Happy Valentine's Day

Love and Cherish the ones you are with...not just today but everyday! I love Love!

I'm Going to be a Ranger!

It is Saturday. On Wednesday, I was so incredibly nervous because I had my first job interview on Thursday; and English position at Redwood High School. Getting little sleep the night before, the day of the interview had finally arrived and needless to say I was very anxious. At about 2:30 I walked into the Redwood front office and then 2:40 came and I was called in for the interview. I answered the questions that were asked but not as well as I had anticipated myself answering them. Fifteen minutes later the interview was over and I did not feel wonderful about it; I felt like it could have gone either way. Friday afternoon I got a phone call (well a call from Calvin telling me there was a message on our home answering machine telling me to call the HR department at the district office). Could it be that I actually got the job?....

..................................................................

....................................................

.....................................

YES!! I got the job! Yesterday, Friday, I was so excited that I did not really have time to let it sink in. Today is Saturday (it all happened so quickly) and it has finally settled in that beginning in August I am going to be an actual teacher, with an actual classroom, and actual students who will depend on me to teach them what they need to know! Needless to say I am VERY excited! And, I will be working at the same school as Calvin, which I feel like is just an added bonus.

I am so thankful and so blessed by God, the one who made this all possible. I believe that he has a wonderful plan for me at this school and I am very anxious to discover what it is. Thank you to everyone who sent prayers up for me, I believe that everyone of them was answered!

I can now throughly enjoy my summer without having to worry about what I am going to be doing career wise next year. Now, I just get to plan, plan, plan! Yay!

Peace, love, and blessings!

Kelli

An Update...

coming soon...

Sorry for the teaser, but I am getting tired of looking at my last blog every time I log in, but alas I don't have time to update right now...so keep a look out for something new!

Peace, love, and blessings!

A little holiday love...

As the holidays come around there is one movie that is on the MUST watch at least once (maybe twice, or more) list, and that movie is Love Actually. Since I have been incredibly busy so far, I have not had time to watch it yet, but it is calling my name for this weekend! So for now, I will share one of my favorite scenes from the movie!

Remember this Christmas season that "love actually is all around."

Peace, love, and many blessings!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

...and this year we will actually have some free time around Christmas! We are very excited for this first Christmas as teachers (well, Calvin is a teacher now, and Kelli's almost there- but at least has the schedule!)

There are many things that we are looking forward to this holiday season. As life goes on, our families have gotten more spread out, so Christmas is an exciting time to come together with the various branches of our family tree. Yesterday we spent the day decorating and trimming our Christmas tree. Decorating really entails our porch and living room- hopefully next Christmas we'll be in a house and have more space to decorate!

Meanwhile, life is still crazy as we are approaching the Christmas break- Calvin is scrambling to get his students ready for finals and to catch up on grading, and Kelli is trying to get the most out of her last two weeks of student teaching while also trying to finish two classes. The last few Fridays have really been full of high school teacher fun- Redwood (Calvin's school) made it into the playoffs for the first time in years, so we had fun following the team for a few weeks with friends. Sadly, they lost in the third round on Friday against Frontier in Bakersfield.

Long story short, pray for us as we get through the next couple weeks, and then we'll breathe a deep sigh of relief when break comes!

Peace, love, and blessings to all!

It's a beautiful life...

I love life...We love life...our life is fantastic! When I think about the life we (Calvin and I) have and the lives of so many people in the world today, I am truly thankful and know that we are surely blessed. We are happy, and healthy, we have jobs, food on the table, great family and friends, and a God who loves us no matter what!

As the holidays come around this year, don't get wrapped up on the small, meaningless things that will be forgotten soon after they happen. Rather, focus on the bigger picture, what is most important, life, family, and our Creator who made it all possible!

A friend has recently reminded me, through numerous posts in her blog, to count my blessings. I have so many things that have blessed my life and are blessing my life at the moment, and for those things I am thankful. And as my friend has so graciously reminded me, I too, am going to remind you (for those of you who still actually read this thing), count your blessings!

Peace, Love and many Blessings to all!

Life as of now...

So I realized it has been quite a while since our last update about Calvin's new job. In case you were wondering, no, we have not fallen off the face of the earth, we have just become extremely busy people.

Rather than update you all on what has happened over the past 2 months I figure I'll just get you up to date on the now.

I (Kelli) have been student teaching for the last 7 weeks at Wilson Middle School in Exeter, Ca. I am in a 7th grade classroom and have been blessed with a fabulous master teacher! I never thought I would even want to think about teaching Jr. High but since I have been in this class, my views have changed. I love my students, well most of them, and would not mind it if I ended up teaching 7th grade--there I said it. Another thing I love about the school I am at is that it is the same school my mom has taught at for 35 years! It is really fun getting to see her everyday!--we even get to have lunch together every afternoon! I have about 3 weeks left for this assignment and then I will move on to do 8-9 weeks in high school!

As for Calvin, he is LOVING his new job. He has really good classes and has been blessed with a fantastic support staff from other faculty members as well as the administration. He is teaching 3 periods of Spanish One in addition to 2 periods of French Two--both of the languages he studied in college. When we first moved to Visalia he was convinced that he only wanted to stay no longer than five years--but now that he has become apart of the Ranger staff I don't think I will have too hard of a time convincing him to stay ;).

In regards to life outside of school, I am still taking classes, well one class for the time being, at Chapman for the credential program. It is really nice that it is only once a week because that means that Calvin and I get to spend MUCH more time together. When he was working at Costco we never got to just relax at home together, but now that he doesn't work there anymore there is more time for quality time---I love it, now it actually feels like we are married!

Last night Calvin and I went to the Tulare County Fair. We had such a fun time as it was the first time we have been to a fair together. First we started out by walking around and looking at all of the farm animals...lots of cows, pigs, sheep, goats, chickens, steers, etc.

In the cow exhibit I was very excited to see these little guys relaxing in a pen of hay...two newborn calves. They were so cute and I made sure to tell Calvin that I wanted one and he made sure to roll his eyes and say "Let's keep going."

Later on in our little adventure, while we were wandering through the land of the goats, we stopped at this pen where there were two very friendly goats. I was petting this white one and the moment I stopped petting him and turned to say something to Calvin, I heard sneeze. I looked down only to see goat snot all over the side of my pant leg and then all I could hear was Calvin laughing hysterically. Yes, it was extremely gross but actually pretty funny as well.

We found a very large piece of machinery that

reminded us both of Frank from the movie "Cars" so we thought we needed to take pictures by it...it even had

eyes! All in all we had a wonderful time at the fair--I am so glad we actually have time to do things like this now. It was an evening complete with lots of animals, greasy corn dogs, over priced lemonade, and cheesy photo booth photos!

So that is about all for now, hopefully I (or we) will be able to keep this updated more often, but we're not making any promises. But know that life is great and God continues to bless us everyday!

Love and blessings to all!