Love

With February being the month we celebrate Valentine's day, this scripture comes to mind...

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

~1 Corinthians 13:13

The month began with Reeve trying out her first cheer clinic.  She is our child who is simply low key.  She enjoys most anything she does-gets somewhat excited-but not one to be super ecstatic about it all:)  So she said she had fun and was definitely tired at the end of the day!

Reeve with her great friend Adeline!  These pictures melt my heart:)

Flag football has begun!  I keep wondering at what age do the tears commence:)  Joden is so competitive, therefore his emotions are very visible when he plays any sport!

 Here are the emotions!

 Still showing the emotions...

My students spent many days reading a book called The Westing Game. In order to mix up how we read we tried Inside/Outside circle so I snapped a picture of it:)

Due to parent teacher conferences we receive a comp day, so the kids and I enjoyed some Big Apple Bagel and Uno.  It felt so good due to the chaos of basketball season!

At Lincoln Southeast we donated money towards breast cancer awareness and wore these Hoops for a Cure shirts.

The boys just enjoying a Saturday together<3

 Valentine's from the boys to the girls:)

Mike goes through a period in the winter where he falls asleep really early at night and this was of course one of them.  I thought it was a moment to capture with how he got all of his pillows strategically placed:)

We had a great assembly at Barr, which focused on being kind to others. Parents of a child from Ralston spoke about their son taking his life due to social media/bullying.  As a parent of young children it is a stage as a parent that I feel anxious about for sure!  Glad this family is choosing to create awareness about it.

Senior night for our lone senior Lindsey Norvell!  She is a phenomenal basketball player and I for sure enjoyed having the opportunity to coach her.  We will definitely miss her next year!

Cousins came to visit!  These two get along so well:)

Snuggles!

Enjoyed going out, even just for a little bit, to McKinney's with family!

Gearing up for our district game!

One of the biggest challenges I have encountered moving to the middle school world this year is just basic respect for adults and responsibility of their work/learning.  It is an area that I definitely hope to become better at teaching the kids as the years go on.  This letter from my sub, although not a great one, helped reassure for me that I am not crazy:(  

Gates Elementary skate night at Skate Island!  

District game.  Love coaching these girls and building relationships with them!

Joden ended up having a football game on the same night as dinner group.  He really wanted these girls to join him and they did:)  He was so excited!

First Saturday off after basketball season we headed down to McKinney's to of course enjoy some beer and spend time playing card games with the kids.  We had a great time:) 

Got an itch to paint a few walls in the house in order to go back to the basics.  We splurged a tad and hired out someone to paint them.  It was amazing!  I left for work and they were done by early afternoon.  It was so worth it!  Love how they turned out!  

January 2017

A new year always brings forth excitement for what might come, but also fear of the unknown.  Therefore it is a must to keep my heart and mind focused on my faith....
"Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness." — Lamentations 3:22-23

I LOVE this girl!  She wanted to be like mom with a towel on her head:)

Parent visitation night for dance:)

Loved this picture Reeve brought home from school.  It was about a gift my parents gave her for Christmas and the drawing is very similar to what it actually looks like!  It is so amazing how they progress in kindergarten.

Basketball with mom!

Hung out with these two one night and they were pretty boring--they hunted all day and wore themselves out:)

A gift from my parents to Joden for Christmas-a card holder!

Trying to engage my students as they learn about conflict!

Saturday morning coffee and some time with the Lord; a great way to start out my day!

Every so often we try to do dinner group without children.  This time we went to the Odyssey in Hastings, which is wonderful!  It was a great night had by all for sure:)  Love this fun group of people!

This is what we do on ice days!  

Our coaching staff is full of kids so when there is no school due to ice and we have practice they all come to the gym with us:)

Painting, cards, popcorn, board games, and wine cork towers were just a few of our activities when we had two days off of school due to ice!

This is my life from November to March!  Although it sure is crazy I LOVE it:)

We were able to go to Kearney to watch my nieces swim meet so we go to hang out with grandpa!

Love all the snuggles on a lazy Saturday night!

Being back in the classroom this year has of course brought back some late nights of grading papers, therefore occasionally I drink some wine just to get myself excited about grading papers :)

As if everything is not busy enough we threw in pulling 4 of Joden's teeth in January!  He has such a crowded mouth and when permanent teeth would start to grow in they would get pushed around by teeth that still needed to fall out.  I have a feeling braces are in our future!

It is amazing how long his teeth were!  By the way he did great:)

Team dinner at Coach Michel's house.  We had a lot of girls in one area:)

Sure do care a lot about every single one of these girls!!  Very thankful to have the privilege of coaching them:)

Upside down braid!  I love trying different things with Reeve's hair!

Love taking the kids up to my classroom with me!  They sure love to pretend to be teachers and it melts my heart:)

Again always trying to engage my students!  This is them partner reading our novel using a structure called Inside/Outside circle.  

Another thing to make life crazy is that I led Little Dribblers this winter.  We only did it 6 different Mondays and it is truly something I love doing!  The elementary students are fun to work with and I love knowing we are working with them on dribbling prior to being immersed into the game at a young age.  

This was a picture of our crew on the last night!

Last picture of January is our freshman crew!  They wrapped up their season 10-0 and we are all so proud of their hard work.  Looking forward to see how they progress in the years to come!