Oh my heavens, all teachers know that there is no tired like first week of school teacher tired (all you mamas are probably rolling your eyes, but since we don’t have kiddos, this week is all I know of T-I-R-E-D!).  It was a crazy but fun week as we started settling back into a rhythm of work and life again.  I’m definitely happy to be back though, and can’t wait for all this year has in store!

1. Getting My Classrooms Set Up

Since I travel between two schools (one in the morning and one in the afternoon), and I moved rooms at one school/had my room painted and had to take everything down at the other school, I had TWO rooms to get ready for students.  While I may not have the spiritual gift of bulletin board decorating like some teachers, I still had fun throwing some posters, flags, and other goodies on the wall to make things a little more colorful.   I wish I had more time/money to spend to make this space sparkle, but for now, I’m feeling pretty good about it!

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Hey hey, friends! If your hometown has been near as hot as ours was this week, I have a feeling you also stayed inside watching way too much Netflix and hiding in the AC.  Or maybe that was just us?

Jordan starts “new teacher” training next week since he is starting in a new district, so this was our last full week of summer together.  I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather, so we once again spent lots of fun time watching Jimmy Fallon, doing house projects, and hanging out with friends.  I also decided to rewatch Parenthood from the very beginning, which has led to lots of happy tears.  It’s just as good (if not better) the second time around!

Here are some pictures and updates from our last full week of summer!

1) Baking Time With My Niece

My sweet niece Elsie is in town for the summer, and it has been so fun to get to spend some time with her.  Jordan and I took her out for Funny Face Pancakes at Ihop and then back to our house for some puppy play time and baking, and it was so fun! I let her decide on our “recipe” (aka what extras we added) and we made chocolate-chip, peanut butter chip, M&M cookies. Olive is pretty happy any time a small child more likely to drop food comes into our house.  She scored two scoops of cookie dough that day! Totally unhealthy but she survived, so I suppose it’s okay, right?

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Hello, hello! I hope you all had a wonderful week and are excited to jump into another fun summer weekend (hopefully filled with yummy food and sweet time with friends and family).  After ten days of traveling, we spent this week hanging out at home and spending time with our KC family we hadn’t seen in a while.  Weeks like this make me so grateful to have a job with natural breaks for rest and recovery before starting up another year.  Just another great reason to be a teacher, right?

Anyway, here are five updates and other fun things from our week!

1) Gorgeous Couple Pics

When we were in California, we had the chance to do a quick couples photo shoot with my best friend and college roommate, Haley of Haley George Photography.  She posted the pics this week and I love love love them! She took pictures of me in college, photographed Jordan’s proposal and our engagement pictures, and has taken pictures of us in so many different seasons.  Thanks to this girl, our life will always be very well-documented! Thanks for some lovely pictures, Hales! You can check out the rest of the pictures on Haley’s blog!

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Before I became a blogger (you can read about the story behind my blog here), I had a handful of bloggers that I followed regularly. I had maybe 10-12 blogs bookmarked on Google Chrome, and every day during lunch would sit down and click through each of the blogs to see if they had anything new that day.

This system wasn’t horrible, and feel like I really grew to love the voices and stories of those bloggers I was following regularly.  But as I’ve jumped more into the blogging world, I’m starting to feel like just about everyone has a blog and it starts to feel overwhelming to follow them.  I want to follow along with all of my friends’ and family members’ blogs, but don’t have the time to click around each day and figure out if anyone’s posted something new.

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Happy Friday, friends! This was our official first week of summer.  Even though some last minute family staying with us (see below) made the week look a little different than we had planned, it was a fun weekend/week and we couldn’t be happier to have a break from work.

This last weekend, Jordan and I headed to good ol’ Carthage, MO for Jordan’s annual family reunion.  Jordan’s grandpa is one of 11 siblings, and the descendants of each family gather in Missouri each year to catch up and celebrate all the ways God has grown their family in the last 100 years.  The descendants of those 11 siblings add up to over 400 people, which is CRAZY! I’m grateful to be a part of this big, crazy family.  Anyway…on to a few favorites and updates from this week!

1) A Full House

After we went to Jordan’s family reunion, Jordan’s cousin, her husband, and their three little girls came to stay with us for a few days before heading to Colorado for another family reunion.  Their girls are 5, 3, and 8 months, and are about as sweet as can be.  We had a lot of fun hosting them, and our house was a much cuter, snugglier, and louder place to be this week.  It was definitely a glimpse of what having a couple kiddos will look like, and it made me very, very grateful that you usually just start off with one tiny baby who can’t move all that much for a few months.

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If you’re reading this post, it means my four weeks of summer school are officially done and it is summertime! PRAAAAAAAISE! Even though I’d say fall is my favorite season, as a teacher, there are few things better than those sweet weeks of break from the ups and downs of working with middle schoolers.  I can’t wait for six weeks of sleeping in, jumping more fully into blogging, snuggling my puppy and hubby, pool time, watermelon, iced coffee, and a million other things.  Seriously…summer is the best.

I’m linking up with A. Liz Adventures, Fitting It All In, Life in Leggings, Grace and Love Blog, Momfessionals Friday Favorites, Friday Letters, and Running 4 Cupcakes to share some of my Friday favorites and random updates from this week! Enjoy!

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