An overdue update....

Well, hello there! 

Remember me? It's only been... ummmm, almost 2 months since I last posted, but who's counting?! Ha!

I know this is hardly unexpected, but this post will be the classic bullet style. You're welcome. ;)

• School is awesome! I love my kids. I love my team. I love my school. I love my district. I love my parents... are you gagging yet? Cause I might be. ;) Seriously though, I feel incredibly blessed and I thank my lucky stars everyday. I can see myself staying at this school for many, many years (many of the teachers that are there, have done just that. One of my colleagues has been there 25 years) and I just feel ... blessed. I cannot think of a better word.
• On the flip side, school has kept me busier than I have EVER been in my entire life. There is hardly ANY time to get anything done. And, just when you think you have time, something comes up. Every. Single. Time. There has not been a weekend that I have not spent in my room at least some time, but I knew this going into this profession and I was mentally prepared for it. I know next year will probably be easier.
• So, a little about my "kids" (no, I don't call them kiddos, but I do call them my kids). I have 28 students. Four special ed, 5 ELP (talented and gifted) and everything in between. I have a BUSY class. In fourth grade kids have the option of playing an instrument for the first time and there are kids coming and going A LOT due to this and all of the other services they may receive. It is A LOT to keep track of. 
• I am trying hard to be TOUGH with them. For example, today they spent 100 seconds of their recess at their desks with their heads down (doesn't sound like much, but any recess missed is enough for them to learn some sort of lesson... lol). Some spent longer because they did not turn in homework. I feel like a mean parent, but I know this is what it takes... It doesn't make it any easier though! I just keep telling myself, it isn't MY choice, so I shouldn't feel bad. 
• Bill and I are still doing GREAT. He has been my rock this past year and I honestly am afraid of what I would look like without him. A giant stress ball, probably. 
• I am still running. Miraculously, I have turned into a morning runner. I get up most days around 5am and run or workout. This is my stress reliever and I know my body needs it. I am so glad I was able to nail this habit because it has done so much for me mentally. 
• In October I am running the Des Moines Half Marathon again and next week I am running Capital Pursuit (10 miles). Sometimes the training stresses me out (especially this week), but I know deep down I would be worse off without it. 
• This weekend I am moving back into a one bedroom apartment again. For the past three years my sister and I have lived together (and for the past 2, her boyfriend has joined us) and although I have really loved growing closer to my sister (we were not close growing up) I am really ready to live like an adult again. 
• If you would like to follow my classroom twitter, I would love to have you! @msjohnson4j
• Well, that's about it! Please update me on your life and hopefully I can make it to your blog soon to say hi! :) 

Miss you all! 

Tour in the Heartland

I wrote this post on Sunday and meant to put photos in and then post on Monday. Obviously that did not happen because somehow it is already Wednesday evening and this post is still sitting in my drafts. Better late than never! :) 

Ahhh! What a fun weekend I had! Just what I needed after most of July being a bummer.

Friday after getting off work, Bill and I headed about 2 hours north to Clear Lake, Iowa to see a couple of 80s bands play at The Surf Ballroom. Due to The Surf being historic, the entire weekend turned into a mini history tour and I LOVED it!

Why is The Surf historic, you ask? Well, let me tell you.

The Surf is the last place that Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens (lalalalalalala bamba!) and the Big Bopper played before they met their untimely death in a tragic plane crash in 1959. I was always aware that these three musicians died in Iowa in a plane crash, but I did not realize the details. It was very sad!

The day after the concert (Saturday) Bill and I, plus his hilarious family which included his uncle and cousins, deemed the day "Adventure Day" because on the way up to Clear Lake Bill asked me if I had to be back to DSM before Monday and I said no. After that he suggested going on an "adventure" (which means, "let's go do something other than go home) and I latched on to this idea and would NOT let it go. Ha!

Everything we did was "adventure!" What can we say, we like to make things fun cause we're fun people! :)

Saturday morning, Bill and I woke up, went on a nice 4 mile jog around the lake area (one of the only runs I have ever done with Bill because he is faster than me) and then headed back to his grandma's house to get ready and head over to his uncles house for lunch. After lunch, we were trying to decide what to do and it came out that his uncle had never seen the crash site! We all decided then and there that it was absolutely NECESSARY that we go see it!

After some gravel roads, a few detours and then a walk through fields (surprisingly not a cornfield!) we found the site!

Marking the trail to go to the actual site is a statue of Buddy Holly's glasses. After posing with them, we made our way about a quarter of a mile through the field to the site. The sky was absolutely gorgeous with big fluffy clouds meeting farm fields on the horizon

The actual site was a little anti-climactic and we were disappointed that there wasn't something a bit more memorializing than glorified garbage! There was cheap movie theater 3d glasses, beer cans, credit cards, latex gloves, coins, t-shirts... just random crap! You can tell some people left nice things like flowers, but most of it was junky and gross. There were four small headstone type things that someone left (a fourth for the pilot), and those were nice. We couldn't leave without a few tears shed from Bill and his uncle... it was very traumatic for these two old(er) men. :)

After leaving the site, Bill's family decided I need a more appropriate tour of Clear Lake because I had never been there, so we headed down to the beach and park area and found a small art festival going on. So, we looked around for awhile, and resisted our urge to buy stuff! I was SO close to buying a spoon ring, but ultimately resisted since I am on a strict no spending freeze! 

After leaving the festival, we checked out a new meat shop called Louie's Customer Meats and More, where we bought some bacon and hamburgers to head home and grill bacon burgers. Gosh, I wish I had taken more pictures of the food we ate, because we ate WELL this day. Grilled chicken for lunch accompanied with corn (what else?) and enough cheese, crackers and summer sausage before the meal to last us a long while, then grill bacon burgers for dinner. Mmmm, it was all so delish!

Oh, and I didn't mention the ice cream we stopped and got while their cousin was working! This day was so indulgent, lol! Good thing we got in a run at the beginning of the day...

The rest of the day and night we just laid around, relaxing, talking, reading (well, I was the only one reading. I'm weird) and playing games until it was time for Bill and I to head back to DSM. We got home pretty late, but it didn't bother me one bit because we had such a good day! I had so much fun with his family and in a new part of Iowa that I quickly fell in love with!

Do you have friends that can make everything fun and never seem bored? I am so grateful to have found a guy that seems to do just that. He makes everything a good time! :)

Mid Summer Update

Hello, hello! It has been quite awhile since I have posted. I am still very unsure of where I want this space to go in the future, but for now I hope that you are following me via Twitter, Instagram and even Facebook. I tend to update those accounts regularly, so please feel free to follow me or request me as a friend. :)

I am not going to lie, July has had its ups and downs. Well, I should say ups and one down. That down being that I have been sick all month. Literally, I have been sick the entire month so far. In late June I started to come down with something and had the basic sore throat, stuffed up sinuses and cough. I tried to remedy it on my own (as I usually successfully do) and it did not work. On July 4th I was in urgent care and just miserable. I ended up having bronchitis and spent my 4th of July holiday week IN BED. They gave me amoxicillin and it did NOTHING. Five days later I called back and said I thought I needed the Zpack, which I have never taken before, but knew it would be effective. Thank god I did that because the Zpack did wonders right before I went on vacation to Miami. I was so close to canceling my trip and I am so thankful that I didn't!

My girlfriends and I went on a vacation to Miami, and it was fantastic! We spent hours sitting on the beach soaking up sun and it was just what I needed. I was still blowing my nose and drinking Alka Seltzer like it was my job, but I still had a fantastic time and cannot wait to go back!

My friend Kristi and I doing a jumping pic... I have some work to do before I master the art form of the "jumping pic" :-/ 

I totally ordered pizza on the beach. It sounded good! 

 View from the jetty at the very end of South Beach. I still cannot get over how clear the water was!

Other things that have been going on ... I got into my classroom and did some work. Yes, I got a job! I am the newest fourth grade teacher in a suburban district and a school very close to where I live. I am SO excited and feel so fortunate and blessed!

The main entrance of my building. I love how my school is tucked back behind houses, if you didn't know it was there, nobody would have any idea! :) 

This is where I will spend a ton of time for the next year! I have a lot of work to do, but I could not be more excited! 

 I am so proud of this book collection that I have been collecting for the past two years!

I am juggling three jobs. Yes, three. I am still at the agency and am still on call status so I am choosing my shifts and hours (which, is SO nice). Two days a week I also nanny (ok, babysit) for a friend of my boyfriends from his running group and I the other three days I am working for another friend of a friend that runs an in-home daycare and wanted to move up a level, for which she needed someone with a teaching degree. She has anywhere between 13-17 kids a day and they are ALL under the age of 5... I (lovingly) refer to it as "Toddler Town" because ... well... it IS! I love it :)

I wish I could post pics, but I just cannot because this blog is not private. If you follow me on Instagram, Twitter or even Facebook you will see some pictures of my newest friends under the age of 6 :)

Things with Bill have been going great and our one year anniversary is coming up! I can hardly believe it. That year has flown by and I am so grateful to have him in my life :)

 A little grainy, but this is us at the Art Festival a few weeks ago

I am not sure what will happen with this space. Only time will tell! In the mean time, tell me how your summer has been going! What has been most memorable so far? For me, it has definitely been Miami and setting up my classroom :)

Dam to Dam 2013 Recap!

My one year running anniversary has come and gone, and I now have two Dam to Dam 20k's under my belt!

Saturday morning my alarm went off at 4am, and I got up without hitting the snooze to get ready and be out the door by 4:40 to head to Bill's and then head to Merle Hay where our bus would take us to Saylorville lake and drop us off at the dam to only run back to another dam in the downtown area...

(See those buildings on the horizon?? That's where we're running to...)

Last week I mentioned that I had some super secret goals that I was hoping to accomplish with this race. Sadly, I did not accomplish either of them. I wanted to run the entire time, and I wanted to finish within 2:30, which would be a 12:00 minute pace. 

I would post my splits, but Runkeeper went pretty haywire for the last half and the app thinks I ran over 13 miles (the race was 12.4) so my splits are pretty inaccurate - perhaps it is time for a Garmin?? Here are my first 6 miles, which look like they're right. 

Mile 1 - 10:46

Mile 2 - 10:27

Mile 3 - 11:11

Mile 4 - 11:36

Mile 5 - 12:11

Mile 6 - 12:29

I know I got started too fast. I have never held a pace in the ten minute range, and although I could feel myself going too fast, I just couldn't make myself slow down. Maybe this is why I hit a wall at mile 9-10 and just did not want to run anymore?? 

My final time was 2:39, 9 minutes slower than what I was hoping for, but it was an 11 minute PR from last year. So, success! Although I did not run 100% of this race, I did run for about 90%, which is much better than what I did last year.

(Bill and I right before heading up to the dam and beginning the race)

Overall, it was a good race. I had fun, I ran a lot and beat my time from last year. I think that if I am this concerned with time, I need to start working on that. I have not worked on speed at all, so I think I need to start figuring out what my goals really are now, since they have obviously changed a little bit from last year! 

Next up for me is a half marathon with See-Us Run Des Moines and then probably the Des Moines Half Marathon in October. Other than long distance races, I am doing a 5k next weekend at the zoo! Can't wait for that :) 

Meals, Miles, Books and Looks of May

Wow, how is it May 31st and I am done with student teaching, my master's degree and am looking for a job?? Time freakin' flies.

I always notice awesome recap posts from a lot of my favorite bloggers, but for some reason the beginning and ending of months always seem so busy for me, and blogging is on the backburner. Not today!

I'm subbing at a middle school, and the end of the year is c-r-a-z-y. I found myself praying that they would be watching a movie as I drove in today. Instead of a movie, I got the next best thing. They're playing with ipads! I will take it.

Plus, it's a half day, so I'm off at 11:30. This means I can meet my dear friend, Lesli for lunch since she is in town today!

Anyway, on to my recap. I'm going to do this recap Lisa style and reflect on meals, miles, books and looks of May.

Meals
Last night was our May Books n' Bars meeting and we met at a new(ish) restaurant downtown called Gramercy Tap. Unfortunately, I did not get a photo of my meal... I was positively starving when I got there right after a run with See-Us Run Des Moines, so I was not very conscious of health food when I ordered. I got the Gramercy burger, which had blue cheese and bacon, with a side of fries. Not the most elegant meal, but it sure was tasty!

Other memorable meals this month included a delicious brunch (after a beautiful wedding) at Americana, and cooking at home a couple times with Bill - including one amazingly delicious grill out. The first of the season!

(Our eyes were a tad bigger than our stomachs when we shopped for this meal... we've got asparagus, corn on the cob, bacon wrapped sirloins, stuff peppers and mushrooms. Omg, this was so good.)

Miles
This month I have logged 70 miles, and I am pretty pleased with that! I wish I had a little more under my belt, but I haven't been tracking my miles as closely as I did last year. I would say I'm doing the bare minimum in preparation for Dam to Dam (which is tomorrow! Eek!) but, I am confident I will pull off a PR. I have a few goals for myself, but I honestly am keeping them to myself... when I recap my race next week I am sure I will clue you all in on what they are!

(after Dam to Dam last year. I cannot wait to see what the race holds for me tomorrow!)

Books
I am so thankful I have kept up with reading this spring. Reading really keeps me calm and centered. It's my "me" time and I am not willing to give it up!
Here is what I read, with a link to my Goodreads review:

• Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Fowler - I really enjoyed learning more about Zelda Fitzgerald. This book will make you not really like F. Scott Fitzgerald though - I think that's pretty common though from all biographies of this couple.
• Slammed by Colleen Hoover - Love, love, loved this book! Definitely recommend this book to almost anyone, but especially fans of John Green
• Someday, Someday Maybe by Lauren Graham - this book was just "ehhhh" for me. 
• Point of Retreat by Colleen Hoover - the 2nd book in the Slammed trilogy. This book wasn't as good as Slammed, but I still thoroughly enjoyed it!
• The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult - I literally just finished this book, and haven't even written my review on Goodreads. But, OMG. It was fantastic. I loved it. I don't know why I keep putting myself through the sadness of books profiling the Holocaust, but I do. This was such a memorable story and I absolutely recommend it.

Looks

I didn't take too many OOTD's for the month of May, but I did have a few memorable looks including graduation, my best friend's wedding and a few teacher looks!

 (after my graduation ceremony with my boyfriend, Bill)

 (Such a beautiful, surprise wedding!)

 (I finally succumbed to the leggings under dresses look. Leggings are so necessary in the classroom!)

(The photo from my teaching portfolio - so teacher-ish! Ha!)

How was your month??

Another great running week!

Last week was an okay running week for me and this week is race week! Dam to Dam is Saturday and I am excited to run this "dam" race!

For those of you that are new to ALPITC, I ran Dam to Dam (20k) for the first time last year and I absolutely loved it. Since then I have definitely been bitten by the running bug, and signing up for races really keeps my body moving!

Here's my workout recaps from last week:

Sunday - Quick 3 mile morning run before all the festivities of the day. I knew a run would energize my day and get me through the wedding, brunch, graduation and dinner with my family!

Monday - Practice with SRDM. We did two laps around Roosevelt (about 2 miles) and then strength training. I was SORE for days... Note to self: quick slacking on strength training.

Tuesday - Active rest. This was an active rest day because I spent 30 minutes walking Zeke and then I spent 40 minutes on a walk with a client (who is young and can walk at a moderate speed)

Wednesday - 10 mile long run. Most of this run was in the rain, and I actually enjoyed it so much! However, I did have an old man shaking his head at me when he offered me a ride and I declined. Seriously, it's 2013. The offer is nice, but... no, thank you.

Thursday - Practice with SRDM. 3 mile run - I forgot my phone so I had to estimate on the time... This run was about 30 minutes long

Friday-  Rest day. (FULL rest day) (besides dog walking)

Saturday - I was supposed to run 5 miles with SRDM for their long run day (they're training for the marathon in October) but it got rained out... At 7am Saturday morning it started pouring down rain and lightning... Back to bed, I went! Unfortunately, I did not do much later that day besides dog walking. :-/

As always you can find my runs and walks on Runkeeper and if you're interested in joining Gympact and get paid for your works, use my referral code "frontAmber" to get $5 automatically!

How was your week of training? Anyone local running Dam to Dam this weekend??

Book Club Friday

Hellooooo, Friday! TGIF, riiiight? This week has been a kind of long week. I am back into subbing full time and, as any teacher will tell you, the end of the year is the WORST. The kids are just restless and done. The end is in sight and they are Checked. Out. It took me a couple days to just finally give in, and decide not to fight this battle with them.

So, I am glad it's a weekend, and a holiday weekend, too!

Today I am participating in Heather's Book Club Friday for the first time in what feels like ages. I am reviewing Slammed and Point of Retreat by Colleen Hoover. Molly sent me Slammed in a book swap quite a long time ago and it has been taunting me ever since. I am so thankful I finally picked it up, because it was SO good!

Almost immediately after finishing Slammed I went to my Netgalley account because I was pretty sure I had a copy of Point of Retreat (the sequel) for review. Huzzah! I did, which I devoured in less than 24 hours.

Here is the synopsis of Slammed from its Goodreads page:

Following the unexpected death of her father, 18-year-old Layken is forced to be the rock for both her mother and younger brother. Outwardly, she appears resilient and tenacious, but inwardly, she's losing hope.

Enter Will Cooper: The attractive, 21-year-old new neighbor with an intriguing passion for slam poetry and a unique sense of humor. Within days of their introduction, Will and Layken form an intense emotional connection, leaving Layken with a renewed sense of hope.

Not long after an intense, heart-stopping first date, they are slammed to the core when a shocking revelation forces their new relationship to a sudden halt. Daily interactions become impossibly painful as they struggle to find a balance between the feelings that pull them together, and the secret that keeps them apart.

Colleen Hoover's writing really reminded me of John Green. I noticed that from that start and I knew immediately that I would end up devouring everything she has written. There were a few things that I found unrealistic, but this is young adult fiction. I quickly reminded myself that this is a story to get lost in and I promptly got over it. Slammed is full of quotes that are just amazingly rich and make you stop reading to think about it or read the quote over, and over, and over... 

Here are a few I loved: 

“Question everything. Your love, your religion, your passion. If you don't have questions, you'll never find answers.” 

“Don't take life too seriously. Punch it in the face when it needs a good hit. Laugh at it.”  

“Imperfections define perfection” 

“Respect the hand that I was dealt. And to be grateful I was even dealt a hand.” 

Point of Retreat was also pretty good. I won't say it was as good as Slammed, but I definitely enjoyed it and read it very quickly. There is a third book in the series called This Girl. For some reason none of my local libraries have it, so I am probably going to have to buy it. Darn.... 

 If you are a fan of John Green, I definitely recommend this series!