In December I completed my student teaching and graduated from WGU with a bachelors degree in special education. That felt good. Still does. The actual ceremony is on August 3rd in Salt Lake and I decided I would go ahead and walk. I don’t know that this is that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things but it was a challenging journey in my life and feels good to have accomplished that goal.
I took a job in January as a wellness coach at South Elementary. I loved it. Loved being around the students and working with them. The staff at south is wonderful and it was a pleasure to work with and learn from them.
In March I interviewed for a position at Canyon View Middle School and was hired for next school year. I was thrilled with this but my goal had been to work at Cedar High. There were no openings in Sped at CHS at the time I took the job. Roughly an hour after accepting the position I got a call from the principal at CHS and he told me a position would open up and he wanted me. It took a couple of months for everything to come together but it did and I will be starting at CHS on August 8. I am very excited to get started and maybe a little nervous as well. There is much to do. I will be with the severe students that I loved when I was student teaching there and though it will be challenging, it will be a lot of fun as well.
Since the end of January I have been focusing on my calorie intake every day. I set some goals relative to weight loss and have worked diligently to meet those goals. This has not been a quick weight loss program and has required steady and consistent effort in both diet and exercise. I have lost 53 pounds so far and have exceeded my goal. I have a new goal to reach my return missionary weight. Pretty excited about it and feel really good. The best part is that it is way easy to pay attention to what I am eating and there is no restriction on what I eat. I simply track the calories and then maintain a certain number of calories per day. The magic bullet of weight loss for me is not the quick and simple or the body trickery. Those work for folks and I have had some limited success with them. More and more it came down to simple math that made sense to me. Calories in and calories burned. If those burned out number those taken in then you will lose weight. Obviously starvation is not what I am advocating. I used an app, entered my current weight, entered my goal weight, looked at my lifestyle and the app provided me with a calorie goal for each day. In addition, I was determined to have some form of daily exercise as part of my routine. That has included elliptical, walking, hiking, other sports and yodeling. Only kidding about the yodeling. Anyway, feels good.
I am currently working on the house. Came to an agreement with Jay and Sara on a purchase and qualified for a loan. Everything is in process at the moment and we should close on it in August. It is very exciting. I wasn’t sure if I would ever be a homeowner again. I have been busy on little projects that have needed to be done. I am about to finish putting a new floor in Jacks room. I took out his existing closet, put up a new wall making the closet about half the size it was and added 10 sq ft to the room. That isn’t much but it makes a huge difference in the space.
The kids are all well. Jack came home from Alaska early. Picked him up 2 days ago. His allergies are really bad up there and he has been miserable. Happy to have him home. Missing Mr Andy and look forward to having him home in a month. Natty is living in her own place across the street in Amy and Dans basement apartment. I think she likes having her space and likes the convenience of being across the street as well. That has been since last November and it has been good for her.
Ok, that pretty much brings everything up to speed. I will try to get back in the habit of being a regular record keeper again.
