Strength and Dignity

"She is clothed with strength and dignity,

    and she laughs without fear of the future."

Proverbs 31:25

Yellow Jacket Band Photo.. not mine. I wish.

Maddie rocked her performance on Saturday for the UIL contest. Well, the entire band did, but of course, I was focused on my girl.

It is so wonderful to watch her come alive on the field. 

I know that we savor these moments more than most as we know just how fleeting these times are. But for today.. she is doing well and able to do what she loves.

We are so thankful.

Another Stress Fracture Means NO Marathon

My left foot has hurt the last few weeks. I've been ignoring it as best as I could.

But I finally went to the doctor on Wednesday and had what I already knew confirmed.

another stress fracture.

This time it's my #2 toe.

You can't see in the picture, but the bone is "fuzzy" all the way down on both sides. Not good.

So I'm out for six weeks.

which means that all of the crazy hard training, getting up at 4:10am and so forth will not be used for the Fort Worth Marathon.

It's frustrating.

Doctor's orders are NOTHING running related for 2 weeks, then I can run 1 mile IF there is no pain. I go back in 4 weeks for an evaluation.

The goal is to be able to run a 10k in December, a 1/2 in January and a full in February. UGH.

But what can I say, I did this to myself. I upped my training and as I had been saying, IF I could remain healthy, it was going to be great. I'm stronger and faster. But I knew that I was playing a gambling game running 6 days a week and logging a ton of miles.

So I'm going back to the Galloway method. I used Jeff Galloway's method and ran half a dozen or more half marathons plus a full marathon injury free. I changed plans to run for a time goal thinking I needed something more ambitious and ended up with a stress fracture on the left foot after Austin. And here I am 8 months later with another stress fracture on the same foot, different toe.

So, I'm telling myself to STOP IT! Galloway's plan is for injury free running. That should be my goal. That is my goal. Cause I have to say, going into the holidays not being able to run off stress and food is hard!

But I am determined to get my foot pain free and I'll them be back on my training plan. this time I'll just be smarter with it and use Galloway!

My article is in Arts and Activities Magazine!!

I submitted an article/lesson plan/activity to an art teacher magazine called Arts and Activities a couple of years ago.

It was selected and put into the publishing queue.

I got an email last night that it is in the November 2015 publication!!

I am pumped!

You can read the article by clicking on the above link or by clicking HERE. :)

What's even more exciting for me is that they asked for additional articles!! Woohoo!

Have you tried Google Drive?

My school district has started a push for all employees to use Google Drive. As everything is in education.. innovation starts with a lot of talk and more talk and then we start slow, get scared, bury our head in the sand, desperately claw at the past and then when we are finally thrown off the edge, we see that it wasn't so bad and the "cliff" was only about a foot and that instead of drowning, we could just put our feet down.

Okay.. so that's a lot of cliche, but you get my point. Innovation doesn't come easily in education.

Well, Google Drive is a game changer. 

Here is my Google Drive for school. I have created all of these folders in the past couple of months! 

Each of the header bars is a folder. Inside each folder there are numerous documents or in the case of my class folders, I have student folders. I can't show you a class folder as my student names are listed on each file, but here is the inside of my instruction and guides folder.

What is so cool about this is that because I made the folder searchable, I was able to give the students the link to the folder (I made a tiny url) and they added my folder to their drive. So anytime I create a new guide, or as I add more guides to the folder, their folder is automatically updated!

From a work management perspective, this is a game changer.

Here is the folder of one of my student's in Art 1. As he completes his assignments, he loads his work into his folder. Because he has shared it with me, I can see his work in real time. 

And, because he gave me "can edit" rights, I can have him drop stuff into his folder from my ipad without him having to log into google.

Storage is unlimited, so while some folders like the above one only have 6 items right now, one of my folders has 168 photos! Multiply this by 160 students and you can imagine the amount to storage that would be needed for me to keep all of my students work on my device. 

So there you have it. My ringing endorsement for Google Drive. And fyi... if you haven't tried Google Docs yet, you should! 

Running Shoe problems and an AH HA moment

My left foot hurts.

No big deal. Unless you are training for a marathon and need to run around 60 miles this week. So yeah. big deal.

Sadly, I think it's from my running shoes.

I have a closet full of running shoes. And none of them feel right.

One of my first "real" pairs of running shoes are still my favorites. but alas, they were model 10's and now the company is making 13's and there is not much of the 10 left in these shoes even though they are the same model.

(Anyone out there have a new pair of size 9 Brooks Glycerin model 10's?) I'd pay good money about now for a pair! Here I am in my brand new pair in 2012!!

Wow. Look at me in 2012. It's weird to look at pictures like this. In this picture I was wearing my first smaller/weight loss outfit and my new running shoes. I was in Chicago with Doug and running and feeling great.

And now I look at it and am reminded of how far I have come!

Maybe I need to look at a different pair of shoes?

Since the above me is wearing a size 10 pants and weighing at least 15 pounds more than I weigh now, it seems a little odd that the cushion and support of the running shoe that I would need would be the same that I need now.

Hmm.

This is a picture of me a couple of weeks ago. I'm wearing a size petite small skirt.

Maybe it's time to go get a new gait analysis and look at some new running shoes!