Good evening!
It's hard to believe we are almost halfway through the month of February, in the year 2015! Time is really sailing by rather quickly. It hasn't really been THAT terrible of a winter (quite yet) but February isn't over just yet! Lately we've had some pretty chilly temperatures, but we've been given with some decently sunny days as well. Almost every February I reflect back on my time at St. Andrews in Sewanee. It was always foggy, cold....wet.....FREEZING. We had to walk everywhere, to the dining hall for lunch, to the gym for sports, to the theater for....theater. Father Wade was the Headmaster during my time at SAS, and every February he would give the same sermon, basically about getting the wintertime blues. The dreary, cold, sunless weather always made life just a tad bit harder, taking every bit of willpower to get out of bed in the morning. He would talk about how if we could get through February, spring was right around the corner (then he would relate it to Christ, Easter, new life, etc) It was always a sermon I actually looked forward to hearing, because it gave me hope of sunnier days....I am extremely excited about sunnier days, and it's halfway through February, so if we can just wait it out, spring will be here before we know it! :)
Moving on, we (Brandon, Tate, and I) have been chugging along, trying to slow down and enjoy life, even in the cold. We stay fairly busy. Brandon has class Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings and seems to like it okay. It's an English class with a studio session which means this is the only semester of English he will have to take! He is excited about that. I've scoped his syllabus and his professor's wordpress website (are you surprised?!) and she is definitely not your typical college English teacher, so I think that is a plus. For February, we have been fairly busy at the park. The latest project I just helped complete was correlating our field trip standards to the current TN state science standards. It was quite a task! But I actually enjoyed all the paperwork, the compiling, and organizing. Now teachers will be able to see what standards are correlated to each of our specific programs when they book a field trip with us, which I think is really important now. But it makes me question the state of our schools. I don't really know enough to form too much of an opinion (since I don't have a child in school) but it definitely makes me consider the future!
Anyway, that last paragraph was a bit boring. Sorry! Here's a little bit more of an exciting story: I got to go visit my friends Jessica and Jaron in east TN the last weekend in January. They live in an amazing new house in Greeneville that they just had built! It's beautiful! And their view is amazing.
Those are the blue ridge mountains. On Saturday, we spent most of the day in a little town called Hot Springs, which is in North Carolina, about 40 minutes away from where they live in Greeneville. It is SUCH a cute town, a resting place/stop off for the AT, huge beautiful rivers, adorable outdoorsy stores, and amazing food. I really enjoyed it. And really loved getting to stare at the mountains all day. I miss the mountains. Murfreesboro is so dang flat. Anyhoo, here's a picture of Jessie, Charlotte, and I in one of the cute artsy stores.
Jess is preggars, due in May, and I can't WAIT to meet baby Hallie Snow. She is going to be SO adorable! We had a really great time and I'm so glad I got to go. Tate stayed with Brandon and my parents and they were both happy to have some one on one time with him :)
Speaking of Tate, I am in the process of planing his second birthday party! Crazy right?! It's going to be so much fun, I can't wait! He is in full blown toddler mode; happy one minute, angry the next. Then back to being happy. He's quite stubborn and seems to know what he wants most of the time. He still loves to sleep and takes about a two hour nap everyday. He is normally in bed by 7:30 at night which is nice for me, I must say. He is learning all sorts of new things now, and has started to delve into more "crafty" things like finger painting. (This is all Brandon-this sort of mess stresses me out unless wine is involved)
He has also been enjoying play-doh, dry erase markers, chalk, and crayons. He seems to like coloring, which is not something I enjoyed as a child. I actually didn't enjoy most artsy things, and I hope he isn't like that. So far it seems like he's a bit more like Brandon, he likes to explore things with his hands, and use tools. When I was a kid, I liked to explore things with my legs, and run around everywhere! Hah. Anyway, we have been trying to get outside any time it's sunny and over 50. On the way home from Ms. Angie's house is the Discovery Center playground and Kids Castle that we have been too a few times this month. He loves both of them, especially the ladders at Kids Castle.
So I hope everyone has had a decent February so far, remember, we are almost FINISHED with winter! More sunshine is on it's way. YAY!
Thanks for reading!
