Wow....Life at Neck Breaking Speed

So it appears I have completely disappeared! The last few MONTHS since my last post have been practically overwhelming and wonderful but that is my life and I suppose I wouldn't have it any other way.  No sense in going through a bunch of words and the fact I have been awake for just over 24 hours is not helping.
Here I go with some bullets (not necessarily in order, but I will try!):
-school year starts winding down
**Celebrated our son's first birthday with some close friends, some close family, dinner and cupcakes!**

Happy Birthday Little One!

-I decide to try to return back to my old school as the changes on my team over the past 1.5 years has been a little less charming. 
-Was offered a position at my current school but with first grade.  (and to make a very long and emotionally difficult 48 hours in one short sentence...) I took the job!
-Which made the end of the year psychotically CRAZY!! Holy moly! I had already planned on the end of the year being more busy than normal but this added a huge amount of crazy.
-Packing, boxes, packing, boxes, trying to sort 6+ years of accumulated "teacher stuff" into things I thought I needed or wouldn't need next year..yikes.  Thank goodness for my family and my good friend for their help. phew.
-All the "regular" end of the year stuff for school.
-Helped my bestie mentioned in previous posts move out of her apartment to go down south. Sad day.
-Finished up in the classroom the rest of the week. (done Friday morning)
-Family reunion (left Friday afternoon, come back Sunday)
-Home and packed for our grand Korea and Japan adventure and leave on Tuesday.
***********Spent just over 2.5 weeks in Korea and Japan with my Hubby**********************
~Among many fantastic things, I met my foster mom in Korea and hung out with my friend in Japan.

One of the best moments of my life!!!!!!! Amazing!

-Now trying to adjust back to the time, but so far not doing so well.  So I will give sleep another shot tonight! 

Hope you are well!

Clubs

Apologizing in advance, this post is going to be a little all over the place!

Thanks to the ladies who left some words of advice for my dear friend.  In the past few weeks I have seen so much from her, pain and happiness and sadness.  She is such a dear friend, my best friend and I do not know what I would do without her in my life.  She has put in a letter of resignation at our school and as sad as I am to see her go, I am every step behind her as she makes some huge changes in her life.  Changes are happening all around. I am there to support as she has me.

In other news, there is a new post up on our adoption blog.  Please check it out there if you haven't already! Building Blocks to Forever . We received a huge surprise on Monday.  Three new photos of our son.  I think he looks so much bigger than the photos from last month.  Crazy. Adorable. We were so lucky to get some new pictures.  I will post some photos on the adoption blog. =0)

I hope you all had a nice weekend and survived Mother's Day. Congrats to the new Mommies and to the Mommies to be.  And to those of us who are waiting and wishing, I thought of you.  I felt like I was in limbo this year.  Not quite part of the still dreaming because I do have a son now, but I can still dream of what's to come.  But definitely still in the waiting club.  And most definitely in the wanting club.  I so want to meet him and snuggle him.  Maybe he will be here next year for Mother's Day. Maybe not, I don't know.  So even though this was my technically my first Mother's Day, I will wait to officially celebrate it when our little guy is home. The last few weeks have been extremely hard for me.  I felt sad knowing I would have had a baby in my arms this Mother's Day.  I would have been due sometime last week.  It makes me cry still. I feel slightly guilty because I feel as though I am not fully embracing my son over in Korea.  But I was and still am overjoyed but life has thrown me a curve ball with my emotions.  I knew this would be hard, just didn't know what to expect.

My dear friend sent me flowers for Mother's Day.  I cried really, really hard.

beautiful roses

love this. My friend is truly wonderful, such a loving heart.

Spring Crazies

Life has been busy as always.  And even though I love being busy, I still need at least a few more hours every day to get my shit done.

Three weeks since my last post....I guess it's a little harder when there isn't as much stuff going on with the adoption as there was with IVF.  But the great news is we got our second update on our little guy last week so my plan is to make my post on the adoption blog tomorrow night. He is getting so big and he has received our first gift. And his hair grew...a lot! Hopefully he receives our second gift soon, as multiple families just traveled to Korea from our placing agency to pick up their little ones.Here's a picture. I will post more on my adoption blog. love, love!

Our guy. getting so big!!!!

I had a glorious week off from school for spring break....spent most of it in Las Vegas with my girls.  So nice to get away from pretty much everything.  I am at a point of trying to figure EVERYTHING out and it's a little frustrating at times.  So good to relax, meet some new folks, get some sun and dance, dance, dance!

Right before I left I finally decided to apply for graduate school.  I was such a spaz trying to fill out the damn application I don't think I even want to know what I would be like in class.  But this is something I have wanted to do for a long time now. And damn it, had I actually started it when I "wanted" to and had the first peeping thoughts I would have been done already...years ago. BUT, of course I didn't because "what if I get pregnant? I don't want to try to go back to school and juggle being a new mommy." HAH, what a fucking joke.  So over the week in Vegas, I talked myself out of it, with some advice from my friends, but mostly with the voice of our social worker in my head. "Don't start anything big." Well, if that's not big I don't know what is. But what about my teacher friend at school who says..."do it now, before your baby comes." Except that he won't be a baby, he'll be a toddler.  I feel so upset. Damn IF, you messed all that up. Or maybe I did because I was waiting for the miracle to happen that always eluded us and I should have just gone for it.  But for now, I will wait. I just turned in a bunch of units, so that helps a bit and I will just try to get more in the coming year.

Feeling like I am in a slump with Hubby. Enough said.  I can't wait for our trip to Korea and Japan this summer. Hopefully it gives us the time together and the recharge we need.  But...we need to book our tickets and that hasn't happened yet.  We are not world travelers so booking a multi-destination trip is trickier than I think we both expected.  So our attempts have been fun so far.  Next step is calling the airlines...help!

School is good. Conferences are over and they went great overall. So proud of my kiddos.  Tomorrow we will start our classroom garden.  Today my kids picked which types of seeds they will plant.  This is my favorite time of year, they love it and so do I!

I try to follow along with your blogs, but realized tonight I have some big holes, especially after being gone for a few days.  Thinking of you.

Leprechauns

We didn't catch any of the tricksters, but boy oh boy....did they have fun! The traps left by my kids were turned into one giant structure with their "bait" hidden inside! Our classroom was quite a mess (mixed up calendar, knocked over/stacked chairs, spilled caddies, etc.) and they left us notes throughout the morning which eventually led us to some edible gold coins! Funny, I have never had a group of kids so convinced they were really here.....loved it! They were looking at things all day with a different eye and seeing things (that have been there all along) but never noticed....which of course meant the leprechauns did it! This is my favorite day of all with my kids.  And this year topped them all. oxo

little boot prints

Believe it or not...I teared up a little telling my kids how happy I was they were there to help me clean. I think it only added to their excitement and how real it must be!!

New structure courtesy of Hubby

Some of the traps as of Thursday after school...

Leprechauns like shiny objects...we used gold coins and treasure tub pieces as bait.

Those Funny Feelings....

I was struck with a bout of sadness the other night.  Guess I felt sorry for myself.  I know it is normal and probably is to be expected.  Seeing pictures of my good friend who was just in front of me in her pregnancy has been hard.  I had tears last night for a commercial for a credit card (I think!) where the lady finds out she is having triplets. I think I will be happier once my friend's baby is born.  As much as I miss her since she now lives out of state, I am secretly glad I won't be able to make it to her shower and instead can just send my gift.  It's funny because as happy as I am about our son in Korea, I am still surprised at my (sometimes) jealous feelings and sadness about what could have been.  I think its getting better.  It just still stinks.

I am excited about tomorrow morning in my classroom....the leprechauns paid a visit over the weekend and the traps my kids set up on Thursday (we had a work day) on Friday have been transformed by my terrific Hubby into a grand structure with their bait hidden inside.  Green bootprints and gold glitter all around and a pot of gold coins to be found later on in the morning.  I'll have to add pictures later since I left my phone at home while we were at school today.  Our celebration will be a little less than normal because our days at school are so squished for time, but I am looking forward to seeing my kids' faces in the morning. 

In other news, I do believe my body is back to normal.  For months, I have not experienced my normal PMS symptoms and last month I did. Sore, busty boobs and cramping a week plus before AF's appearance.  So I am happy things are back to "normal"...took long enough. 

I posted a new post about our wonderful trip to Arizona to our placing agency.  If you are interested, check it out here, if you aren't following along yet.

Hope you all had a great weekend! I am off to try to catch up some more on your worlds. 

Wonderful

Waking up in a hotel room and not being able to fall asleep is a perfect excuse to do a mini post. I am on my phone so this will be short and sweet. This weekend has been wonderful so far and I wish we could stay one more day (and had a rental car!) to explore AZ more. Today was more emotional than I had expected.  I wish this agency was closer so we could stay in "better" contact with some of the people we met today. Saw a very dear old friend way back from kindergarten and will see a college friend tomorrow before we return home. Hoping my pills work their magic again on the flight back and trying not to think about it too much. I'll fill you in about our trip soon.

Long Overdue

Yikes.  I have been really bad about this blog lately.  My life has taken an interesting turn and I am enjoying it but my life seems a bit busier than ever. More on that in a moment.

In adoption news, we received our first update on our son and all looks well. The best part was receiving 5 new photos!! I posted a few over on the adoption blog.  Scroll down for the link if you are interested in checking it out.  I am still so very grateful we received our referral so quickly.  We are flying to Arizona early Friday morning because our placing agency has a mandatory orientation meeting. California families have one on Friday...Saturday is for everyone.  Please send good thoughts my way......I am a terrible flyer.  But I am trying to look at this trip as good flying practice for Korea!!!  I am thrilled to finally meet the director at the agency and I am looking forward to connecting with some other adoptive families as well. I'll be sure to do a post about it next week.

My newest turn in life is my attempt to help bring in some extra income, on top of the after school tutoring I am already doing.  I signed up to be a consultant with a well know candle company called Par.tyL.ite in January.  We had an amazing fundraiser and I can already see how this can help us in just my first month. I wanted to help with some costs, especially our trip to Korea this summer, which we are still planning on taking.  I have a great leader and I am enjoying everything so far! I work full time but this allows me to help but with my own schedule and I can do as little or as much as I want, and it's different. I figured it couldn't hurt just to see what happens.  So far so good and I am committed to doing whatever I can do to help.  In fact, I received a beautiful bouquet of flowers last night at our unit meeting for having the highest sales in February.....go me!!   We all know how expensive our family building attempts are and since I have the time and the energy (for the most part!) I wanted to do more. And since I love their candles and their products...why not?! If you are interested in checking out their awesome-sauce candles (or ever earning free product...online party anyone?!?!)  just let me know in the comments section and I will send you the link to my page. =0)

School is good. I "lost" a student a few weeks ago to his ED (Emotionally Disturbed) placement out of district.  I have never cried so hard saying goodbye to a student. Saddest thing ever for me, I could hardly talk at one point saying goodbye, I was so choked up.  I know he is where he needs to be and it took a lot to get him there, but I miss him in many ways.  One of those kids where his family betrayed him in so many ways.  Beyond maddening and it makes me sick. He was the hardest student I have ever had in my class and I miss him the most, even though some days my work day was a living hell because of him.

I have been trying to read and catch up on your blogs...usually on my phone which is not ideal. Thinking of you ladies. Have a great weekend!!!!