Sweet Life in the City

When I was a kid I really don't remember what I wanted to be when I grew up. I think I went through a stage of wanting to be a pediatrician, but realizing how long you had to be in school and all the other gross stuff that came with being a doctor I decided I did not want to be that. When I graduated high school and went to college, I really did not have a wide range of choices, so like most females at this college I entered the teacher education path. My sophomore year at school I felt strongly that the Lord was calling me to pursue a mission degree instead of a teaching degree. It would be in that new course of my life that I would get to know my future husband better, meet a couple who would impact my life more than I can even explain, and develop a love for people from all over the world. I would graduate with my missions degree and Jeremy and I planned to go to the mission field, France actually. We had big plans, God had other plans. Our lives would forever be changed with a ...

How? How in the world is today December 1st! We had a great Thanksgiving even though I have to honest that I was a little apprehensive as it was approaching. This was the first time I would not be celebrating a holiday in my childhood home and I was not sure how emotionally prepared I was for this new house. We left at 1:30 on Wednesday to head to Missouri. Jeremy did not have school, Samuel dismissed early and we always dismiss at 1:00 on Wednesdays, so we left from my school since it is already on the other city of downtown. The reality of not going "home" surfaced as we passed the exit we usually would take and Emma declared "well we would already be at Grandma's house if they still lived here". Nope, we still had like 6 hours to go 😡 We got to my parent's house in Missouri Wednesday night and the kids were super excited to explore their new house. The house is so pretty and it fits my mom personality perfectly and every room has her touch for making a h...

I feel a little bit guilty that I have not posted in a long time. I feel like I had taken everyone to this place of our new adventure and then I just left it there. That very first day of our new school seems like a lifetime ago. Several times throughout the last few months I have sat down to write, but for starters my exhaustion would always take over and my brain would pretty much be mush. We leave our house at 6:20 every morning and are usually home between 5:00 and 5:30 every night. The days are extremely long and the drive  has been less than kind to my body. By Friday afternoon  I certain my legs will never work again. The second reason is that it was just too hard to put into words all the emotions that I have been feeling. The first few months were really sad for me. It didn't make any sense. My school is amazing. The people I work with are amazing and the students are mostly amazing 😏. I just found myself wanting to go back to what I knew. I missed so many sweet face...

I feel like a blinked and it went from Thursday to Monday! Friday morning we had a kindergarten ease-in day and I was able to meet most of the students that will be in our class this year. One of our students is a sibling of some students I know from my last school. I see at least seven familiar faces at my new school and it has been a great comfort to me. It seems like we will have a really great group of kids and I am excited to see how much they will learn and grow this school year. Friday afternoon was our staff luncheon and finishing up things to get ready for today. Friday night I was pretty tired, but Friday nights have become Jeremy's and I's night to watch an episode of whatever crime series we have been watching. This started a few years ago when we got hooked on "Midsomer Murders". We managed to watch all 19 seasons and since season 20 has not made it to Netflix yet we had to find another series. We have gone through two other series ("Hinterland"...

It has been a pretty full week. It was full of events that I had been waiting for since May and thankfully I can say that I survived. Last Thursday I drove to my new school to start a new job, filled with so many people that I did not know. Thankfully I had been communicating with the teacher I am working with and I had met the 4th grade teacher at a conference a few weeks ago. It was pretty awkward the first few minutes. Another new teacher and I found each other pretty quick, we were the ones looking around like we had no idea what was going on! It didn't take long for the kindergarten team to find me and took me right under their wing. We jumped right into introductions and all the beginning of school information. My new school is doing some really amazing things and implementing some awesome programs. Some of the programs are pretty new to everyone (they are in the process of becoming an IB school if you know anything about that) and so thankfully everyone is also learning. It ...

About two years ago I was scrolling through Pinterest and a quote by C.S. Lewis caught my eye. It was three little words that spoke volume to my life and it was a phrase that I would hear the Lord whisper to my heart many, many times over the last year, " Courage, dear heart " .  I knew this quote was from the Narnia series, but I needed to do a little more digging into the quote. To my surprise the context of the quote would only make the quote even more powerful. The quote is taken from Chapter 12 of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I will be adding that part of the book at the end of this post if you wanted to read the context of the quote. When school ended in June the anxiety of the next school year seemed to increase. I kept it at bay by reminding myself that I had all summer before I had to think about the changes that were coming to our family. But here I sit, less than 24 hours away from starting this new journey and the nerves are pretty fierce. I mentioned in my l...

I stopped blogging almost two months ago. I have to be honest that I stopped because I was aggravated with a situation and decided that I would no longer be sharing any personal information about my family online. But I have found myself several times wanting to sit down and write some things out and this is the most beneficial means to calm the thoughts raging in my head. It has been a busy summer and it is sad as I sit here thinking this is my last Monday of summer break. Here are some highlights of our summer. 1. The last time I had posted the girls and I were heading to camp. It was an amazing time for us all. I ended up being a counselor in one of the rooms. I have to admit that I was so anxious about it! I don't normally work with 5th and 6th graders. I also was assigned to leading one of the class times and leading all the campers (divided into groups) on how to do a devotion. They obviously did not know me well enough and my dislike for doing things without preparing for ...

This is a hard post for me to write. I am not completely sure why I have struggled to sit down and write down about some more changes coming to our life. Maybe because I am struggling with this decision. Struggling not because I don't fee like God is asking us to do this, just struggling because my selfish nature doesn't know if I have the courage to obey. We have decided to put our house on the market. We have an amazing house and those who walked with us during our search for a home and those that endured my endless complaints of living in that apartment probably think we are crazy. I had someone recently tell me as I was telling them the possibility of selling said to me, "But Kim, God gave you that house!" I 100% agreed with her. This house opened up at the perfect, most crucial time in our lives. We were going through a difficult time of God closing a door to plant the church and we were barely surviving living in the conditions and environment of the apartment. ...

It has been a bit chaotic around here the last few days. No, seriously our house has been hit by the plague of lice 😩😱. I understand that it is part of life. When your children go to school or are around other children there is always a chance that they will be affected. Knowing all of that, being an educator myself and knowing that it in no way reflects the cleanliness of a child afflicted by it, it still absolutely freaks me out and it makes me go into some crazy state of mind. The girls had their first case of lice within the first few months of us living in Chicago, but we have not have any issues since this weekend. I was aware that when we switched Chloe to public school the chances of getting lice were greatly increased, sure enough Saturday I discovered the nasty things and it has been extraction city going on in my house. I asked for prayer on FB. I was really vague because frankly I was not in a good place to tell the FB world the depths of my despair (okay maybe too dramat...

I have taken a few weeks to process the freedom of being done with school. I have taken an extra break as I process the freedom that came with the ending of this particular school year. I did write a post last week, but it was not very nice. I wrote mostly about why I feel so liberated. I focused a great deal on the freedom that has come with a situation that I dealt with my two years prior to this year and although all that I wrote was true, I did not want to risk offending anyone. I have also been processing the sadness that my time being over with my class from this year. Even tonight as I think about it being Sunday I still am having a bit of sadness knowing that I will not see my sweet kiddos anymore. Last Wednesday we finished our school year doing what we do best, having so much fun! We had a carnival day filled with games and other fun activities. As each student left my resolve to keep the tears in became harder and harder. It only got worse as the parents started crying as th...