Laura got a job!

That's right! As many of you saw on facebook, I have accepted a long-term full year Art position at Orchard View Early Elementary. It's very exciting for me and I am ready to start the year! I am thinking about starting a blog about my adventures as a first year teacher in Art! We will see how busy I get as the year progresses. Thanks for all of the prayers and thoughts and good vibes. Great things have happened and this was all part of God's plan! I never saw this job opportunity coming. This job was never posted, so I did not apply, and I never knew there would be an opening for this. I was surprised with the phone call from the principal with this amazing opportunity that, of course, I could not turn down! I am ready for this!

what a beautiful day!

it is such a beautiful summer day today. i love having the windows open with the fresh air blowing through the house! 

well, i am just going to get into it. our 3rd attempt at conceiving a baby has failed. we have tried IUI 3 times and have not yet been successful. while it can be discouraging and frustrating, we do trust that God has a plan for us and apparently a baby hasn't fit into those plans quite yet. i do believe that we will have children one day. 

we are going to meet with our fertility doctor sometime in august to discuss what is next for us. we have looked into IVF and adoption costs and it is quite scary. to think that the cost of either of these two options could prevent us from becoming parents is scary. we want children more than anything. we will have to wait and see what the doctor has to say and in the meantime, start saving for the future. we are still hopeful that we will conceive naturally. i do think if we didn't have the faith in God that we do, we would be depressed and much more frustrated with this whole thing. having faith is very important and we know God has the perfect plan for us.

in the meantime, i have applied for several teaching jobs but have yet to hear from any district about an interview. i am really hoping that i will hear something soon. new jobs are getting posted every day, so i am looking daily. 

we are going to D.C. soon and look forward to this vacation and time away on our own. it has been awhile since we have gone on a vacation. we are very excited to see our nation's capital. kevin has been to D.C. several times with his students, but i have never been there. i think it will be a great experience. 

enjoy this beautiful day and God bless!

What's New With Us?

I really need to update our blog more often! What's been new with us since our last post, you might ask? Well, a lot actually.

We were so busy wrapping up the school year. Kevin finished his 5th year of teaching at West Ottawa. Crazy, I can't believe it's been that long already! I finished out the school year teaching 8th grade resource kids at Mona Shores Middle School. It was quite the experience and one that has definitely benefited me and given me a great teaching experience. This finished out my 5th year of subbing and was my 6th long-term sub job. At the beginning of the year, I was a long-term Art & Phys. Ed. teacher at Ross Park Elementary. I really enjoyed my time there getting to know each and every student. I'm glad I was given the opportunity. Most of my school year was spent at Ross Park. 

I have applied for a lot of openings and am hoping for an interview in at least one district. Please pray that something will work out for me this year! Kevin will be teaching at the high school again next year.

We have been pretty busy this summer so far. Kevin is teaching summer school 2 days a week and working for the city the rest of the week. I am enjoying my time off this summer. Kevin has been very busy helping his brother fix up a rental home. He spends most evenings in Spring Lake helping. We have already attended 2 open houses. Congrats Molly and Marissa! We have 2 more to attend this Saturday. Congrats Sami and Mari! 

We hope you are enjoying your summer so far! Have a great 4th of July!

Basement/Bedroom Painting Project

Spring Break is here! Kevin & I are on break from school this week. While several people we know are enjoying the sun and the beaches in the south; we are home where it is, unfortunately, snowing! 

We have been wanting to paint our basement since we moved into our house in 2009. The basement had light pink walls ... everywhere! Kevin calls it his man cave, even though he doesn't spend much time down there, and he didn't want pink walls. So we decided it was about time to paint. We chose 2 different colors and painted the entire basement including our master bedroom. We chose a shade of grey and a shade of yellow for an accent wall. The grey has a hint of blue in it so without my even realizing it (until it was too late), Kevin got his way and finally got a blue and yellow room (basement). What better colors for a Michigan fan than those 2! He sure is lucky to have me! ;)

 the pink

 getting ready to start painting

 nosy Buddy!

 yellow accent wall (it looks so much better than the pink!)

 uncle kevin is a slave driver! :)

 doing my share of painting (kevin did most of it, but i helped a little bit)

 long wall half way painted (see how blue it looks)

 yep, it looks blue (we still need to hang everything)

 our bedroom after

think he inhaled too many paint fumes? haha

 Now the basement looks so much nicer and much more fresh! We picked a good time of year to paint because we were able to do some spring cleaning, too. You won't believe how much dust can accumulate over the winter! I have been sneezing for days!!

A Tough One

Some of you know the struggles that Kevin and I have been through with trying to get pregnant and some of you are about to find out. I have decided to share our story with more and more people as the time goes on. 

We decided about a year after we were married that we wanted to start having children. Unfortunately, it hasn't worked out the way we had planned. If we chose our futures, ours would certainly be different. We'd probably have at least 2 kids by now and I would have a teaching job, but God works in mysterious ways. I have come to realize that God has the perfect plan for our lives and there is a reason why he has burdened blessed us with the life we have now. I do believe we will have children of our own and I do believe that it will happen sometime soon, I'm just not sure when. 

Kevin and I have been blessed with 4 wonderful nephews and niece. We love them all very much. We get to spend a lot of time with them and watch them grow. I feel incredibly blessed to be an aunt and Kevin is a great uncle! We have several friends who have children. We get to see the little ones and also watch them grow. Kevin and I have learned a great deal about parenting through these experiences. There is a reason we have not conceived and why several of our friends have. I believe we have been blessed with children all around us so we can learn from others. Being teachers, we are always the ones teaching and don't really learn. I think that God wants us to step back and learn from those around us. I think that we will both be great parents because of this.

Both of our families are very supportive and pray for us on a regular basis. We are very grateful for their prayers. We lift everything up to God and pray that one day we will conceive and when we do, that child will be a blessing from God.

We have been trying to get pregnant now for almost 3 years and believe me it has been a struggle, for both of us. I, personally, have gotten to the point where I am relying fully on God and have passed the point of depression. Again, it will happen when it's supposed to happen.

Don't get me wrong, we aren't just sitting back and doing nothing. We are seeing doctors and trying to figure out if there are any problems. So far, there hasn't been any issues found. We recently saw a fertility doctor in Grand Rapids for a consultation but after some thought, have decided to check out a different fertility specialist in GR. Just today, I called to schedule an appointment for an initial consultation and hopefully we can get the process moving a little quicker. 

I pray that by the end of the year, we are blessed with a little one we can call our very own.

I don't write this as a "whoa is me," "please feel sorry for me" message. I write it as a release and a prayer request. Kevin and I have kept this information to ourselves and immediate family for a long time. We have just recently started sharing this information with others outside of our family. We feel that at this time it is necessary to share. We have been married for 4 years and we very badly want children of our own. Believe me, it wasn't our plan to wait this long. But we all must realize that God is in complete control and He, alone, knows exactly how our stories are written.

thoughts...

We all know very well what has happened in Connecticut and we are all very sad. I can't even imagine what the families are going through that lost a child in this terrible act of violence by a coward. Every time Kevin turns on the news and watches more on the event, I tell him to turn it off. It's too sad to hear about. At first, I was very angry and upset, as were several of you, I'm sure. This man was a coward and an evil person for taking the innocent lives of these children who had their whole lives ahead of them. Unfortunately, they are no longer on this earth and their parents and families are mourning the loss. They are in Heaven, though, with Jesus being loved to pieces by Him and perhaps those that have gone before them. I am certain that a beloved teacher I know, that recently passed, was greeting them at the gates of Heaven and giving each and every one of those children a great big loving hug.

For those students who saw the events unfold and witnessed what happened, they have been robbed of their innocence and I am sure they will live with those images for the rest of their lives. How unfortunate that is.

I am proud of the teachers who risked their lives to protect their students. What true heroes they are! It isn't easy to put yourself in harm's way to protect the lives of others. But as a teacher, I would gladly risk my life so my students could live theirs no matter how scared I would be of losing mine.  I feel like I need to hug every child I see when I am teaching and tell them they are loved and cared about. Thank you to all teachers, administrators and everyone who works in education! I am very proud to be a teacher and to do my job every single day. I know Kevin feels the same. 

I pray that the Lord will be with the families who have lost their young children and that He will comfort them, especially during this time of celebration and joy. Please continue to pray for the children's and teacher's/faculty's families!

Isiah 41:10 states, "Fear not, for I am with you." We should always know that God is with us always, especially in times when we are afraid.  

My hope is for all of you to have a great Christmas and to enjoy your time with your families this holiday season. Let's keep Christ in CHRISTmas and remember the reason for the season. 

Merry Christmas to you from us!

It's that time of year

It's that time of year ... Project time! We have been busy working on projects and thinking of even more projects to do.

Kevin built a fence for Buddy as you saw in the previous post. We love it and so does Buddy. It is so nice to let Buddy out on his own and not have to worry about him running off, like he loves to do, and he doesn't have to be restricted to a leash!

Our next project will possibly be making a bed. We have been looking for about 3 years for a new bedroom set and we just can't find any we like in a price range we like. I have asked Kevin before to make a bed and now he is seriously thinking about it. We found one we like that might be simple enough for Kevin to make. You can find it here. I'm hoping he can get it built over Christmas break but I'm not sure, because we also plan on painting our bedroom and basement during this time. 

I am excited for my new scrapbooking project. I am going to start Project Life, which I found on Pinterest. I think it's been around for awhile but I recently came across it and with my birthday money, I purchased a "starter kit" on Amazon. I cannot wait to get started. I will start it in January or maybe December since I may have a lot of Christmas pictures since I got a new camera for my birthday. Here is a link to project life in case all my scrapbook friends are wondering what it's all about.

Enjoy the beautiful weather today as it may get worse tomorrow. Only in Michigan is the weather in the 60s one day and the next day in the 30s with a possible chance of snow.