I am so very, very proud of him :)
In other news, I found a stray Yorkie running down the street last week.  I stopped and picked him up and took him to Aaron's parents house.  They were so sweet and let him hang out in their backyard for the evening while I figured out what to do.  He was the sweetest little guy and had fun playing with Griffin and Rookie.  Unfortunately, the men, Aaron and Greg, were adamant that we could not keep him.  Sheri and I took him to the emergency vet and they kept him overnight.  He was then picked up by the pound and spent the next five days at their waiting for his owners to call looking for him.  That didn't happen, but today was the first day he was available for adoption and I was told that someone showed up minutes after opening to adopt him :)  I am so happy and I know that this is the best thing for him.  I am just so glad that this story has a happy outcome and that sweet puppy has a good home now.

Adding to the craziness, I had parent conferences these last two weeks.  They went so well this year and I really enjoyed getting to visit with my kids parents.  I had so many parents thank me and tell me how much their kids are enjoying school this year.  It was so nice to hear and really made me smile :)
Also keeping us busy on Monday nights is our co-ed soccer league.  Our team is 3-1 and I am loving playing soccer again!  It is hard for me to admit, but I am so incredibly out of shape!  After our first game, I could barely walk for a week my muscles were so sore!  I have felt much better after our other games and really haven't been sore at all :)  I had 2 goals in our first win (whooohooo) and have had several assists since.  The biggest story of all though has been how GREAT Aaron is at goalie!  He really was impressive in our first few games.  I think everyone was a bit shocked :)
Anyways, I think that caught me up to now.  Hopefully I can get back on the bandwagon and do a better job of blogging consistently. 
Oh yeah...I started a class blog too.  I am planning on using it as a writing activity for my class.  I am going to let them come up with the ideas and tell me what to write.  I am hoping this goes well...we shall see :)