Summer always keeps us busy and this summer has been no exception. Mark finished student teaching the end of April. My spring semester for school was done at the same time. Mark then completed his last course and finished his Master's in Education in June!!!!
I survived 19 credits this May and June. Summer school is quite the beast. I attended classes from 8-5 Monday-Thursday and some Fridays. I got up at 5:30AM and was busy every minute until about 10PM for those 2 months. It was insane!!! Nonetheless, because Mark is awesome, Maya is a trooper, and there is childcare on campus, I did it!
In June, Mark was offered a position to teach Kindergarten in Laurel next fall! He is very excited to be working in the Laurel School District and thrilled to have a job in such a challenging year for openings in education.
After we completed school for the summer, we celebrated the fourth of July in Laurel and then hit the road. We have a pop-up camper and were able to take our time driving out to Wisconsin. We camped in South Dakota, visited my grandfather in Iowa, stayed with my Aunt Karilyn and Uncle Bruce in Prairie du Chien, visited some of our friends in Stoughton and Madison, and finally ended up at Mark's Dad's home for a week of fun and a wedding in Chicago! Phew! We drove by our old house in Stoughton and it looks almost exactly the same! Someone needs to paint that poor old house! Maya did awesome for the trip and slept very well considering all the changes! We also have the movie "Curious George 2" close to memorized. Thank goodness for portable DVD players!! We returned home through Minnesota and North Dakota after 2 weeks of travel.
Mark is now preparing his classroom for the year and getting his mind wrapped around Kindergarten (it is quite the shift from the fifth grade class he student taught in) He will be excellent!
Meanwhile, Maya is considering taking our word about how awesome using the toilet is and I'm sure one day will prefer it to hiding behind the sofa. She also continues to be an AVID reader. Mark recently purchased her a special reading pillow for a corner in her room and it is her favorite thing. She sits there and reads "The Cat in the Hat" and "Curious George" and it is so precious. She can "read" the books we've read over and over with her. If she discovers a book she has yet to hear one of us read to her she shouts, "I don't know this one yet!" She loves to use her Leapfrog Tag reader to read "Fancy Nancy" and is a very big fan of Angelina Ballerina.
We have seen a great deal of change over the last couple of years as we have had a child, shifted locations, career paths, and finances. We are starting to see some of the results of our hard work and it is wonderful. Mark is so ready to be in the classroom full time this school year and I am grateful that I have received grants and scholarships to cover my last year of college. Here's to a new school year and, something I love, new school supplies! Wahoo!
