Updates...

While I'm sitting at home, enjoying a relaxing day off from work, and enjoying a blissfully quiet house as the dogs are playing outside and Landon is out golfing with some friends from the Texans, I thought I'd update a little about our life lately.

Our only real exciting news is that, after years of talking about doing it, we finally booked a Mediterranean cruise for this July with Blake and Morgan, two of our good friends and our traveling buddies. We're SO excited--and having a blast planning it! It's only 3 days after Landon finishes his Ironman, so we'll definitely be celebrating his accomplishing that--and enjoying relaxing because all of the hours of training will be over. :) SOOO...if anyone has been to Paris, Rome, Pisa, Florence, Barcelona (and there's a couple of other stops, but I'm drawing a blank and can't remember them at the moment!) and has any recommendations of things to do--we'd love to hear it!!

Other than that, it's really just life as normal. We're getting in the groove of work and triathlon training and how to still have a life on top of it all. Our first triathlon (and my only one on the calendar for now) is the last weekend in April and then Landon's Ironman is in June--both of which remind me that summer will be here almost before we know it. I was looking at the calendar and Spring Break is only 2 weeks away--and the end of school ALWAYS flys by after Spring Break. It's crazy, really.

And speaking of work, its going well these days, overall. For Landon, work is pretty steady, which is awesome. And, I'm so jealous of the fact that he get's to make his own schedule. :) I love hearing him on the phone with clients because he's so good to them--and really knows what he's doing, which is so cool to me because I would have NO idea how to do his job. He still has mostly CPS clients, which is what he wanted, with a few random criminal cases thrown in there to pay the bills. I think he still enjoys the work, but I know working for yourself can be lonely at times, so we'll see how God works things out.

For me, work is overall pretty good. My three problem students from the first semester got sent to an alternative school for a few months and, because I ran into him at our 8th grade dance on Friday, found out that my little darling who jumped out the window to escape detention, is back. He came running up to me and the first words out of his mouth were "Hey Ms. Speights--did you miss me??" Then, he proceeded to tell me that he was "reformed"--haha, they must have used that word at the school he was at. So, we'll see. I have him in class tomorrow and I'm praying he truly is "reformed". The other two boys just got worse at the school they got sent to, so they're still there, according to my one little reformed one.

Other than that though, classes are going well. I love the social issues interpretation unit we're in and the book clubs their in are having awesome discussions. It's just fun--too bad out TAKS prep unit starts next week. Oh well. With my low ESL kids I'm struggling with how much I'm really teaching them--I know they're making progress, but they're not where I want them to be, which is frustrating. So, I'm trying to make the most of the time I have left with them--they're working hard and I'm working hard, so hopefully the next few months will be fruitful. I just want them to have a fair shot in life.

Outside of work, we are loving getting to know friends better--and loving meeting with our small group from church every weekend during this month for our Bible study. We went on Saturday and were so blessed by it--we're loving getting to know everyone better.

And this weekend, we enjoyed living near family. We celebrated my dad's birthday Friday night and then Saturday night had Landon's entire family over at our house because his brother and sister in law were in town. So, a good time was had all around--though I was thankful for a long nap to recover from all the fun on Sunday afternoon! :)

And, I'm thankful for today, a day to catch up on little things like blogging--even though what I really should be catching up on are things like laundry and dishes. :)