The Last Day of School

Every day for the last 5 years, I have been in charge of our students graduation.  They participate in the regular ed 8th grade graduation ceremony, which I think is really cool.  I create their slideshow with pictures throughout the years, their silhouette with pictures and quotes around it, work with them to write their "last wills and testaments," and hand make invitations.  This year was no different, except for the fact that I didn't actually get to see the kids graduate.  This made me really sad, but my last day of school today was a close second, and I have absolutely no complaints.

We started the day with an hour long hike through the redwoods.  The high school kids that I work with are very mobile and quite independent, so most of them were able to trek up and down the hills.  I am SO lucky to have the job that I do.  I mean, who else gets to hike through the redwoods with a bunch of awesome kids and coworkers for an hour?  I couldn't snap any pictures because I was working, but my goodness the forest is gorgeous.  I was really confused when the kids started eating lunch at 11:30.  The last day of school is usually an early out for the regular ed population, but at my old school, our kids always had to stay until the regular time.  I guess at the high school, the kids get to leave early and they were all gone by 12!  I couldn't believe it.  It was basically a perfect last day of school.

The weather was absolutely gorgeous when I got home, so of course I had to take advantage of it and go for a run on my usual 5k route.  I have been getting rather bored with it lately since I have been running it for years, but today I had so much on my mind that the miles flew by.

I keep my phone in my bra while I run, so it was all cloudy from the sweat.  Gross, I know.

Stretching in the sun.

Then I came inside, got barefoot, and did my shoulder routine.  I am thinking about creating a page specifically for my workouts because I mention them a lot, but don't go into specifics, just in case my dad my readers are curious about what I do (hint: I make it up as I go along).

I finished off my workout with a plank, as I have been since I heard of the plank-a-day challenge.  I don't know about anyone else, but my sides right underneath my armpits are so sore from planking.

After working out, I realized I hadn't eaten lunch yet, so I made tuna and paired it with vegetables and 65 pounds of fruit.  I am a fruit addict.  

I then crawled into bed with an icepack, green tea, and put on "Spirit of the Marathon," which I got totally sucked into.  It's really, really good and almost makes me want to sign up for a full.  I'm scared though.  

My left knee has been bothering me, so I figured icing it would be good.

Our good family friend's twins are graduating from high school this year.  They both went to different high schools based on preference and where they felt they would best succeed.  So the girl's graduation was today and the boy's graduation is tomorrow.  We had their graduation party at our house.  I forced myself out of bed (and had to pause the movie) to go be a good friend and watch the graduation ceremony.

This is also where I graduated from college.

The spread when we got home was fantastic.

I ate my weight in food because I was starving.

I accidentally had two plates.  This was just the first one.

Now I am back in bed ready to finish my movie.  I am going to spend the first day of vacation at the gym with my best friend teaching her how to make her not be able to stand up from the toilet workout her legs with lots of squats and lunges.  I can't wait!

Workout Wednesday

Today was an unexpected day off.  I was actually kind of hoping that no sub jobs would pop up because I had things I needed to get done.  I avoid errands on the week days because after working and exercising and making dinner, I am exhausted and would rather read blogs or catch up on stupid shows on Netflix.  Boyfriend left for work, so I was up bright and early (he has to leave the house at 6:30am to get to work by 8).  I spent a little while in bed cuddling with Milo.  He NEVER wants to cuddle with me, so I soak up every minute I can when he's in the mood.

Yeah, he has creepy eyes when he's sleeping.

When 7:15 rolled around and I didn't get a call from the sub line, I got out of bed and started a different version of the workout I did last week.  It was just as awesome and got me just as sweaty.  The 11 minutes of ab work at the end almost killed me.  Luckily, I survived.  Barely.

Obviously the woman in the video was dying too.

After breakfast and a shower, I headed out to my mom's school to watch their end of the year performance and 8th grade graduation.  My mom works at the tiniest little two room school house in the middle of nowhere.  Seriously.  Research the middle of nowhere, and you will find her school.  She has 12 students ranging from kindergarten to 8th grade.  The road to the school is incredibly windy and mostly one lane, but absolutely gorgeous. 

This is what my mom's commute looks like most of the way.

It is literally a little red school house.

When I got there, they were having their little cafe part of the performance.  Their act was a "poetry slam" where they performed poems they had memorized and ones they had written themselves, so to make it feel more real, they started out with a cafe.  The kids were the servers and were all wearing chef hats and wandered around taking people's orders.  The tables were even covered with paper for us to draw on!  It was the cutest thing I've ever seen.  My mother is the best teacher I know.

After the performance and the graduation there was a BBQ.  Since the school is so small, it was a potluck.  The burgers that were grilled were from a cow that lived on one of the student's ranch (meaning completely grass fed, hormone/antibiotic free), the strawberries were grown in someone's garden, as were the vegetables for the salad, and there was homemade apple and blackberry pie.  I love the country sometimes.  You better believe I fueled up.

There's a burger under those tomatoes, I promise.

The spread.

I practically ate and ran because I had to be back to town by 3 for a very important meeting with my best friends.

That's right, I got to see my best friend's little nugget on the ultra sound machine.  It was so exciting!  This baby will practically be my nephew and I love the baby so much already. The baby (the jury is still out on wether it's a girl or a boy) was waving at us and looking at us.  I've never experienced any pregnancy first hand, so having all of these pregnant best friends is really exciting.  I can't wait for there to be babies everywhere for me to play with.  

After a quick stop at the bank, I finally made it home.  Earlier in the morning my amazing family coworkers had called me asking where the heck my scholarship application was (it was due today).  I told them that I needed two letters of recommendation and since I had literally just gotten the form less than a week ago, I didn't have time to ask people to write me one.  Well, both of the teachers of the two classrooms wrote me letters and I just had to deliver my end of the paperwork.  Luckily for me, the woman in charge lives 1 mile away, so I strapped on my running shoes and ran to her house, then continued on.  

It felt really good to get sweaty again...

Or maybe it hurt a little bit.  Then I did a little more ab work, planked it up, and stretched.  Milo did his sit ups with me.

Then, of course, since I worked out again, I had to eat.

After I peeled myself off the chair in the dining room, I forced myself to fold all of the laundry that had been piled up for an embarrassing amount of days.  

Moe is obsessed with this monkey toy he has had since I got him in 2009.  It was sitting on my desk chair and I noticed he was staring at it intently.  For 45 minutes.  He's such a weirdo.

Tomorrow is the last day of school and I always love the last day of school.  Everyone is excited and in good moods.  I hope everyone has a fantastic Thursday.

End of the Year

Thursday is the last day of school for the students around here.  While I am enjoying getting some extra experience in other classrooms, I am really feeling sad this week about not being in my classroom for the last week.  I have been in charge of graduation for the last 4 years, creating everything from the slideshow that's played for the parents to the invitations that are sent home.  Once again, I did it this year, except that I won't be attending the graduation.  It's also a little sad because the student that I was a one on one for would have been graduating as well, had he not moved.  I spent the rest of the night on Sunday in a sad funk trying to figure out what the heck was wrong.  I finally pin-pointed it.

Monday, I felt a little better.  I went about my day, working in the pre-school classroom, which is never boring and then hit the gym.  I did a 5k recovery run and then worked out my back.  I finished it off with a two and a half minute plank.  I'm hopping on the plank-a-day train because I like the challenge.

When I got home, I was put in charge of making dinner, so I created some concoction of sausage, spinach, carrots, and onion.  And made a big ol' salad.

Apparently the boy had made plans for us with our friends to go discgolfing again.  It was a nice evening for it and it was nice to get out of the house on a week night.  This grandma usually is in bed by 8.

Brother photobomed.

Perfecting their form.

Brother is the only one who actually knows what he's doing.

Celebrating their bogies.  Whatever that means.

We also took plenty of photos of ourselves, because that's what we do when we're together.

Today was my last day in the preschool class.  It was a fun day.  They had their graduation and parents came to watch.  It was really rather adorable.  I hit the gym afterward because that's what I do every day.  I did somewhat of a tempo run, with miles 2 and 3 faster than miles 1 and 4.  

Then I did chest and triceps.  The man who asked me what I was doing in the gym a couple of weeks ago is there at the same time as me pretty much every single day.  He has taken blatantly staring at me occasionally looking over at what I'm doing and copying me shortly after I am finished with my set.  I don't know if I should be flattered or creeped out.  I also did planks.

When I was finished, I went to collect my things from the locker room.  I don't have a lock for the lockers because I'm not super paranoid about my stuff.  I generally trust the people who are there at the same time I am, they are usually family people or women my age getting in the pool.  Today, however, my bra was missing.  I searched everywhere.  All of my other belongings were still there, like my money, but someone took my bra!  Unless it flew somewhere else in the locker room, someone actually STOLE MY BRA!  I simply could not believe it.  A bra is a pretty gross thing to steal.  Hopefully the person who has it now really needed a new one.

Tonight's dinner was chicken breast over rice, roasted broccoli, and leftover salad.  So fantastic.

I don't have anywhere specific to be tomorrow, and I am almost hoping I don't get a phone call about subbing so that I can visit my mom's classroom for the first time ever.

Sunny Sunday and Runner Problems

Last night, after I blogged, I did not, in fact, get into bed.  Boyfriend DID take me to froyo before we went north to hang out with our friends and play Mario Kart.  I'm incredibly horrible at any and all videogames, but I do enjoy playing Mario Kart.  I came in last every single time.  It was fun.  She braided my hair for me in a fishtail which I cannot figure out how to do to save my life.

We finally got home around 1:30am where I proceeded to pass out immediately.  The sun really wears me out.  So does staying up until the wee hours of the morning.  I woke up at 7:45 this morning and thought for 2 seconds about getting my long run out of the way.  That thought was demolished when I fell back to sleep until ELEVEN!  I could not believe that I slept that long.  We are supposed to be down at boyfriend's mom's house at 11, so we jumped out of bed and made our way down there.  We had fresh sugar snap peas straight from his grandma's garden to munch on while we waited for brunch to be ready.  Those taste like a dream.

Finally brunch was ready and I stuffed my face with delicious eggs, sausage, and fruit.

When we were finished sitting around digesting chatting with each other, boyfriend got into his chimney sweep persona and cleaned out his grandma's chimney.  I don't think there is anything he can't do.  Last week he was a tree trimmer, this week cleaning out chimneys.  I guess he can't keep up with me while running, so there's that.

While he was doing that, his mom and I chopped the wood from last weekend into kindling.  This was actually a lot more work than it sounds like.  Thank goodness the weather was perfect and I got a lot of vitamin D.

Then we rushed home so that I could fit my long run in.  I was hoping to get 10 miles in again, but by the time I got to my dad's, it was already almost 5 and dinner is at 6:15ish every weekend, so I only had time for 9.2 miles.  I guess I just need to get speedier.  There was a little fiasco while I was running when boyfriend tried to be noble and wipe up the treadmill because my water bottle had leaked but he ended up knocking out the key that makes it go.  I was at 7.7 miles at that point and had a mild freak out.  I continued on until my dad came in a yelled at me that dinner was ready and that I really needed to stop.  I only got about 1.5 more miles after the little fiasco.

First world problem.

The only reason I chose the treadmill today was because I knew dinner would be ready in the middle of my run.  It was a fairly good run and I felt really good.  I felt even better when dinner was ready for me immediately.

In other news, in true runner fashion, I had a toenail come off this afternoon.

I now have 9 toenails, working on having only 8.  If you notice that middle toenail is totally gross and also about to fall off.  I have lost several toenails in the past and I feel as though it's a rite of passage into being a runner.  Runner problems are pretty gross sometimes.  

The Great Outdoors

About 85% of today has been spent outdoors, which is absolutely awesome.  Especially compared to yesterday.

As you can see, I ran 4 miles.  It was about 75 degrees outside, which meant it was about 95 degrees inside the gym.  It was so stuffy and hard to breathe.  I'm pretty sure air conditioners weren't invented in 1992, so of course the gym simply has tiny little fans blowing in random directions that aren't actually pointed at you.  It was leg day and I hit a major wall about 3 exercises in.  I had left my water bottle in the car, so I had to drink out of the lukewarm water fountain, which did not help anything.

Tried to get the massive amount of sweat pouring from me.  That shirt was dark blue by the end.

I came home and hung out with my best friends for the rest of the night.  We went to Pho because it has been way too long since I've had any.  It was a perfect Friday night.

This morning, I woke up early because I had to be at the local park by 9am for the bootcamp class I signed up for on Monday.  I've been majorly slacking on going to my circuit class, so I told my trainer friend I would be there today.  I am so glad I did.  The weather was perfect and the class was supposed to be an hour but ended up being an hour and 45 minutes.  We warmed up, did 6 sets of tabatas, ran a loop around the duck pond that had breaks involved for us to do dynamic squats, frog jumps up a massive hill (that murdered my legs), and burpees.  After the run we did ANOTHER round of 5 different tabatas, then a group exercise before finally cooling down.  It was definitely killer, but my kind of workout.

Finally done!

The group.

I had several missed calls from my friends who thought the class was only going to be an hour.  We had plans to go to the river, so I rushed home, ate my smoothie, and immediately headed out to the river.  It was about 100 degrees and way too hot to just lay out, so I spent most of my time swimming up stream and floating back down.  One of my best friends is pregnant and is already extra hot all of the time, so we left after about an hour and a half.  It was a good amount of time.  My skin didn't boil.

Boyfriend finally got off of work this morning, so he came with us.

  

When we got home, we showered and I immediately put on sweats.  Boyfriend then informed me that we were going to play discgolf, so I quickly downed food before heading to one of our many local courses.  Discgolf is a huge sport around here, but I don't really get it, so I just stand around and chuck the frisbee as far as I can.

I also sneak off behind bushes so that the boys can't see me taking pictures of myself because I'm so bored.

The boys, however, take it super seriously.  They know which discs are the putters, which ones are the drivers, and so on.  My brother even carries a towel around with him.  I made a comment about how he's pro status, and he said that he's not because he doesn't carry a bag or a chair for his bag.  Um?  A chair?  For your BAG?  I don't get this game at all.

It's too bad the course was so ugly and hard to look at.  I definitely didn't enjoy my time at all.  Oh wait.  It was actually beautiful.

I drove over that bridge in the distance for work every single day for 5 years.  Oh nostalgia...

We came home and I was hungry, as usual.  Apparently my best friend's mom asked her the other day if I have an eating disorder.  She told her that I, in fact, eat A LOT, I just run a lot too.  So that was awkward.  For dinner, I made myself a random plate that actually turned out great.  Leftover turkey from last night, two eggs, cheese, avocado, carrots, and bell pepper.  So much protein.  I shouldn't be hungry for awhile.

Now I am going to lay in my bed because I am incredibly tired from all of the vitamin D I got today.  Sometimes, we just need to be outside in nature.