Hola!

Not too much has been going on since my last post, but I thought I'd give a little update. The school year's officially over now and summer school has begun. I did get an official note, in writing, that I will be an assistant again next year. That's definitely good to know if I am unable to find a teaching job for the fall, at least I'll still have my job at the school I was at this year, which I love! For summer school, I am working in an Early Childhood classroom, so it's a change of scenery for me for sure. Early Childhood is like Pre-K for students with disabilities (physical, developmental, etc). The students are three and four years old, and not really my favorite age of students to work with, but I enjoy the adults I'm working with so that's a plus for me. Summer school is only twenty days long, Monday thru Friday from 8-12.
Then straight after summer school, I am going back to school myself. I've decided to take Spanish 101 at the local community college because the school I work at is turning into the ELL (English Language Learner) hub for the district in the fall, so I figured I better start learning some Spanish! This means that there will be at least one bilingual classroom at each grade in our building; so a much different population of students than we had this year. My Spanish class started on Monday, and so far so good. I haven't taken a Spanish class since 7th grade, so in about ten years (I don't even feel old enough to say that I haven't done something in ten years!). So it will definitely a learning experience for me, but the teacher is really nice and it's a pretty small class of about 10-15 students.
Besides summer school and my Spanish class, I haven't really been doing too much else. We haven't done anything else on our summer "to-do" list, so there's nothing to update there. Tim actually added golfing and fishing to the list, so we'll see if we get to those this summer. We've set a date for our trip down to see Tim's sister near St. Louis, so I'm looking forward to that in a few weeks. Otherwise to kill time I've been reading and watching TV mostly, nothing too exciting. I've made a couple trips to the library - once on my bike to get in some exercise. Our next big plans that we're looking forward to is next weekend, which is our nephew Cole's first birthday party, so that will be fun!
Keep you posted. Adios! :)

Checking Things Off the List

It's definitely felt like summer this last week, especially weather-wise. Tomorrow is the last day of school and it's only a half day! :) The staff is supposed to be there all day, but we have a "staff meeting" at a local restaurant at 1:00pm.

Tim and I are now able to check our first thing off of our summer to-do list after this weekend. Saturday, Tim spent the whole day at a concert with his friend Chris while I attended my cousin's high school graduation party and my friend's college graduation party. It worked out well because everything was in the same area pretty much, so I was able to drop off and pick up the guys from the concert. They both got pretty burnt, and also very wet as it rained, well poured, for about ten minutes on them, but I know they had a lot of fun. We stayed the night at Chris's house and played Apples to Apples with his family that night (so hilarious!). This morning we came back home to drop off Chris (and check on Archie) and then we headed up to Rockford for the AirFest! 

We loaded up with sunscreen, but of course I still got burnt, but not too bad - it was about 95 degrees and very sunny all afternoon. Next year I'll have to remember two umbrellas for shade (only had one this year), to bring a backpack instead of a purse (easier to carry) and to pack a cooler full of Gatorade for the ride home! A side effect of cystic fibrosis is that my body cannot move salt in and out of it's cells, so it exits through my sweat glands. So when I sweat, especially a lot on a day like today, my body releases salt with the sweat. My skin was covered in salt today (you literally could see it all over my legs) from being so hot. It's much better for me to drink something like Gatorade when I'm outside and sweating because it has salt in it, so it helps me replenish the salt that I'm losing. Obviously, it's still good for me to drink water too, to stay hydrated but anything with salt is good too. So anyway, we went to the nearest gas station as soon as we left the airport to get some Gatorade and they only had one left, and unfortunately it was grape (yuck!) but I had to get it...I survived. Here are some pictures and a quick little video from our day! Enjoy!

The cockpit of the huge helicopter below.

Heavy Metal Jet Team

Heavy Metal Jet Team

Trying to stay cool -- thank goodness we brought that umbrella!!

A retro plane from 1947 called a Cessna.

We're back now and I'm fighting to stay awake. Our show, The Killing, is on tonight at nine, so I have to stay awake to watch it! I think it's time for some dinner and relaxing. Last day of school tomorrow, woo hoo! :-)