Simplify

I am officially finished with student teaching. I am so excited, it is unbelievable! I had the most incredible experience. While I don't think it would be appropriate to say too much on a blog about my specific experiences, I can tell you that I had the most wonderful group of 23 kids to join me in my journey this past semester. I was in a 4th grade classroom and I was nervous about it at first, but I ended up just loving it! I'm not sure now whether I love Kindergarten or 4th grade better!

I have also been given the opportunity to do a long term substitute position in a 5th grade classroom at my school. A teacher is going on maternity leave for 12 weeks and I will get to sub in her class for the duration of her leave. I am really excited about this as well! Not only will it be a great experience for me before I start my first year of actually teaching in my own classroom, but it will be so fun to get to know another group of students! Not to mention, the paycheck will be a wonderful addition to our bank account. It has been so hard not contributing a paycheck for the last year! Although I'm not one of those "let's go blow all our money when we have a lot" kind of people, one thing that I have cut back on over the last couple of years when I have been finishing school and then not working is dyeing my hair!! So below is the new look I'm going for in January. I'm having to cut bangs because my lovely post-pregnancy hair loss fiasco has now caused me to have little bangs because it's finally growing out! But I've got to cut my long bangs to match the short bangs because it just looks weird right now! I'm also doing the dark red/auburn color.

So here's what I've decided after my long and difficult semester: I need to SIMPLIFY!

As most of you can tell, I really dropped the ball on my blogging. I guess my big plans for being organized and prepared in advance were just a total bust. Sorry, Adriel! I had great tips on your blog for being a working mom & a blogger, but hey I'm human. It just didn't work out like that. I was struggling just to get the dishes done day to day. Thank goodness I have the most wonderful husband!! Lewis did so much for me this past semester!

Maybe my new obsession with watching Hoarders has also contributed to this, but we are clearing out a bunch of stuff from our house this weekend (despite the recent ice storm in our area - I literally cannot get my car out of our driveway). I'm also going through my Google Reader and unsubscribing from several blogs so that I can just really simplify my life. Most of my mom blogs are staying, but a bunch of the others are getting cut. I have so missed blogging and I need to really find a way to keep it up, but I can't keep up the pace I was doing last summer while I'm teaching. I think this semester, it just seemed so overwhelming to try to even come close to that, so I just did the bare minimum.

I have so many things to tell you all over the next few days!! 

I'm going to go into more detail on the blogs I'm cutting because I realized it drew up some more philosophical ideas on my part. LOL. 

Then I have to talk about the fact that Isis is almost ONE!! 

I need to recap my blog year. 

I met some new great moms at a group my church does & I want to share! (One is even a blogger!) 

And I have a few other tidbits that are brewing in my brain since reading through my Google Reader! 

Plus I just finished the most amazing books & I need to share.

See you soon!!!