summer is flying by!

Hi everyone,

Well, I made it through the end of the year. It all went smoothly and I am glad to be finished. I won't go back to the building until July to do a little bit of work in my classroom and rearrange some things. Plus, my friend Katie is going to make me some new curtains, so I have to go and measure so we know how much material to buy.

I am in the midst of training for my next triathlon. I am competing in one on August 2nd and then the long one is on Labor Day. The training is going well and we are in the midst of trying to find me a bike. We have a couple of options, but one of them is on the internet and I'm kind of scared to buy something that expensive over the internet where I can't touch it and ride it.

I was gone all last week in Oklahoma visiting family and Jason had the house completely cleaned for me when I got home late Friday. He is the best!

My summer got off to a busy start and the trip to Oklahoma was a little scattered. We lost a treasured member of our family on June 15th. My grandma passed away peacefully with one of her daughters by her side. She lived a long life and passed along so much wisdom and knowledge to those of us who are following in her wake.

The minister at the funeral talked a lot about my grandma and mentioned a lot of memories both from her children and grandchildren. The minister mentioned one of his favorite memories of my grandma and it is from that memory that I think I've figured out where I got my passion for children. I didn't know that about my grandma and it made me feel a new connection to her even though she is not with us anymore. My grandma used to teach a Sunday school class at the church where this minister preached and she taught the class for years. At one point this minister decided that all of his teacher's needed a break and that he would give my grandma her break first because she had been such a faithful teacher for so long. When he went to her classroom to tell her he just knew he was going to get a pat on the back because he was about to make her so happy. So, he delivered the great news and was so surprised when he was greeted with silence and a quiet tear running down my grandma's cheek. When he asked her what was wrong she said 'Don't you want me to teach the kids anymore?' and he said 'Of course, we are just trying to give everyone a break.' She then told him that she didn't want a break, she was there to teach the children about Jesus. In the midst of that story, the minister used the word passion several times and it made me realize that my grandma and I share a passion for children and teaching with excellence. It made me so proud! We will miss her, but she will not be forgotten simply because she taught us all so much and it will always be passed down from generation to generation. I thought my mom put it so simply, but yet said it all when she wrote the following:

"Her strength came from the Lord, as her open Bible on the kitchen counter reminded us. her prayers were never ending.

Now we know how she raised eight kids without raising her voice.

If you were privileged to know Mom, you were blessed.

She was a living Bible."

Our friends from Nebraska left us sooner than we expected and they are missed. It is hard to have friends come and go, especially friends like these that you don't find everyday. I don't think its fully hit that they have moved, but we did drive by their old apartment complex today and it was sad to think that they weren't there anymore. So strange...this is the part of being an adult that is really hard. The pictures are of our group of friends at our last couple of dinners together. I am having to get better at Facebook so I can keep in touch a little better. The older I get the more I realize how precious friends are.