Job Prospects

I wrote earlier about having an interview with the local school board last week. They called me and rescheduled the interview for April 15th in the afternoon. So the suspense will have to keep building on that. This past weekend I took the last teacher certification exam I need to take. I won't know how I did til April 28th. I hope I did well enough to pass but I really don't know. I am not very confident because I am not a great test taker usually. So we'll see how that turns out.

Today is exciting because I just got a job lead from Aidan's mom. I thought Aidan's mom hated me, but I guess she likes me enough to send me a good job lead. There is a community programs coordinator position open at the local arts council. So I emailed them and attached my resume. Hopefully I will hear back from them. I would rather be in a classroom but if that doesn't happen then this job would be really great for me too. And I think I would really enjoy it because I love doing art outreach. So we'll see about that.

I am pretty excited to have both these job prospects right now. I hope one of them works out!

And if you are in Indy then you might be counting down already. For those that aren't in Indy, I am leaving in 3 short days to go to Indianapolis and visit TwinBro and my bestest friends Shrimp Run, Off Gas, Cara and Co, Kara and Co, and Joanna and Co. I am sooo excited!!!!!

Evie spins and falls on a ball

Sliding Time

Dancing!

Bye Gramper

This weekend we went to Blairsville, GA to send Gramper off to hike the entire Appalachian Trail in the next 6 months. We went swimming at the hotel and we went out to eat yesterday. This morning we drove to the trail and said our goodbyes. I am so excited for my Dad but I am also sad that he'll be gone for so long. He will take a break when he is halfway done and come home for a week, that will be so great! So here are pics from this weekend.










Evelyn really loved running around the hotel room with a blanket wrapped around her like a toga. It was really cute!

Good Morning!

New Blogs

Hey everyone, how are you? Are you looking for some new kick ass blogs to read? Wanting more info about Gramper, BigBro, DocRom?

Look no further than my links section to satisfy your search.

Please check out their blogs, they are super cool!! All three of them are doing extraordinary things. Gramper is hiking the entire Appalachian Trail. BigBro and DocRom are documenting their amazing adventures living in Okinawa, Japan. You can't get cooler people than them!!

=)

Trains, Planes, and Automobiles

Okay, not so much the train part but definitely the planes and automobiles. I recently purchased plane tickets for myself to see my friends in Indianapolis and to visit my bestest friend Jen in Hawaii!! That's right folks, I am leaving on a jet plane all by myself to have some much needed friend fun!

I go to Indy the first week of April and I will be in Hawaii the last week of July. To say I am excited is an understatement! I am absolutely thrilled to see my friends! And especially excited to go to Hawaii and get some beach time. I haven't been to the beach in 4 years!! That is a crime! I really love the beach, but Ben is not a fan so we never go. But that is going to change come July 25th!! YAY!!

Also coming up is our little family's much anticipated and needed trip to New Jersey to see Mimi and Grandpop and Oma and cousins and uncles. We are really excited! We haven't bought tickets for that trip because we are waiting for the dates when Ben will be done with school. We will probably be there in late May.

Oh and I am driving up to North Caroline for Mother's Day to visit with Evie's Nana. That will be a very fun trip for all of us. Evie hasn't seen her Nana since she was 1 day old. This is a much anticipated trip as well.

So all in all we are a family on the move. =)

p.s. Evie saw her pediatrician today and he said he isn't worried about her speech at this point. He offered to give us a referral to a speech therapist anyway. I told him I wanted to think about it and talk with Ben. I am leaning toward getting the referral even though I don't think she really "needs" it. I think it will help her and not hurt her and we can learn a lot about her and speech in general. We'll see...

I know, I know...

I say it all the time and I talk about it all the time on this blog but...

Damn! This kid is freaking GORGEOUS!!!

Interview and more!

I landed myself an interview with the Board of Education that hosted the job fair I attended. Yay!! This is the first step in a 2 step process. Once I interview with the board and they (hopefully) approve me then the principals at the schools can interview me and (hopefully) offer me jobs. The interview is Mar. 26th at 1030AM. I am so happy!! =) Thank you all for your very sweet and encouraging comments, they mean so much to me right now!!

In other news Evie has an appointment next Tuesday with her pediatrician to start the evaluation process for a possible speech delay. She only has 3 words that she says consistently right now. They are: No, Momma, and Bye Bye. She is getting more sounds everyday but not really talking as much as I think she should. Her signing is going really really well! She signs 15 words or more all the time. And she is developing normally or above average in every other way. So I just want to get her checked out to make sure there isn't something we are missing or something we can be doing to help her along. My fear is that she won't be able to talk when she starts 2 yr old preschool in the Fall. I don't want her to be signing and not getting any help when she needs it because no one knows what she's saying. I think I am just being an overly protective Mom but I don't care. It won't hurt her at all to be evaluated.

Also, I came through my midterms with flying colors. I got a 98 and a 99 on the tests I took. Yay! And I just got loan money to cover what I paid for school this semester and to cover me for my summer classes. So that is nice.

Couples therapy is seriously hard work and painful on top of that. But it is really good for us. We are both learning a lot and making great progress on many aspects of our relationship.

Ohh and I joined the local gym for free because I am a military wife. It is soo nice! I love getting back into shape and Evie loves going to the gym daycare while I work out. It's a win win for both of us =) And I am starting belly dancing classes on Thursday. I am really excited about that!

Evie Loves to Cook!

Job Fair

I went to a job fair for the a local Board of Education this weekend. I talked to 24 different schools about my qualifications and my hopes for teaching in the Fall. I got 3 principals that offered me interviews and probably 3 more that want me to call them about an interview. So I am super excited and anxious about what my actual job prospects will be for the Fall. I was very nervous the day before the fair and I felt very insecure about my ability to impress anybody. But the night before I got my self physched up and I felt great the morning of the fair and I think I did a great job at selling myself. I did pull out some tricks to dazzle the schools. I put a picture of myself on my resume. I know, most of you are thinking that is resume suicide but many schools commented on how smart that was and how impressed they were with that idea. I figured that these people were going to see upwards of 100 applicants and it would be very hard to remember which was which. By putting my picture on my resume (hopefully) they will remember me right away. So we'll see! Interviews won't be scheduled for another 3-6 weeks. In the meantime I am sending thank you notes to the schools that I particularly liked and that seemed to like me. Oh yeah, I got some tricks up my sleeve ;)


Here's the pic I put on my resume, though it was cropped down more than this.


p.s. I have some adorable photos of Evie helping Ben cook jambalaya this weekend. I promise I will post them in the next few days.

From the Archives - Nov. 16, 2006

IQ Test Score

I am taking a class about special education. I didn't know this before but in order to be classified into special ed you have to have a low IQ score in most cases. So I thought I would take an IQ test and find out where I fall. Now the interesting thing about IQ tests is that many people believe they are biased toward white middle class Americans. So, if the test is biased in that way then how do you think low income black kids do? How about children of immigrants? You see where this is going? There is a disproportionate number of non-white kids getting classified into special ed. One might say, "Well that's okay, they'll get better help and be smarter in the long run because they have extra help." But the statistics don't agree with that. Forty percent of special ed students drop out of school. So we are fueling the poverty cycle by misclassifying non white students into special education. Why is special ed placement such a large predictor of career/life success? Because being in special ed is stigmatized and because the curriculum and expectations are much lower than that of the general student population. The whole system is broken. It is fixable, it is very fixable and people that are much smarter than me are advocating for change in the system. Hopefully it will come sooner rather than later.

So I am a white middle class suburban raised person. My IQ score is 116. I am considered above average intelligence, by 3 percentage points, so just barely. What is your IQ? What do you think about this debate?

Evie Speaks!

Missed but not forgotten

I had a miscarriage last weekend. It is very sad. We are sad. But it is what it is. This time wasn't right for the baby to come. We'll try again some day and hopefully that will be the right time for all of us.

Because I won't be taking care of a newborn in the Fall I have started applying for full time teaching positions in the surrounding counties. I am hoping to get a job teaching kindergarten or pre-k. I am nervous and excited about having my own classroom so soon. Having the experience will be great for me and a welcome distraction from what should have been in the Fall. Also having the extra income will help us a lot. We will be (hopefully) buying land adjacent to my parent's farm in the next few months. With the added income we will be able to start building our house sooner and we will be able to go to Japan to visit BigBro and DocRom. And I will be able to visit my best friend Jen in Hawaii.

So with this sad news comes some hope and new opportunities. Life is so unpredictable sometimes. But I still think everything happens for a reason.

Can't resist the cute...

Happy 4 Year Wedding Anniversary!

It's been a wonderful, crazy, hard 4 years. I am so glad to be married to Ben. Here's to a lifetime of memories and fun! This is a picture of us the night before our ring ceremony. We got married at the justice of the peace and then had a ring ceremony at my parent's 100+ yr old victorian house. We had almost all of our family and close friends at the ceremony. It was a wild, crazy, fun time. =)

Evie's First Movie

Thanks to Mimi and Grandpop, Evie, Ben and I went to the movies this weekend. It was quite an adventure to Evelyn. She loved all the lights and colorful games and posters at the movie theatre. We went to see the Veggie Tales movie (not good!). But we didn't make it very far into the movie before Evelyn got restless. Her favorite part of the whole thing was the previews, she LOVED the previews! I still enjoyed myself because I got a cinnabun-pretzel with icing, it was GOOD!! Thank you Mimi and Grandpop! Overall we felt like we had a good experience. But we won't be trying to take Evie to a movie again until she is older.

Game Night

We had our Game Night this weekend and it was a big hit! We will be hosting another one in 2 weeks if all goes according to plan =)

Evie and our friend's daughter had big fun playing together. This was thier first time really playing together. They got along great!