Looking Forward to the Next...

Okay, be forewarned that there is a lot of explanation going into the fun part of this post, and it is a bit personal, but here it is anyway.

I am really blessed to have found a good job for the past 11 years. I have had the joy of working with teenagers in a high school and developing my skills for teaching Spanish. Now when I say joy of working with teenagers I mean that to the extent that I like teenagers, and generally speaking I get along quite well with them. I could sit around all day and just talk to them, unfortunately my job wasn't just hanging out with them, it was teaching them, which meant trying to get them to focus and learn something that they didn't usually feel like learning.  When it comes to teenagers they just aren't as fun when you have to get them to do things they don't want to do. That having been said I really struggled with my job and spent much time pondering possible changes to my career. Unfortunately no matter how much soul searching and prayer I put into it I would always come full circle to rediscovering that I was where I needed to be for the time I was in. 

Year ten was the absolute worst for me! I had one class in particular that made me want to walk out of my job everyday. I tried everything with them, from phone calls to personal pleas, to individual goal setting with each student to having the assistant principal sit in on classes...you name it I probably tried it; fasting and praying included. I don't know what made me sign another contract but I did have one single moment where I knew I must do it for another year. I signed the contract then at the end of the school year I took off to Utah to get away and, like I said in my other post, regroup.

So, here I found myself re-determined to move forward and to teach for at least another year. Fortunately the next year had a little bit of hope to it because as I said before I was dating this guy, as I also mentioned before, that I really liked. My challenge now was to get through the year with the hope that I would finally find something new to make this "one more year" my last. 

For the next several months I found myself looking forward to the next big thing, the next date, the next trip, the next holiday... so here are some of the highlights that I looked forward to that year.

NAUVOO
So my...hmmm...what do I call him?...I will just say boyfriend :) suggested we take a little day trip for Labor Day. We talked about a few places and settled on going to Nauvoo. Here is a pic to prove it.

(Just in case I have readers who aren't familiar with Nauvoo here is a site with a little info.)

LOUISIANA
So he use to live in a tiny community and went to church with a very small congregation that was made up of people mostly older than he was. One evening he told me he had word of one of them passing away and another that was near death and that he wanted to go visit soon. I knew I would miss him and asked when he planned on going, he said soon, within the next few weeks, then he followed up with extending an invite to me to go with him. I was pretty excited. We made arrangements to stay with his old branch president (like a bishop but for a smaller congregation). They had appropriate accommodations for us in their home that was in the middle of nowhere. Some of the highlights of the trip included:

-the scenic drive where I learned more of the depth of knowledge he had for farming. (on a side note, all my sisters married Idaho boys, and yet I ended up with the farmer - hmm -go figure)

-a beautiful sunset! (pictures never do them justice)

-and of course riding a small tractor

Things I don't have pictures of: 
-the delicious catfish we had at a random stop
-the walk by the river, it was just a stop and stretch stop
-the ride in and old army truck 
-the roadside picnic we had on the way home 
-the meeting of people he use to know and seeing his love and care for them (only emphasized what a great guy I was dating)

So I guess he also enjoyed that trip because on the way home he suggested that we take another trip to Utah for Christmas...to make that wait time a little more bearable I also looked forward to my Birthday in October and to Thanksgiving, but I don't have any pictures of them.

UTAH/IDAHO
to be continued...