I'm Walkin' Yes Indeed…

Yep, somehow I've become the team captain for a walking challenge at my school. The school district that I work for has developed several healthy challenges for the teachers and staff. Our latest challenge is a walking challenge. One requirement for entering this challenge is that you needed to join a team or organize a team. So I thought I would ask the team leader from the previous walking challenge if she was going to be a team leader again. She replied that she was but her team was full. (I guess she knew a slow walker if she saw one. albeit she is also the PE teacher - go figure!)

Well working at a small school is somewhat similar to living in a small town; news travels fast - and before I knew it a couple of teachers asked if they could join my team, MY TEAM I was just looking for a team to join, but then I figured why not - so this afternoon I send out an e-mail to my fellow teachers inquiring if anyone would like to joint my team and two hours later I had a team of 12. So, I'm all excited and I began making plans on my way home on ways to add steps into my day! I think I love a challenge!

Which leads me to my next thought - how about we have a family walking challenge? It would begin Monday May 11th and end June 8th (That would give us all time to get our pedometers). The would last one month and all interested parties could all put in $5.00 into a kitty that would be given to the winner at the end of the month. Each week you could e-mail me with your steps and I can keep track of the weekly winners. So family what do you think? Dad, I know you already walk and this challenge could be a real cinch for you. And, Jake I know you love a challenge. Erik, Colette, Samantha, Sarah, Anna, Uncle Mike and Uncle Bill you guys are already into fitness and could give the rest of us a run for our money. (No pun intended!) The rest of us could just use a little motivation. If you're in let me know.


OK this is off topic - here's a picture of Nana, me and Katie in Arizona, at the Desert Botanical Garden. We were enjoying a beautiful glass art exhibit by Chihuly.


Here are a couple of pictures from the exhibit - the sculptures are much more striking in person!

Things Are Looking Up!

Surprise Erik, here's another post. Kristen just got home from her Biotech Trip. She went to St. Louis and U of I to see several biotech facilities. She was gone for three days and we all missed her, but I think Katie missed her the most. According to Kristen she was constantly texting her. What will we do when Kristen goes off to college?

Katie was a big kid and came home all by herself two days and did just fine. She went to a party Friday night and I was home alone since Lee was at the Temple. It sure did seem weird to be home by myself since I'm hardly home alone. But I quickly adjusted.

I had a less stressful week this week with my little kindergartner. I began a new behavior intervention plan this week with him that it seems to be working along with changing his paraprofessional. Can't wait to see what next week with him will bring. I was only hit once this week with him, which sound bad but really is good for him. Thank goodness he's little and doesn't hurt much!#?

Happy Brithday Katie!

Well Erik, here it is. You'll have to respond so I can see how long it takes for you to check the blog. For the rest of you, yes it's been awhile since I've last posted, but Erik informed me last Friday that I don't need to add a picture each time I blog, but I could just post a few thoughts. So here it goes…

The biggest news this week is that Katie turned 12, and as of today I no longer have a child in Primary after 24 years. WOW! Yep, Katie is now in Young Women's; a Beehive, imagine that!
Life is moving on, and that is good.

Anyway, we enjoyed a Saturday celebrating Katie's birthday. Lee and I began our celebration with Katie by taking her out for a Mom and Dad lunch at Applebees, and since we mentioned that it was her Birthday, they provided her with a complementary ice cream sundae. YUM! Then Katie and I were off to Target to purchase a new bedspread for her bed (Happy Birthday) and then to Meijer to purchase food for her party. We made one more stop before we went home however, to purchase an Oreo Ice Cream Cake at Dairy Queen.

That evening with our family room floor covered with balloons, and the kitchen island all decked out we had a Fondue Party for several of Katie's closest friends. We had three different fondue pots ready for the event; oil, cheese and of course chocolate!

All and all Katie felt that it was a wonderful day - what more can you ask for?

This upcoming week Kristen will be traveling to U of I to attend a BioTech field trip with her Genetics class. She'll be gone from Wednesday until Saturday. We will miss her.

BEACH

We went to the beach on Labor Day. It felt a little more like a parking lot. There was a lot of traffic (cars, horses and scooters) driving on the beach. It was crazy. We both had never seen a car drive on the beach before. We even did it. 
One of the 2 whole sand dollars we found. Erik got really excited every time we found a large chunk of one. After about 1/2 hour of finding many pieces we found this whole one. We walked a long the beach for about 1 mile or so. The water was cold. But we still stuck our feet in it. 
It was beautiful. It was sunny and around 65 degrees. It took us about 2 1/2 hours to get there. We packed a picnic and ate that on the beach. We also played card games, which Erik thought was silly, but I liked it. 
There we are at the beach. This is not fake. 
Our shadows still exist! This is proof that there is sun in Washington. We even got sun burnt on our legs, because we rolled up our pants. All and all it was a great day. Goodbye.

New Specs

Erik, the eye glass lover, has new glasses! I thought I would show them off to you all. Here he is being very enthusiastic about his new glasses. Notice that they are not rimmed glasses!

He has never had glasses that go straight back, so it is a little weird for him. He likes them and I think they look great on him.

PS. I wanted to thank Nana and Dada for their birthday card. Sorry I am so slow. Also thanks Uncle Bill for the birthday card that got to me exactly a month before my birthday :)

New Bicycle!

This summer I had been saving up my money in order to buy a better transportation then what I currently have.  I was debating between a scooter or a road bicycle.  While I was thinking this through a scooter just didn't make that much sense.  If when I get to the student teaching part of my major I will need to get to the school that they will assign me to.  Well there is a possibility, a good possibility that where they assign me will be out of scooter range.  This to me made a scooter impractical.  So I decided and went ahead with buying a road bike.  I tried out several of them and finally settled on one.  I bought a 2008 Raleigh Grand Sport.  It is a gorgeous bicycle and one that will last me several years.  In other news I'm doing good.  A few weeks ago I went into the doctor's office and told them that I was not feeling as well as I should.  He ordered me to have a CT scan.  After waiting far too long, I finally got the results back.  It turns out that I had a fair amount of inflammation in my ileum (the ileum is where the small intestine meets the large intestine).  Luck for me I did not have anything which would cause me to have to undergo surgery.  The doctors once getting my results from my CT decided to double my dose of remicade (it used to be 5mg per Kg).  I went to the doctor's office again today and well I still am not feeling my best.  The doctor said the remicade is not a failure yet but has put me on Entocort (it's a steroid) to try and help me until the remicade can kick into full effect.  Anyways I thought people might be interested in knowing what has been going on in my life. 

Update from Aurora.

Hello Family,
Colette I love your posts! Thanks so much for keeping us all up to date with you and Erik, it makes the miles between us much closer, and … you motivate me to post a blog too!

I can't believe that summer is almost over for me. I report back to school Monday, August 18th. I've had a busy summer: I subbed for summer school for two weeks, spend a week taking a grad class, attended several one day trainings with my school district, enjoyed reading a lot of wonderful books, and sewed a bit. The girls and I have also enjoyed visiting the pool and volunteering at Feed Me Starving Children. But as I look towards the last two weeks of freedom I have mixed feelings as I'm excited about returning to the classroom, but there is always so much more I perhaps should have done, but haven't and probably won't. I guess that's life.

News with Kristen is that she is now employed at Loehman's. It's a store like TJ Max, but it's merchandise is more upscale. She has been training in Oak Brook for the past two weeks, which has been hard, but since it's on Lee's way to work he has been driving her and bringing her home. They are opening a new store about 1/2 mile from our home and thankfully has begun working there this week as they are loading the store for the grand opening this weekend.

We have a couple of pictures to share with everyone. First, we want to share Katie's first cucumber! She has planted several container gardens on our patio and this beauty was her first harvest. We ate it that night and it was delicious.


Some of her other plants include cherry tomatoes, tomatoes, and zucchini. We have enjoyed several zucchini and she also makes a mean zucchini bread with her delicious zucchini's. YUM!


One day last week Katie and I went to Color Me Mine where she enjoyed painting this lovely trivet.

Here's the final product.

Well hope all is well with the rest of the family. If you need help blogging, just let me know.

Love,
Joey