first day of student teaching!

Today was my first day of student teaching. I'm so happy to finally be starting! It was a long wait...and kind of nerve-wracking at times (are they going to get a spot for me? What will the teacher be like? What grade will I be put in? What if I DON'T get a placement???)

I woke up at 5:30 this morning so that I could give myself extra time to find the school (sad news is that I'll probably get to "sleep in" til 5:45 from now on...) I'll need to be there at 7:15 every day. Thank goodness that the school is 10 miles east of our house (a 20 minute drive) as opposed to 10 miles west of our house (heading into Los Angeles during rush hour? good luck!)

Jesse woke up with me and had eggs and toast ready for me by the time I was dressed. What a guy! Have I been incredibly blessed, or what?!?

My CT (Cooperating Teacher) is Mrs. Shelly Inglish. The minute she opened the door for me this morning, I knew we would hit it off. She is warm and supportive, and I'm really thankful to be working with her (apparently, one of the other kindergarten teachers was supposed to get me, but she opted for a Kindergarten/First grade combination class over taking a student teacher! Praise God for putting me somewhere where the teacher was happy to have me!)

Because of my love for preschool, I've been wondering for the last year or so if elementary teaching was really for me. Today made me happy to realize that Kindergarten is really a perfect balance of everything that I love about both, so I'm very happy about that. I'll be interested to see what I find when I move up to 3rd grade for my next part of student teaching.

On my drive home today, I was wishing that Jesse would be home when I got there so that I could tell him all about my first day. Not that that would ever be the case (except on his day off!), but tonight will be especially late since there is a church council meeting, and I won't expect him to be home by 9:30, if that.
As I was feeling sad about having to wait until late tonight to share my day with him, I realized that I was coming upon the freeway that leads to church. So in a split-second decision, I jumped on the 605 and headed to see my husband. I'm so glad that he's only a 15 minute drive away! Maybe that will mean we can have lunch together sometimes...? :)

It was so nice just to be able to pop in and surprise him like that today. He decided to take a lunch break when I got there, and we hopped in the car and headed for some of Del Taco's amazing "Taco Tuesday" deal. Just sitting next to him at Del Taco made me so happy. I love him!

Oh! Funny story: the kids have to call me "Mrs. Brubaker," and it was definitely an experience adjusting to hearing that today (it doesn't happen at church because all the kids are on a first name basis with Jesse, so why would they be with me?). "Brubaker" is quite a name for 5 year olds to handle, but my favorite of the day was when a child raised his hand and called for me in all innocence "Mrs. Blueberry!"








Mr. and Mrs. Blueberry

Home Sweet Home

Sometimes when I wake up in the morning and walk through the house, I'm still amazed at all that has transpired here within the last few months. I was completely in love with the house from the first day we came here to see it and meet Mrs. Yurada, but who knew that it would change so much and look like this?
It took a LOT of hard work, and when I look around, I see the faces of the people who worked here with us and helped us fix up our home sweet home. I remember my three siblings walking out the back door with the horrible green carpet from the guest room and a look of triumph on their faces; I remember Bianca in the kitchen, tossing out canned foods that had expired 15 years ago; I remember my dad working tirelessly to paint the ceilings and teach the rest of us padowans how to paint an even coat; I remember my mom outside with a bottle of Windex swiping through years' worth of grime on the windows; and I remember Jesse and our faithful friend Greg ripping out the orange carpet from the front room and scraping up the disintegrated rubber mat underneath--two days before our wedding!

Well, here it is folks, the culmination of all of our work so far (with many things still on the to-do list, but here's what we've got right now!)

The before and after pictures you've been waiting for!

The front room on our first day with the keys to the house:



The front room now (give or take a sister or two!) beautiful wood floors were hiding underneath that old yucky carpet! This is now our music room (in case you couldn't tell!)


The dining room had antique gold wallpaper...nasty stuff.


Painted and set for dinner!


I fell in love with the kitchen at once

It (besides the bathrooms) is the only room in the house that we didn't paint.
I love yellow kitchens! (good thing too, huh? Not much you can do when there's yellow linoleum too!)

I love the vaulted ceiling in the den...the fact that it has a fireplace...
and the beautiful hand-built bookshelves that are on either side of the brick fireplace


Here it is with our furniture in it:


Our room was already painted blue, but we gave it a fresh coat (and a lighter hue) anyway


The beautiful quilt on the bed was made by Jesse's Aunt Leann--isn't it gorgeous?!?


The guest room is one of the rooms that made the biggest transformation. From this...


To this...


And of course, one can't forget the patio out back!


Ta-daaaaa!



It has been a lot of work (a LOT of work) but we can't be anything but sooo grateful for all of God's blessings!

time to catch up!

So, Jesse and I are in the living room right now. He's preparing his Sunday School lesson for this week and I realized that my time could be better spend catching you up on our last week instead of sitting around watching him like a pot waiting to boil.
It's been quite a week! Last Saturday, Jesse and I spent the whole day working around the house. We went to Lowe's and bought new handles and hinges for the cabinet doors above the closets in our room and our guest room. We also picked up some pretty mums to perk things up in our front yard. When we got home, it was time to trim the hedges, weed some areas, and plant my new flowers
Jesse and his crazy task: trimming the hedge!

happy to have flowers again!

We were very excited to be the hosts of this year's Labor Day with our family. Dad and Mom Mueller came from Oxnard with Kate and Laura, and Jon drove up from Biola after recovering from an "overnight Odyssey marathon reading" (or whatever it was called--pretty cool! why didn't they do things like that at my college?!?), Gramma and Papa came from Costa Mesa, Momma Bianca came from San Bernardino, Uncle Todd came, and our neighbors, Perry and Siby (who are absolutely adorable and I just love!) came over too. It was a full house! We're looking forward to hosting Thanksgiving here this year too, but I think we'll have to buy more chairs first!
Anyway, here's the whole group eating dinner:

We had a wonderful time! It was so much fun to have everyone over to our home--especially for those who hadn't seen it yet :)

On Tuesday and Wednesday, I got horribly sick with swollen lymph nodes. Here is a prayer email that I sent out, which I should have posted here too:

"Hello,
I just wanted to ask you to pray for me. For the past three weeks, I've been getting swollen lymph nodes under my left arm. It causes me a lot of pain and makes me feel weak, nauseous, and tired. Everything that I read online said that swollen lymph nodes are common, and can last up to 2 weeks. So far I've had 3 swollen lymph nodes, all on my left arm, and none has lasted a full two weeks. Yesterday, Jesse finally convinced me to go to the doctor, and I was told that I have an infection. The Dr. gave me an antibiotic and told me that if the swelling doesn't go down within 2 days, I have to go back for cultures. Last night another one began--this time in my right arm. It hurts a lot, and I don't know what to do.

Student teaching is supposed to begin any day (all I'm waiting for is a phone call telling me where I've been placed). It's been a frustrating experience waiting to hear where I will be, and the further I go into the school year without a placement means that my chances for getting a job in the spring are getting less and less. Jesse pointed out last night that "God knows what He's doing" since He hasn't put me in a classroom this week. Now I am thankful for that, because it's given me the ability to rest and be sick the last two days.

Please pray that the antibiotics help the swelling to go down so that there will be no need for further treatment. And also, please pray that I will hear about student teaching soon.

Thank you!

my love to all,
Bethany"

No fun! But God was amazing, and by Thursday, I was feeling much better. The swelling has gone down, and there is barely any tenderness left. I'm so thankful!

Also, good news about student teaching! I received a call yesterday letting me know that it is *almost* official that I will be placed in a kindergarten classroom at California Elementary School in West Covina! It couldn't be any better if I'd planned it myself. I've been thinking for a while now that Kindergarten may really be my niche, and I'm thrilled to get to do part of my student teaching in that age group to see if it's really for me. I'm also really blessed that this school is 10 miles away from my house, and in the right direction, traffic-wise. The next option was to place me in a school in East LA, and on top of being kind of scary, that would take forever to commute to because everyone is heading into LA in the mornings. But not I! Thank you, God!

I was feeling so good today that Jesse (whose new day off has officially switched to FRIDAYS as of this week) and I spent the day at the Long Beach Aquarium. We had a wonderful time. I don't think I've been there since high school, and I have so many fond memories of going there with my grandparents. Jesse had never been, so it was a lot of fun to show him around--and also be amazed with all of the changes they've made since I was there last.



This picture is especially for Papa Chuck:


After spending about 4 hours at the aquarium, we walked around Long Beach and enjoyed the harbor and some of the shops around there.
They have to have the biggest Borders over there that we've ever seen. Book stores kind of attract Jesse and me like moths to a flame, so we went in and enjoyed one of our favorite pastimes: reading childrens' books!
Good Ol' Shel Silverstein :)



Oh! I almost forgot to add one of the highlights of the day: there is actually a Bubba-Gump Shrimp Co. right across from the Aquarium. Here's Jesse's best Forest imitation :)


Well, that's it for me tonight. I feel a Scrabble tournament coming on!

p.s. I just realized that all of the pictures are pretty small. But if you click on any of them, they will show up in their own window much larger :)

time to enjoy

My last day of work was last Friday, so I got to enjoy Jesse's day off (Mondays) with him this week! Instead of taking advantage of another day we could spend doing housework, we decided to do something randomly touristy and go to the Los Angeles Zoo. I don't think I've been there since my sister Laura's 7th birthday.
It was a very warm day, and I went through all of the water I'd pack way too quickly, but we had a wonderful time. I took a series of pictures of Jesse imitating the various animals we saw, and that humored me immensely :)






It's wonderful to be able to enjoy times like these. Not to be dramatic or anything, but I feel like we're just about to dive into another realm: student teaching! Right now, all I'm waiting for is a phone call to let me know they've found a place for me and that I'm beginning in a few days. I don't know what life is going to be like when I start my student teaching. I just know that I'm going to be crazy busy, my day off will be different from Jesse's, and life just isn't going to be as simple. I'm going to miss being able to spend half an hour waking up in the morning just because I can, having leisurely breakfasts with Jesse before I either get in the car with him to go to work or stand on the threshold and wave til he's out of sight.

I just pray that as busy as I'll be, my focus won't shift and make me too busy to be a good wife. God has blessed us so much in the love that He has given to us to share...as long as we keep that in focus, how can anything go wrong?

Howdy

So I am sitting in my office waiting for Bethany to be finished up with the day care. Tomorrow is her last day and I know that she is excited to have a small portion of Summer left before Concordia/student teaching. However, student teaching is starting to seem a little sticky. I am sure that Beth would love your prayers for strength and encouragement - not to mention that I wouldn't mind some either ;-)

Thank you to all of our friends and family who have made our first Summer a great one. We thank you for the many blessings you have given us and look forward to seeing you soon, when and wherever that may be. God bless!

-Jesse

coming along... :)

From all of our work on this house, Jesse and I are learning patience, hard work, and the feeling of victory. Things come along a lot slower than we expect them to (like how I thought the blinds would all be up and everything by this time last week) but it's good practice for us to learn to be patient!
We finally got the blinds up today--sheer victory! It made the room (in my opinion...Jesse's differs slightly) about 20 degrees cooler inside (believe whom you may...). I'm so happy to have them up! Keeping that room cooler will be so much more merciful to both of my harps. They haven't quite forgiven me for bringing them to this unbearable climate.
While we were outside today, we met some of our neighbors! 5 year old Shauna popped out of her house across the street to show us the little puppy, Morgan, that her family is babysitting this week. Her mom came outside too, exclaiming how wonderful it was to meet us because we're "never home!" Adriana, the mom, is sooo sweet, and I like her a lot. It turns out she is a kindergarten teacher! She offered to help me with whatever I need, and also said that anytime we feel in over our heads about home maintenance, to give her husband a holler and he'll come over and help us out. (That's nice to know, because our silly drill gave us so much trouble today just figuring out how to get the drill bit in there that the whole thing almost had to be postponed! Why don't tool manufacturers include INSTRUCTIONS???)
Little bit by little bit, this adorable old handful of a house is coming along, and it's so encouraging just to see our progress! (before/after pictures still to come!)

A new month...

It got up to 92 degrees in our house while we were away at church today. What an adjustment for me after living a mile from the beach most of my life! I am doing much better with it now than I did initially when we moved here. Never having lived in a home with air conditioning before, and hearing horror stories of bills that went through the roof, I was terrified to use the AC at first. But another thing I learned here is that heat makes me grumpy...and I'd rather pay a high electricity bill than drive my new husband up a wall our first year of marriage! There has probably only been a collection of about 10 days or so since we've moved here, though, where I've been forced to turn on the AC in desperation. Otherwise, we've learned to manage quite well with our two floor fans and lots of ice cubes (ok...not we...I might as well leave Mr. "I-grew-up-in-the-Inland-Empire" out of this. Except that he has learned to manage with ME!)

Yesterday, we attended the wedding of our pastor's son (who has also been a close friend of Jesse's all through college). It was the third wedding in three weeks for me. I was "Matron of Honor" the last two weeks in a row for my high school friend Alina, and my college roommate Kim. What busy times! It was nice to get to sit down yesterday and enjoy the ceremony from the other side of the pews!

Mondays are Jesse's day off, and tomorrow, we have determined to finish painting the trim on all of the windows in our house. We worked so hard to get most of the painting done before our wedding and the two weeks after our honeymoon, and now that we have taken a well-deserved reprieve, we are back to the brushes again. Painting the window trim is the only thing keeping us from installing all of the new blinds that our landlords have purchased for us (that and probably the fact that neither of us has wielded a drill before!) It's as bit daunting, but I'm certain that the house will be much cooler when we have some way to keep the sun from cooking it inside out!

honeymoon pictures

thank you, Scrapblog! :)

back to the "real world" (well, sort of...)

Jesse and I both begin work tomorrow. It's crazy to believe that these three weeks have gone by so quickly. In one way, I think we're ready to settle into routine and escape our time of painting and remodeling the house, but at the same time, I wish this wonderful time of simply being able to spend every moment together never had to end. We have had so much fun! Setting up house has been a lot of work (I don't know how many trips we've made to Home Depot in the last two weeks, or how many cans of paint we've gone through...) but it has been so rewarding! We are still a long way from being completely finished, but compared to what it looked like in the beginning, it is such a huge change. I can't wait to post before/after pictures! I just have to wait to get all of our "afters" together first :)

We sure have learned a lot about this house in the last few weeks. Like the fact that the back door isn't weather-proof, and that hosing it off from the outside is a reeeeaallly bad idea. Or that one shouldn't turn on the washing machine without first checking to make sure someone else hasn't plugged the utility sink (into which the washing machine water drains) to soak paint brushes and rollers. That poor back entry--those two episodes meant that it was completely flooded twice in one week!
Also, it's important to check what color paint you're using before you paint all the trim in the house with it (it's pretty hard to tell until it dries...) And make sure you're not allergic to a chemical cleaning agent before you scrub with it for hours...

We've grown a lot, learned a lot, and laughed a lot. I'm thankful that those aren't traits we have to turn in once we start working. It has struck us, however, how being married all the sudden has turned us into old people! Jesse commented the other night, "I was driving home from youth group, and I realized that it was already 8:30, and I thought to myself, man, it's late! if we turned on a movie when I got home, it would be nearly 11 before it was over. And that's when I realized oh no! I've turned into an old man!" Yes, times have changed. Gone are the days when staying up until 3am was no big deal!

Tomorrow will be exciting. Jesse gets to move into his new office at the church and prepare for his career as the Director of Christian Education at Hope Lutheran Church, and I get to see what my first day is like as one of the day camp leaders for the summer program for the children at the church. I'm so happy to get a chance to be around kids again! I've missed my preschoolers so much in the past 2 months, and I'm really looking forward to surrounding myself with little ones again for the rest of the summer.

We had such a wonderful day today. We left early so that we could be at church in time for Sunday school. It was Jesse's first opportunity to sit in on what he will be leading next week! I got to join Pastor Terhune's class on Romans, and I am excited that I will be getting to partake in such an in-depth study with other adults every week. After church, the Terhune family invited us to lunch with them, which was a wonderful time of getting to know them better and enjoying lighthearted conversation. I know that we are so blessed to have such a wonderful pastor, and family, and congregation! They have all made us feel so welcome. In fact, the theme for the next Wednesday Night Fellowship Meal is "Meet the Brubakers"--that's this upcoming week, and we are both really looking forward to it!

When we got home from church, Jesse and I crashed on the couch and watched "My Fair Lady" (it's basically a crime that Jesse's never seen it--especially since he even acted the part of Henry Higgins in a scene his freshman year of college!) After that, we enjoyed sitting together and reading some "joy-reads" we picked up at Costco the other day. I think today was seriously the first day we haven't painted a room, or polished a floor, or organized a closet, or dusted a shelf, or unpacked a box since we moved here. Knowing that it was our last day before working, we decided to enjoy it. It struck me today how much I love being married to Jesse. It's so amazing just to be able to spend so much time with him, to laugh over the silly things we do, to enjoy being together, even just to hear him breathing beside me. I love being married to my best friend.

Mr. and Mrs!

We now have 17 days of married life under our belt, and have decided it's the best thing we ever could have done. In fact, we're recommending it to everyone!

June 8th was the most beautiful day of my life. To have so many of our friends and loved ones gathered around us to share in our special day was incredible. We had so much fun!

We married at the Lamos' ranch in Ojai. It was the perfect setting to our "happily ever after." So many dear friends helped in whatever way they could, and we are so blessed by all of the personal touches that were put to our wedding with love! About 230 people attended, ranging from friends from college to church friends, cousins, aunts and uncles, grandparents, friends from church, friends from work, and people we've known our entire lives. How wonderful to share it with everyone!

I could write everything about it, but you know what they say about pictures...

(go check out Jesse's dad's website and see our sneak peek slideshow!)