clean & congrats

Today I started to move stuff in to our new house/apartment. My wonderful friends Melissa and Carey came over to help me move stuff and clean our new place. We took over two car loads of stuff and then tackled the cleaning. It wasn't too dirty, but the cabinets and windows needed to be wiped down and the bathtub needed to be cleaned. Carey did wonders on the tub with some comet and Melissa tackled the kitchen cabinets while I cleaned the windows. Katie even stopped by with her lunch. It was so much fun to show off our new place. I can't wait to have all of our things there. Tonight, Mike is graduating!!!!!! Even though he won't be quite done with classes, it will still be fun to celebrate him. I am so proud of how hard he has worked. I'm excited to see what God has for our future (but I'm secretly hoping it involves staying in Colorado Springs for a little while more.) I can't believe that Mike is actually done (almost). It still doesn't seem like we've lived here that long, but it will be 3 years this September. We're so thankful for our small group and how they have become our family.

busy month

July has been a busy month so far. Lots going on and lots of great time with friends. We signed the lease for our house tonight so now I really have to start packing. I've been procrastinating that for awhile. We also are dog sitting one of our favorite doggies Riley and Miranda and Holly are coming for a visit soon. July is just going to fly by. And then it will be time to think about school again. I'm sure I'll get excited once it's time, but right now, I am not ready to go back. On the veggie front, we made kale and black bean tacos again. They were much better because we used canned beans this time. Plus, I had them in hard shells which I liked much better. We start getting fruit this week. Lots of cherries. I realized this week that I don't think I've ever tried a real cherry. Hopefully I will like them since we're getting lots.

who knew

last week, we got some new veggies. One in particular interested me. We finally ate it tonight. It was kohlrabi. It looks like a circular potato base with big leaves coming out. We just cut it up and Mike had it on his salad, but I just ate mine with some salt on top. One of my favorite things is raw potato with salt. This tasted just like it. It's so nice and crunchy with not much taste, but would be great for dipping in things. I even tried dipping it in a little salsa, which was yummy. Another thing I did not know until today was that some kids are very emotionally attached to their particular method of multiplying. Now, for those of you who don't know, there is now the traditional method (what we learned at school), partial products (what I teach now) and this thing called lattice method, which they teach in 3rd and 4th grade. It's this weird boxy graphic organizer for multiplying and I hate it. I don't let my 5th graders use it. I'm teaching middle school math prep for summer school. We were talking about ways to multiply and I told the kids that we weren't going to use lattice because the middle school teachers don't like it. Cue crying kid screaming, "what do you mean i can't use lattice......" I sent him to the hallway where he proceded to climb under a table. After I got the rest of the kids started on their pre-test, I went to the hallway to talk. He was still crying but willing to talk and told me that he was, "going to fail middle school because he only knows lattice and I said he couldn't use it." whooops! We made a compromise where he can use it but we're going to try to learn some other ways. So it looks like it could be a long 3 weeks, considering all this happened within the 1st hour today.

pirate fun

Our friends Jennifer and Garret had a wonderful 3rd of July pirate party. It was so much fun finding costumes at Goodwill. Here's what we came up with.

camping pictures

Finally some pictures from our camping trip. It was such a great time. Sorry there are a lot of Sadie, but I tend to think she is really cute.

Beautiful Mountains

Sadie Loving the Hike Crossing the Water

Snowball Fight

Sadie Helping Pack Up Camp

obedience

Today was class #1 of obedience training for Sadie and I. She was pretty good. Not too hyper considering our walk got cut short because of the lightning. We learned sit, stand and down with hand signals. We have to work on the loose leash walking a lot. Not so good at that. She really just wanted to go see all the other doggies. I think her favorite part was when she got to go through the tunnel. She went right in the first time. I was a proud mama. We have way to many veggies still and are getting more tomorrow. Tonight for dinner we had black bean and kale tacos. Not my favorite. Pretty much, saute up some garlic and cumin in some butter. Add some kale and put a lid on the pan for 2 minutes. Then throw in some black beans and heat till warm. We added a can of rotel to spice it up a bit. Then put on tortillas with all your favorite fixings. It would have been better if our black beans weren't still crunchy. I'm actually still pretty full from the dinner.