lilacs

I love springtime in Minnesota.  I love when our backyard (and our neighbor's backyard) is full of sweet-smelling, fluffy, purple lilacs.  I love my annual 'lilacs' photo session with my girls.  I love watching Ella and Zoe fly through the air and laughing while they try different jumps, with big bunches of purple and violet in the background.  And even though this post is way overdue (our lilacs bloom for a short time in May), and our spring weather was mostly cold and rainy -- we did enjoy a few sunny and beautiful days too, and I love how these photos turned out!!

I also love how at the very end, when the girls were done jumping and having their pictures taken, they both gave me the same expression when I asked for one more smile ......

I got a job!!

And I'm pretty sure it's because this girl ....

.... made this for me, for 'good luck' while interviewing.  It's a monkey in a boat, with tissue smoke coming out of the boat's smokestack.

And this girl ....

.... made this for me.  It's 'modern art' and the heart in the middle is for love : )

Coming off leave and finding a teaching position was more time-consuming and stressful than I thought it was going to be.  Even though I was guaranteed a job I could have been placed at any school, in any grade-level that I was licensed to teach (my license is Kindergarten-6th grade), so I wanted to interview and hopefully be chosen by a principal because he/she wanted me at their school, rather than be placed.  It was also very disappointing to learn being on a leave of absence from a school district (which is all about kids and families) would put me at such a deficit.  But after learning A LOT about my district (which is more political than I thought) and hearing things like:  'it was a really hard decision, you interviewed very well', 'we went back and forth between you and the one we offered the job to', 'if we had a kindergarten opening it would have been yours', I was offered three positions in one day, one right as I was leaving for another interview.  Crazy timing.

After talking with Tom quite a bit and feeling more nervous than I thought I would trying to make sure I accepted the 'right' job (at that point we narrowed it down to two), I made the call to my new principal and accepted her position.

So this Fall, when the girls are spending their days in All-Day Kindergarten at Falcon Heights Elementary School, I will be teaching All-Day Kindergarten at the St. Paul Music Academy.  I am really excited to head back to Kindergarten, the school I'll be at is quite close to our house, one of my funniest friends teaches there, I really like the principal a lot, I am so grateful I have a job --- and I'm DONE with the interview process!!

I did have my breakdown moment though.  Last Friday night it all hit me.  Not only will my time with Zoe and Ella change a lot (and I have huge up and down feelings on all of that, even though I know they are at the age where they're supposed to experience more independence from me and the timing is good on all of that, it still makes my heart hurt), but now that I have a job I'm actually going to have to pull it all together and teach again : )  Seriously though, teaching was challenging enough before I had the girls and so much has changed in my district over the past years, so I needed time to process.  But poor Tom, he didn't know what to say to me.  He tried four different times until he finally told me he thought I just needed to cry and get some good sleep.  He was right : )

So now the list-making has begun.  Still lots of nerves and apprehension at times, but also a lot of excitement.  I truly love teaching and am excited for the new adventures that are in store for our family.

Five years out --- half a decade, and now I have my own Kindergarten classroom again : )

And my girls.  Being home with Ella and Zoe has been such a gift, I can't even begin to find all the right words to describe my feelings about the past 5+ years.  But I know when I'm 85 years old these past years will be the best in my life in many, many ways.  Honestly though, I didn't think time would really fly by so quickly .....

Father's Day 2011 ....

.... was perfect in almost every way.

Zoe and Ella made the neatest art for their dad (even though they wouldn't smile for me) ....

 Ella made a fancy hat using our newspaper bag and blue painters tape.  We all thought it was pretty funny (though Zoe wasn't too sure about it) ....

We went to the Minneapolis Institute of Art for the afternoon.

The girls saw their first naked man sculptures, and their reactions were very funny ....

They thought Cinderella would love this dress .....

..... and they totally got into seeing different pieces of art displayed on the walls .....

They thought the wiener dog out for a walk in this painting was fun (I always get a kick out of wiener dogs) ....

.... and they couldn't believe how HUGE this painting was ....

After the museum we went to the Children's Theatre to see the last performance of the play 'Annie', which was absolutely FABULOUS.  And since then the girls have been busy putting on their own versions of the play, were Zoe is 'Emily' (instead of Annie) with a pet dwarf hamster named Rosa, and Ella is 'Emma' with sometimes a cat named Nermal (when she goes a long with what Zoe wants her to do), or a dog just like Sandy in the real play.

I love it --- they let me sing all the songs and don't say 'moooooom', like they usually do when I sing : )

The only not-so-perfect part of our Father's Day 2011?  I didn't get a photo of Tom and the girls!!!!  Good grief!

trampoline

A few weeks ago Tom and I put together the girls' 5th Birthday gift --- their trampoline!!  Overall the set-up went well but there were moments I couldn't believe how differently we go about doing a project.  Tom can look at things and pretty much know where they should go.  I prefer to read every single word of the directions at least a few times, and work in a sequential order.  That combo made for some interesting moments : )  Afterwards I told Tom I didn't think we should ever be on the Amazing Race together, and he told me he actually thought the opposite, that we would be a great team and do really well on the show!  That really made me laugh .....  it's so funny to me how at times we can look at the same situation so differently.

Despite our different approaches and our different perspectives we did get the trampoline put together and the girls were SOOOOOO  excited to jump on it.  Then Tom told them they would have to wear their bike helmets while jumping.  Oh yes.

Now this is another example of how Tom and I can look at things differently.  I LOVE how thoughtful Tom is and especially how protective he is of his daughters.  He loves them so much and even the thought of them getting hurt is too much for him.  But I really didn't think Zoe and Ella needed to wear helmets inside of their enclosed trampoline.  He admitted it might be an extra cautious safety precaution but he didn't care, he had heard too many stories of kids getting hurt on trampolines and he figured the helmets would at least protect them from bumping their heads hard if they jumped into each other.  I felt very strongly about establishing a few firm safety rules too (only three or four kids jumping at a time depending on their sizes, no flips in the air or tricks where kids could land on their necks, no jumping without supervision, those sorts of things), but I wasn't feeling the need for helmets.  I did support Tom's decision though, and let him know he was the one who would tell the girls.  We also agreed they only had to wear their helmets if they were jumping together, and once we felt comfortable they wouldn't need to wear them together either.

Their reaction to the helmet news was priceless.  Both of their eyes got really big, they looked at Tom, then at me, and then back at Tom.  Then Ella told him 'but we don't wear helmets when we jump on Mia's trampoline' (I had a feeling this sort of connection would come up .... it did make me smile).  Tom held his ground, explained his reasons and told them to show how cool he thinks it is to wear a helmet while jumping on the trampoline he would jump first (partially to make sure it didn't fall apart), and he would wear a helmet too.

Since Tom doesn't own his own helmet (I know .....), he wore one of the girls', and after he finished some beer (love Ella's expression, she couldn't believe the whole helmet rule or that her dad was wearing her pink bike helmet with a big flower on the front) ....

.... the girls watched with anticipation ....

.... as their dad took the first jumps on our new trampoline!!

Zoe got a big kick out of it all.  I think to a while for Ella not to be distracted by her dad wearing her helmet ....

When it was finally their turn they had a BLAST!!!!

And it didn't take long before Tom realized they could indeed jump safely without wearing their sweaty little bike helmets ....

And jump they did, and have been --- multiple times a day, every single day, except when it's been stormy.  No head bumps yet but lots of smiles and laughter!!