If you didn't know...

life is beginning a new chapter in the Call household. The year 2014 is only a few months in and a lot has happened in the everyday lives of our little family. Take a step back with me into the past few months for me to describe what has happened, what is currently happening, and what will begin happening in the next few months. 2014 is shaping up to be the most growing our family has had to do, yet!

At the beginning of the year, we had the opportunity to spend sometime down in a state that neither Matt nor I had been to. Florida. My father and step-mom have made this humidity ridden state their home and boy did we love it! We spent a whole week with my family. We saw plenty of animal life and experienced the beauty that excess water does to vegetation. Let me just tell you, it is a heck of a lot different than here in desert land Utah. When the week was up it was incredibly hard to leave. But, we put are big girl/boy panties on and came back to the real world which meant the start of some really challenging weeks ahead.

To start off, the beginning of January meant the beginning of my 55 day journey through Student Teaching in a 1st grade class. Student Teaching was the last "hoorah" I had to complete, alongside my senior project, before I could graduate and go into the real world. My classroom consisted of 24 kids who were hip height, all of which had different levels of interest, reading scores, math high and lows, and personalities from all walks of life. Student Teaching pushed me past my breaking point and times, granted I was between 25-37 weeks pregnant during the whole ordeal. Yes, I was pregnant.
Call me crazy, call me insane, ask me "how I did it" as many times as you want and I'll always say, "It's what I had to do, so I did it"
Was it hard? Yes.
Was it exhausting? Was it ever.
Was it worth it? I can describe how helpful and enlightening the experience was.
Was it what I expected? Not in the slightest.

See, kids have a way of acting differently when you become the authoritative figure. They try and figure out through a twist of games they play, just how far they can push you and how hard you'll push back. It took me almost halfway through my student teaching to realize that I was the one in charge and that I needed to demand/teach that respect should be given when I am the teaching. I also had to remind myself that these kids are 6 and 7 years old and I was the one teaching them the virtues and facts of life. Such as, not pushing other people, or pulling on people's clothes, saying "Excuse me" when they fart or burp, no pushing in line, saying a genuine sorry when they did something wrong, not touching themselves or others where they shouldn't be touched, and not starting a fight but learning how to deal with it and avoid having them. There was a lot to teach but I found that the more prepared I was the happier I was and the happier the kids were. (Oh, and substitutes are the worst things for your kids, it throws the scheduling and everything you have built as their teacher, off.)---Basically, when I have my own classroom I can never be sick.