A Tumultuous Season

At last the time has finally come
When my full heart is overrun
By joys, delights and childlike fun;
The HSPE begs me reach for my… gin.

If you haven’t guessed, the above is a joke. A joke poem. A joem, if you will, that I wrote on the first day of HSPE testing. As much as I would love to divulge the HSPErrific, HSPElicious and HSPEtastic details (all words created by myself and my Proctor Partner to pass the time), I will save that for another time when a future blog post is not as plentiful with updates… but yes, in case you’re curious, the past three days of watching students test has propelled me into madness.

Well since we last spoke, the second semester of White River High School has begun in earnest. It’s been about a month and a half now and it is very different from first semester; the beginning was very trying and made me quite sad, I had no idea I had become so attached to my kids from before! But I have come to many realizations, though I feel that I am still learning and enjoying the experience a bit, that will be addressed later in the blog. I feel as though I am respected and have heard good feedback, but still... it isn't the same!

At the end of the first week of the new semester, I wasn’t feeling super fantastic about my new beginnings. When I got home, Richard had the car packed up with everything but me and asked me to get in for an adventure. Despite the headache and pessimistic attitude, I obliged. We
hopped in the car and sped off towards the sunset. He was surprising me with a short drive to Lake Tapps (I found this out very quickly… and was so excited because we hadn’t been yet!). Didn’t quite go as planned… we got lost on back roads and every park we tried was closed for the season OR blocked off by fallen trees from the Snowpocalypse. Well, we were missing the sunset and feeling somewhat disappointed, so we decided to just go home… but then I had a thought.

You see, we’d been discussing for the better part of two months whether or not we could afford a pet… or if we even wanted the responsibility! We decided after many long conversations that we could and that we wanted to; short story shorter, we’d been looking for a few weeks for our purrfect companion.

As we sat and thought of our failed attempt at a romantic sunset, I suggested that before heading home we stop by Petco just to see what (or who) had changed since our last visit. When we got there, we noticed that the same sweet 3 year old cat we’d looked at before was still there, but she
had a new neighbor. A little brown and gravy tabby kitten, 4 months old, started meeping next to us. We went to her, spent some time sticking our fingers in her cage to pet her and see her reaction, and knew that she was just what we were looking for. It took a while to get everything straightened out (we had to run home and get our lease agreement) and also had to get all the
fixings for our new baby, but about 4 hours after our failed sunset we arrived at home with our new baby girl! Her given name, Harriet, was immediately abandoned and replaced with Lily.

We’ve completely embraced our new parenthood, almost to the point of being weird (I call us the crazy cat people), but she’s so wonderful! We’re still trying to train her in some respects but she is absolutely perfect for us and has our goofy personality :) she’s brought us
nothing but pure enjoyment and we’re blessed by her. I’ve been thinking about the little reasons we love her and came up with what I’ve considered cat successes:
1. She hasn’t pooped outside of her litterbox. Yahoo!
2. She’s never pawed either of us… teeth are another story.
3. She has two different meows, one for dad (crazy cat man) and one for mom (crazy cat woman).
4. She isn’t destructive! Except for the blinds in the spare room… mortal enemies, they just get in the way.
5. She’s a real cuddler and obsessed with her crazy cat parents.
6. We can clip her nails after turning her into a kitty-fuzzy blanket burrito.
7. She plays on her own like a madwoman; we laugh so hard.
8. She didn’t eat at first but now she’s a piglet. Awesome.
9. The spray bottle is working, but she still tries to get away with things (only child syndrome).
10. She’s literally afraid of nothing, even when mom sneezes VERY loudly while she’s napping on mom’s chest.

The night we got her!

She's precious :)

And kinda weird.

Enough catness… on to the next topic! Since this blog is in chronological order, I’ll begin with the next event. I won’t dwell on it since it still hurts to remember a bit. Three days after we adopted our first born, I went to a Weight Watchers (*cough* Whale Watchers *cough*) meeting with
my mom. On the way home, I called Richard to see if he’d started dinner. He didn’t pick up at first but did on the second try. He sounded out of it, but I didn’t notice until I’d asked him if he was home. He said “no, I actually just got in a car accident”. My response: “don’t say that, that’s not funny”. His response: “I’m serious”. It was at that point that I started to freak out, trying to find out if he was okay and where he was; he didn’t know either. At one point he
needed to talk to the cops, so while he did that I called my dad and he told me what questions to ask and what I needed to find out (after calming me down). When I called Richard again, he put a paramedic on the phone and I got directions to where they were. In my nervousness and distress, I got lost but finally found him. Seeing his car made me break down again, but I was so glad
he was still upright and coherent; it could have been so so much worse. Quick synopsis of what happened in the accident: Richard was driving down a remote highway between Auburn and Black Diamond and an older woman turned to the left about ten feet in front of him while he was going 55mph and she was going 30mph. It was a head-on collision and she wasn’t hurt whatsoever. That’s the short of it. I whisked him away to Enumclaw’s ER (he said he didn’t want to inconvenience the paramedics anymore and refused transport… don’t worry, dad’s
talked to him about that :) ) where we spent 6 dreadful hours. Final count was: sprained left wrist, concussion, whiplash, two cracked ribs, and a lip laceration apart from other strains and bruises. The lip looked the worst; his bottom teeth pushed clean through to the outside. But after some scans, some 20 stitches, and some morphine, we were on our way home. Honestly, worst
experience of both our lives, but he probably would have died without his seatbelt. Moral of the story: WEAR YOUR SEATBELT!

Lily was trying to help daddy feel better :)

One good thing that came out of this mess, apart from Richard’s life of course, was…

Our new Honda Civic! His car was completely totaled and we figured that new cars’ financing and cost are low enough that we could do it :) she perty.

About two weeks after the accident, an interesting and controversial announcement was made. Our school district’s alternative high school, WRAP, is to be closed after this year. This not only means that those kids will be reintroduced into the general curriculum, but also that teachers
will need to be moved around. Since I am the bottom of the totem pole (along with my friend Joanna), we were told chances are high that we won’t be invited back next year. The Assistant Principal that hired me, Lainey, really wants us to stay and is even planning to train me this summer to teach AP Biology, but I honestly don’t think that my place is here. I know God intended my first year to be here and to be challenging, as it has been, but I’ve come to realist that this is not my place in the teaching world. Being bumped would be a blessing and a mercy in disguise; I have begun the search for middle school jobs in the area. We love this part of the state and would love to stay if possible! I’ll keep you updated, but rest in the thought that I’m happy with this turn of events :)

This past month, we’ve been lucky to have been able to travel down to Albany for Payton’s second birthday (please see Jenna’s blog :) ) and to go to Spokane to celebrate Richard’s birthday with his family. Both trips were wonderful and tons of fun, we’re so blessed by our families! On the
Spokane trip, we weren’t able to stay at his parents’ house because his little brother was quarantined with the flu; but thankfully, the rest of the family (including all sisters with spouses and children) made it to his sister Britta’s house for a birthday dinner! It’s the first time the whole family was together in a while which was great, and we laughed and talked wedding most of the time :)

Speaking of which, wedding plans are going splendidly! We’re waiting to tour our venue within the next few weeks but have TONS of ideas otherwise :) we’ve also decided on our honeymoon! Say hello to Seaside, Newport and the Oregon Coast :D Oh, and we’re also getting help (and discounts) from a budget wedding planner; she has a lot of decorations and linens and connections so she’ll end up saving us lots of money! It’s going to be beautiful and less stressful with her help. Not only has it been fun to constantly plan our own wedding, but I was just asked to be Maid of Honor in my best friend Chelsea Trotter’s wedding taking place this June. It’s going to be short planning for sure; I didn’t come in late in the game, it’s just a three month engagement, but it gives me a mental diversion from the end of my first year of teaching :)

I know this was quite a tedious blog as far as updates goes, so I’ll leave you with this little nugget. My mom came up a few weeks ago to Bonney Lake because the Marshall’s there is known to stock a large variety of Anna Lee’s, grandma’s favorites other than Bunnykins. When we were there, we spotted at the opposite end of the store these furry little friends:

And couldn’t resist :) I see them daily and am reminded of her; not a day goes by that I don’t think of her anyway, but these add some reassurance that she’ll still be there when another of life’s major events comes next summer :D I love you all dearly and miss you even more.

XOXO Chels