Happy Birthday Tyler Swan!

Our nephew Ty turned two on March 3rd. He came to town this weekend to celebrate with us! As you can see in the pictures, he had a Mickey Mouse party. It was so cute and a lot of fun! Happy Birthday to our favorite little guy :) We love you!

Busy Bee!

This week, I was asked to take on the head track coaching position at Muncie Central. The coach quit last Friday, and the athletic director asked if I would take it over. After talking with Jeff, I decided to say "yes." I am very excited to have even been considered for this position. I am also very nervous about the responsibilities. The girls seem to be great, and many of them are my cross country runners. My plate is pretty full, but I am trusting that this is a good time to take the opportunity. Jeff is very supportive and has told me he would make sure to help extra with Lily. Now, I just have to learn how to hurdle, long jump, and high jump before Monday :) Thank goodness my grad class is over tonight! As for training for my race, it looks like I can workout with my runners now!

ISTEP!

Dear Lord,

Please help the Longfellow students this week on state testing. We have been working EXTREMELY hard these past months. Help these children to come to school with a good attitude and ready to do their best. We deserve a year of excellence!

Amen

ISTEP officially starts tomorrow. I teach third grade and luckily we only have 2 days of testing. We are a failing school, which puts us in a really bad position. I cannot explain the amount of work my staff has done since August to "revamp" the learning system. Countless hours have gone into preparing our students for this examine. It would feel really good for the rest of the city to see what excellent staff and students we have at our school. I have a really good feeling about the days to come! If any of my readers pray out there, send up a special one for Longfellow. We would really appreciate it!!

Happy Birthday Caitlyn!

The Birthday Girl!

Callie being silly...

everybody loved the slides

forgot to post this one of ty and lily earlier...

Today is our niece Caitlyn's 2nd Birthday!! We were able to celebrate with her in Columbus, OH today at an ice cream party. Lily had a blast running around the play area and eating yummy treats. There were lots of kids to play with too! Thanks for a great day Danny, Jen, and Caitlyn. It was great to see you! :)

Blanket Making

This weekend, we headed to Dayton to do our blanket community service project. Jeff, Pat, Sarah, and I each had to make a tie knot blanket to get our free Disney World ticket. We are going there in July!! Here are some pics of our craftiness!

Jeff was a good supervisor!

the boys made camo dinosaur blankets!

finished blankets

kid tested...

Story Time!

It is so much fun to see Lily's play changing...she is becoming very imaginative! Tonight, I asked her if she wanted to read books. She picked out 4 Dr. Seuss books and Goodnight Moon. We hopped on her bed, and SHE wanted to read them to me. She would say a few words from the book that she has memorized and then say "the end." Later, I saw her bring all her stuffed animals and books to the couch. She lined up her animals by a book. She said "it's story time." Jeff and I watched as she opened the books for each animal. Sooo cute! Of course, the teacher in me is so proud that she is wanting to read.

this is Lily setting everything up for story time

here you can see her animals with open books

she is "reading" to minnie and piglet in this one...I kid you not, Jeff and I had nothing to do with any of this!

Another Fun Day!

What a nice day :) We were able to get some things done at home. Jeff relaxed with Lily in the afternoon while I ran 16 miles. Even though it was on the treadmill, it was a comfortable run. My second new pairs on running shoes (I took the other pair back after one run because they were giving me awful blisters) felt really good! Then, Lily and I headed to the Children's Museum. It was actually free day, so it was a cheap date! She loves running around there, and it gave her a chance to be out of the house. I love this age because she really in understanding and thinking about how things work. I constantly see her mind turning! We also had Pizza King for dinner. Couldn't ask for a better Saturday.

digging for dinosaur bones was her favorite part