The Finish Line

Well the day finally came and went, just like that!  I'm officially finished with my student teaching.  I won't say that I'm finished with "college" all together because I still have a few papers to write as well as my "capstone project" as they call it, the Teacher Work Sample.  I have all of my information and research that I needed, it's just a matter of writing everything up now.  I'll have all of my projects finished in the next two weeks. 

October 31st was my last day.  It has been pretty hard being a mom to an infant, a wife, a student and a teacher all at once.  Student teaching while I was 9 months pregnant was super hard, but it was nothing compared to what I've done in the last few weeks.  Taking over the class full time was a great learning experience, but it was challenging.  The very first week, as you might expect, was the hardest.  Then I started to get a little more comfortable with it all and fall into some routines.  It was much harder this time around and I had a lot more responsibilities.  For most of the days, my mentor teacher would just leave, go do other things in the faculty room etc.  I appreciated this because it gave me the real feel of what it's like to teach the class and be "THE teacher".  It was just kind of a lot and I was happy to be finished.  I'll miss some of the kids of course, and we had a lot of fun times...but after 4.5 years of college, I'm very ready to be done.  I've always "liked" school I guess, but I've always been VERY ready for this day to come.  

The kind of sad thing to me was how I felt, which sounds strange.  It was a little bit like Christmas evening.  You SO look forward to this day for so, so long.  You dream about how it will feel and how wonderful it will be.  It comes, and it really is great! But then it ends and there is kind of "now what?" feeling.  Does that make any sense?  It kind of felt like any other day, except I didn't really know what was next.  When you graduate middle school, you go to high school.  When you graduate high school, there's always college.  When you graduate college, typically you'd get a job.  Except I don't really know what I'm going to do.  It's like I've conquered my last "definite" milestone.  Meaning OBVIOUSLY there will be a ton more obstacles, challenges, and milestones in my life.  I've just finished the ones that I have always known about and planned for since I was little.  Now there's a lot of...options and figuring out what I'd like to do.  So don't bother asking what my plan is, because I don't know.  For now my plan is to be a wife and Mom and enjoy that to the fullest.  I don't know what the future will bring, and for now, I'm going to just live in the moment and take a breather.  I'll officially graduate in December and I can walk in April if I want. Despite all of that, I'm so glad to be finished.  I'm not normally one to toot my own horn, but I am really proud of finishing school.  Whether or not I end up using my degree, it would have been so easy to quit and drop out.  Just not come back and stay home with my family like many do (not that there's anything wrong with that).  There were a lot of times that I wanted to just give up.  Even though I don't feel an overwhelming feeling of victory in this very second, I know what I would feel if I hadn't finished.  I survived, and for now, I feel like I can do anything!

I'll go back and post another post in a little while of other random pictures from the month of October and some videos.  Today I'll just post about yesterday, October 31st.

I posted a bit on Facebook already, but October 31st was a great and busy day!  So many wonderful things happening all at once!  My sister, Stephanie, was due to have her baby October 23.  We got the news Thursday morning before school that little Karsten Douglas Oxborrow decided to show up not even an hour after midnight, making him a Halloween baby!  Welcome little Karsten, we are SO excited to meet you!  And he's SUCH a cutie!!  We're excited that Jimmie now has 2 little cousins so close to him in age.  In fact, Karsten is exactly 5 months younger than Jimmie

Here's the little guy! Well, not super little.  He was 8 lbs 3 ounces and 20 inches long.

Welcome to our new nephew!

Like I mentioned, Karsten is exactly 5 months older than Jimmie.  Our little boy who is growing up so quickly turned 5 months on Thursday! Of course, we had to take our traditional monthly pictures in his chair, with the giraffe (and some without).  I was going to do regular 5 month pictures without the costume, but that's just too much work

 Our sweet little Kermit before the Halloween Parade at school

 Hey, I actually got him to smile in one of these pictures!

Can you tell it's because I held the camera to the side so he wasn't scared of the "big black thing in front of Mom's face"? ;)

 Back to the intimidation...and we're not so sure about this giraffe guy

"I guess I'll hold him, if I have to"

Because it was my last day and Jim and Jimmie were coming in for the parade, my teacher told me to just come in at 9 (when school actually starts) instead of the 45 minutes early that I'm normally supposed to be there at.  It was pretty nice to be able to sleep in a bit and use that time to get us all in costume!  Once at school I was able to introduce Jimmie and Jim to the class and they just stayed through the Halloween parade (so for about an hour).  It was also cool that Jim was there after because he was able to take some class photos for us and Mrs. Walker was able to take a family photo for us

Miss Piggy and Kermit waving

We were a big hit!  We had random parents stopping us asking to take our picture

It was a lot of fun!

It was also cool to have Jim there because he was able to snap a lot of photos from the Halloween parade because he went down to the gym for it.  I can't share them all with you though because you're not really supposed to share pictures of your students on personal social media (at least without blurring their faces out)

Mom and Jimmie

 He liked it much better when I didn't have the nose on :)

Animal and a distracted Kermit

He wasn't entirely sure what to think of all these little kids 

Not my favorite picture of us, but it's the only one we have of all 3 of us on Halloween!

Miss Piggy - Kermit - Animal

And here's my silly 5th graders!

(Normally I'd blur their faces, but I thought it'd be a lot funnier to just put stickers on their faces!)

Mrs. Walker was Spiderman along with her 2 boys and husband.

The stickers don't necessarily match their personalities, in case you were wondering :)

We've had a lot of fun together in the last month!

I stayed at school for the rest of the day, doing some Halloween activities, lessons, and helping with the Halloween party.  Afterwards, the boys came back and picked me up from school so that we could go to Jim's Halloween work party.

I realized when we put him in the stroller that we'd never put him in the stroller this normal way. We have always had him in his carseat, which just snaps right into the stroller.  I think he liked this way a little better!

Though you can hardly tell with the weird sun glare and my slightly possessed looking face, we had a great time!  There was free J-dawgs AND Rita's water ice.  What's not to love!?

There was one employee in a full on, super intense Darth Vader costume.  Jimmie's too young to appreciate it, but I know a few boys who would have loved to see this guy.  It was impressive!

It was actually pretty chilly but he had pulled his socks off in the car and they were no where to be found.  Obviously, he didn't mind much! 

Today was my first day home.  The first day of November.  

It was wonderful! I felt like I'd gotten more accomplished and spent more time with Jimmie within the first few hours of the day than I've been able to in a long time.  

It was a sweet thing to be able to lay on the floor, laugh and play with this little bug again.

It was wonderful to be able to take a mid-day nap with my buddy.

It was nice to be able to sing and dance around with him.

It was even nice to be able to hold and rock him when his pathetic little whimpers started because his teeth hurt him, he's exhausted, but the pain keeps him awake.  Poor baby!

Happy November to you all!

This month we will be preparing for Christmas, seeing a physical therapist for the flatness of Jimmie's head, going to California to visit the Oxborrow family for Thanksgiving (and meet baby Karsten), everyone trying to eat a little healthier and doing a 30-day squat challenge (both of us), completing my Teacher Work Sample, celebrating our 2-year anniversary, researching about starting solid foods, moving into sleeping in the crib, and at least for me, a lot of crafting, organizing, decorating, and playing with my little boy. And at the very end of it all, we will have a SIX month old.  Can you believe it?

It should be a good month!  I can't believe all that has happened this year and that it's gradually coming to a close.  2 more months left of the epic 2013.  I can remember the totally daunting feeling from the beginning of the year, knowing all that was ahead of me.  And for the most part? I've finished it all.  We moved apartments, turned 22, finished the last of my BYU classes, student taught while pregnant, had the most wonderful baby in the world, had a summer of visiting family and family reunion, completed my TELL practicum, finished my student teaching placement and ultimately will officially graduate in December.  

It's been a roller coaster, but a fun one at that.  Thank you all for your continual support, especially for the support of my awesome husband and family.  I couldn't do it without all of your love, prayers, thoughts, kind words of encouragement and advice.

Now to go work on those last assignments.  As Mrs. Walker would say,

"Finish strong! Don't trip over the finish line!"