Adult Best Friends

In middle school, my best friends and I passed notes in class and talked on the phone for hours every night.

In high school, my best friends and I played sports together, learned to drive together, got part-time jobs together and shared a limo to the prom.

In college, I lived with my best friends, eating dinner together at night, gathering together for nightly TV shows and watching out for each other on the weekends.

When I was a kid, I thought that adult best friends had it so easy. Adult best friends live next door to each other. Their kids play together. Since they are adults, they don't have rules about when they can and can't hang out. Easy.

In reality, I've seen that adult best friends have many more obstacles to overcome. We have work, school (often times work and school), maybe husbands, and it turns out we do not live next door to each other. We are lucky to live in the same state.

But I am still thankful for adult best friends. For our on-the-way-home-from-work phone calls. For our life update e-mails. For our g-chats and facebook comments. For our reunions for parties and weddings. For our dinners and drinks. For the fact that no matter how long it has been since we last saw each other, it's like no time has passed at all.

For the fact that on Tuesday morning no more than 20 minutes passed from my best friend sending a bad news e-mail that the other five (college roommates) had planned a reunion weekend to surround her with love :)

Not that I didn't love a passed note in history class complete with food code names for boys that we liked... cuz that was fun too.

Why do you love your adult best friends?

It's the Little Things

Today I am thankful for post it notes :)

At least once every few weeks one of my students will "forget" his or her backpack. I always find it slightly impressive that they walk out of their house without their backpack and usually joke about it with them for awhile. But in all reality, I am a kindergartner. This morning, I successfully walked right out of the house without my purse. In my defense, I did have my giant school/tutoring bag and my lunch so it's not like I was empty handed. But still.



Enter the new post it on my door:









I also use post it's a lot for "To Do" lists. Since I have a life planner and also a school planner, I find it easier to move to do lists around when they are post its. I am definitely a "To Do" list person. On days when I go to work without a plan for what I'll get done before the kids arrive, I am SO much less productive. I need a "To Do" lists. I guess you could say I'm thankful for "To Do" lists.















Do you love post it notes as much as I do?

What I've Been Reading Lately

Today I am thankful for books. I am thankful to the teachers who helped me learn how to read, and to the authors that wrote books that made want to keep reading. I am thankful that I still love reading (even after all my high school English teachers attempt to ruin it with terrible books!) and that I have many people in my life who enjoy talking about and recommending books.

In the spirit of that I have some book recommendations for all of you :) If by some chance you have some little ones in your life who enjoy reading books on a preschool/ kindergarten/first grade level, please check out Little Oink, Little Pea and Little Hoot by Amy Krouse Rosenthal... so cute and pretty amusing too. But the rest of my book recommendations are for adults, I promise.

I got the idea to read this book from browsing Lisa and Nora's read books on GoodReads :) Both of them enjoyed it so I thought I would too. In this story, a husband and wife pass away and their children come to stay at their Bed and Breakfast for their funeral. While there, the "children" (grown adults) learn that mom and dad wrote letters to each other every week throughout their marriage. As you read the book you learn more about the marriage and also about their children. This was a very fast read and I enjoyed it a lot. I felt attached to the characters and wanted to know what would happen to them. Plus, it's just nice to finally read a story where the husband and wife actually like each other despite many ups and downs over the course of a long marriage.

My mom has been telling me to read this book for awhile but I kept forgetting to get it from her so finally I just took it out from the library on my Kindle. This book explores the many life changes caused by a scandal at a private boarding school in Vermont. I thought the story line was really good- and it should probably be required reading for all high school kids, seriously. However, I personally would've liked it better if she chose to focus on less characters overall- there were times when I was like wait WHO is this person? I know her point was to show just HOW many people were affected but I found myself caring less about the characters because I didn't know them as well. Still I thought it was a good book and I'd recommend it especially if you like Anita Shreve's writing style.

Okay yes, this is totally the 10 years later Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series. I didn't say I was recommending classics, did I? I just loved these books when I was in college (I was going to say high school but the first one came out when I was in early college, oops). I had read reviews that this book was depressing, and I can see where those reviews came from but I thought overall it was really happy, and more just realistic of how life changes and some serious things can happen when you are no longer in high school anymore. It was fun to see what happened to my favorite characters and in the end I thought it was quite uplifting :) If you were a fan of the original books, I definitely recommend checking out the 10 years later book.

Next up, I am about the start The Postmistress which is our blogger book club book this month. I'm a little nervous because I've been told the beginning is slow and I am bad at making it through slow beginnings. I will really try though.

Who has another book recommendation for me? What have you been reading lately?

Thankful for Weekends

I hope everyone is having a nice weekend. It's been a pretty relaxing weekend over here which was definitely due after the last few weekends of class and trips. I didn't have a chance to post what I was thankful for, but don't worry I've been thankful for something every day :)

Friday

On Friday I was very thankful for my first round of conferences being over. I had a great round of conferences. Parents were very accepting of suggestions that I made and very appreciative of the progress their children have made so far. If only every round of conferences could go that well, I may not mind them so much. Maybe. I celebrated conferences being over with a few friends after work and then by going to my favorite restaurant with Eric.

Saturday

All homeowners can relate to my Saturday morning. I open up the cupboard under the sink to grab a bag and some bad smelling, sticky, brown stuff is all over the bag I was about to grab. I immediately yell for Eric to come check it out and after pulling everything out from under the sink we realize the disposal has been leaking and it's destroyed all the tile under the sink AND it's still leaking. Begin internal freak out: Oh my god, I have to call the plumber on the weekend AGAIN and it's going to cost a million dollars and what if we need a whole new disposal and what are we going to do with all the stuff under the sink and it's going to cost a million dollars and CRAP I hate calling people especially on the weekends. Even Eric had a (much smaller) internal freak out thinking that he really doesn't know much about plumbing and what if he turns something and it ALL comes flying out at us.

Luckily the two of us calmed down enough to call Eric's dad, who was at our house within the hour and the two of them set out on Operation: Fix Disposal. Several hours but only $17 later, everything is fixed and I did not have to call a single person NOR did I have to shell out god-only-knows how much money. Oh, and most importantly, I don't have any nasty brown liquids coming out below my sink.

And that, my friends, is when I decided that I am thankful I married into a family where household problems are just another challenge to be solved :)

Sunday

Today I am thankful for the foods of fall. Sure, we've already had a big snow storm here, but technically we are still in fall and will be for awhile. Fall is my favorite season when it comes to food: squash, apples, pumpkin etc. This morning I cooked up a couple of delicious honeycrisp apples and enjoyed them on top of some pumpkin oatmeal. This combination gets old for me come springtime, but then I'm ready for it again when the cold fall air rolls back around.

What is your favorite season for food? Do you have someone in your family who is good at fixing things? (I hope so!)

Milky Ways and Mountains

No, I'm not thankful for Milky Ways and mountains, well I suppose I am, but that's another post :)

Today I am thankful for kids.

I know, it doesn't happen every day, that's for sure! I kinda love my class this year, and not because they are easy, because they are definitely not. Every year seems to come with it's own new set of challenges :) But I just like these kids. They have some great personalities and even when they are being crazy (which they have been all week- thanks a lot whoever decided Halloween would be on a Monday), they are still pretty cute.

I have this one kid who is a small kid with a huge personality. Today he was trying to explain to me where a girl in our class lived and he actually said, "yeah she lives just right up the mountain from me." HAHAHA... there are no mountains in the town I teach in. There is maybe a hill... but he doesn't live near it. I seriously can't even picture any remote hill in his neighborhood so it must be something really small and yet he refers to it as the mountain. Amazing.

Same kid, the other day I'm working with him in a small group on the most boring skill ever... breaking sentences into words. I'm trying to make myself not want to cry while teaching so I was making up sentences about Halloween. I asked him what his favorite candy was so I could say "D's favorite candy is _____" He tells me that his favorite candy is Milky Way. I said, I love Milky Ways too. End of conversation. Move on to teach seriously boring lesson. Today... what does he bring me but a Milky Way?! This means he not only remembered that passing comment but ALSO gave ME one of his favorite candy. Probably the most delicious Milky Way I ever had.

Now if only I could find a way for kids to have less germs, we'd be smooth sailing.

Are you a kid person? Tell me a cute kid story. Ready... go!

Walks and Talks

I'm already loving my thankful challenge because it's making me think several times a day, "oh I'm thankful for this, I could blog about it!" I had lots of ideas for today but one stood out as the best.

I am thankful for late afternoon walks with Eric. Sometimes it's a run, and I'm equally thankful for those, but today it was a nice long walk around our favorite reservoir in the area...

It's so nice after a long day of kiddos and conferences to just debrief the day with Eric and enjoy the nice scenery. Oh, and play with Instagram on my phone...

Ah, this might be almost as fun as getting my new fancy camera in the summer. Almost.

Do you ever take a break from running (if you run at all) to just go for a walk and soak in the scenery?

A Thankful November

In honor of the month of Thanksgiving, I am going to challenge myself to tell you one thing I am thankful for every day. Some days I may have another blog topic and some days it might be super short, but hopefully (if all goes to plan) I will post every day. I hope many of them will be simple pleasures in honor of the fact that there are so many in life that often go completely unnoticed.

Today I am thankful for the beautiful sunrises I've had the pleasure of seeing on the way to work for the past two weeks.









The picture doesn't really do it justice (it turns out driving while taking a picture is maybe not the best... oops). Basically I come up over the hill and I look in front of me and I can see the Boston skyline with a beautiful sunrise behind it. You can kind of see the skyline in the picture on the right, just before the trees. Although this is my commute most mornings (except when I tutor), I usually miss the sunrise because I'm either too early or too late. However, the timing working well the past few weeks has made it okay that it is has been pitch black when I wake up :)





Tell me something you are thankful for today. Join me in this challenge if you want :) I know Canadians don't really celebrate Thanksgiving in November, but it's always good to be appreciative, right?