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!

All praises to Him!

Praises be to God!  Calvin was offered a full time teaching position today!  He will will be teaching 3 periods of Spanish and 2 periods of French at Redwood High School!  He is so excited and ready to start a new chapter in his life!  God is SO good!

Fabulous weekend...

This weekend I (Kelli) took a break from Visalia and went to spend the weekend with my Shell Bell in Santa Margarita, though we took several trips in and out of SLO.  

It was a gorgeous weekend complete with beautiful weather, shopping downtown, Michelle, Shannon and Leah, Firestone tri-tip, plenty of frozen yogurt, a high school diving tournament :), a bike ride along the Bob Jones Trail in Avila, movies, hot tubbing and star gazing, relaxing, and plenty of wonderful conversation and catching up!  I really have the best friends in the world and I miss them like crazy.  Luckily the drive isn't that bad...only 2.5 hours.

Although the weekend was wonderful it was also great to come home to my wonderful husband, I really did miss him.  And I was very happy when I came home to a clean house!

Now it is the start of a new week and hopefully I will get a full week of work in seeing how next week is Spring Break, which means no subbing=no money being made :(.  I am also kind of excited to be starting new classes this week.  It is weird to think that I have already finished two sessions--one step closer to getting my credential!  On that note, since classes start tomorrow night, I am going to go enjoy the rest of my evening!

Peace, love, and many blessings!

Making old memories new...

Today was really fun.  I attended my first swim/dive meet in almost 5 years, and let me tell you, it brought back a lot of great memories.

Diving was a form of therapy for me in high school. I remember how great it used to feel to be out at the pool for 2-3 hours a day just doing something other than homework or things pertaining to the academic side of school.  I was very successful on the diving board, I tried hard and did well and it was something I became very proud of and now, something I greatly miss.  Which is one of the reasons I went out there today.

I decided that now that I am back and living in Visalia, I want to try and do more.  So Tuesday I went out and talked to my old coach, Deidra (she is still the coach), and told her that I wanted to come out and help out with the meets.  She was more than happy to have me come out, so that's what I did.  It was great to be out there again watching the diving kids remember how it used to be for me.  Hopefully I will be able to get out to more of the meets this season!

On another note, I just go back from having dinner with some wonderful ladies from church.  They are such great company and I really like spending time with them!  Now I am home watching a, finally, new Grey's Anatomy!

Hope you are all having a great week!  

 

God bless!

It's Been Awhile...

So as I sit here watching Harry Potter on TV and wait for my laundry to dry so I can proceed to do yet another load, I figure, "Why not update the blog."  I know it's been quite while since I last updated so I am going to copy Megan (from her recent blog post) and give you some "one liners" (though they will probably be longer than one line) on what has been going on the last 2.5 months.

Dec. 25-27--Christmas with Calvin's family in Nipomo

Dec. 27--Went to the snow with Jenna and her awesome boyfriend David.  David is from Uganda, Africa and has never seen snow before.  It was so fun to watch him enjoy snow for the first time.  It was really funny because he didn't want to put on a sweatshirt for the longest time because he "wanted to feel the cold."

Jan. 2-3--Calvin and I went to Harris Ranch to enjoy an evening together.  For Christmas, Calvin booked a room at the Ranch and got me gift certificates so we could eat at the steakhouse.  It was such a relaxing time with good company and delicious food.

Jan. 9-11--Weekend in SLO with my favorite English Ladies!  It was a fabulous weekend complete with shopping, movies, cocktails, and amazing conversations.  I am so blessed to have such great friends.

Jan. 16-18--Calvin and I were both out of town, but in two different places.  Calvin went to San Francisco to visit Victor before he left for 2.5 years for Thailand.  I on the other hand went down to Azusa to visit one of my besties, Jenna! And her boyfriend David was still visiting so we took him to some "tourist" attractions around LA.  We went to Hollywood and saw the star walk and Chinese theater, Beverly Hills and drove down Rodeo drive and got AMAZING cupcakes from Crumbs and proceeded to eat them in a little park near by.  The day ended with bike riding on the beach in Malibu at sunset...so beautiful.  I also got my first experience with IKEA...one of the most fabulous stores ever!

Feb. 14--Calvin and I celebrated our first Valentine's day as a married couple.  Instead of going out for the night, I made pizza and we had a lovely evening in.

Feb. 20-21--We went to Disneyland for my birthday!  I got a free pass because it was my birthday and we spent the whole day at the "Happiest Place on Earth."  There weren't too many people there which really made it nice for getting on rides.  The longest we waited was probably 35 minutes for Indiana Jones, which for that is pretty good.  We went on almost every ride and some we went on twice...for some reason some rides are just better at night!  Here are a few pictures from the day!

So that about recaps the events of the first 2 months of 2009. 

 

Some other highlights include:

• We got a Wii and Wii fit--they are both so much fun!
• We joined a gym--so far I love it and am feeling so much better
• We both finished the "Twilight" series--kind of lame to admit, but whatever, they are really good books and if you haven't read them yet I would recommend them.
• I have been subbing a lot lately, which is good because Calvin hasn't been working as much at Costco since he started student teaching.
• I survived my first "non-drill" lockdown.  I was subbing for my mom (girls PE) and while out on the field watching the girls play kickball cops ran out right by where we were and tazered a guy and arrested him.  I had to quickly get all 50 girls into the locker room and wait for the all clear to dismiss them. Kind of scary.
• I am almost done with my second session of Chapman classes--one step closer to getting my credential.  Whereas, Calvin is almost finished with the program.  Pray that he will be able to get a job for the Fall!

So that is about all for now.  Hopefully I will be able to update this more often, but for now, enjoy!

God bless!

What a week...

Well, I don't even know if anybody's still reading our blog since it's been so long since we've posted on here, but here goes.

For those of you who don't know, I (Calvin) have been student teaching since the middle of January, at Tulare Union High School.  I have two weeks left, then I'm going to another school.  This week was National Foreign Language Week, which basically translates to a week of craziness for our department.  All week we had songs in class, dress-up days, lots of extra credit opportunities, and lots of crazy activities.  Wednesday was the NFLW assembly, which got about 800 students together in the auditorium, for songs and poetry in Spanish and Portuguese (the two languages taught at our school).  There was lots of dancing, including some really good Portuguese folk dancing, and all the Spanish students sang De Colores together!  So much fun!  It was also a great opportunity for me to be a part of the school, and part of the department as a whole.  Thursday we had a department lunch- actually the lunch was for the whole school, but our department is banished to the other side of the street so we kept some of the food for ourselves (oh yeah, our department provided the food) and had lunch as a department.  Mexican pozole, Portuguese baked beans and linguiça sandwiches, Portuguese rice pudding...I haven't eaten so much in a while!

To finish off the week, at the end of each class today we brought the kids outside all together (five classes) and all did the chicken dance.  With my class, fifth period, which is the main one I teach, I bribed them with extra credit points, so we dominated the chicken dance.

I'll let Kelli catch everybody up at some point on other stuff we've had going on, but here's a preview: Recent Disneyland trip (pictures to follow) and lots of subbing for Kelli, including a real lockdown.