A Simple Christmas

With life absolutely nuts, I'm purposefully taking things a little easier for Christmas. This means fewer decorations, fewer gifts and fewer obligations.

In fact, while I had already explained to the girls that we were going to be doing the 4 gift Christmas this year (1 gift you want, 1 gift you need, 1 gift to wear, 1 gift to read), I was reminded tonight of why we all need to refocus.

Because you see, while Kylie and Lexi were decorating the tree, Kylie thought it was fun to place the little elf figurines with the nativity scene. And that BOTHERED ME!! 

I am completely aware that my sweet girl had no disrespect in mind, but really? Is this were we are at? Has elf lore taken over my home?

NOT THIS YEAR!

I quickly called on my pastor/husband to explain in a calm fashion that the elf means nothing. In fact, the elf isn't making an appearance at our house this year. "Jingle" is needed elsewhere.. and that's cool. We have Jesus.

Anyway..

As I worked on my digital portfolio for my class, Maddie finished off the decorations for the tree.

 Thanks Mad.

And there you have it. Our decorations. DONE.

I'd say that was more than enough to celebrate the birth of Jesus.

Having too much fun to take time to blog!

We are in the wonderful busy time of the year called SUMMER!!!!

It's the most wonderful time of the year!

I'm still getting up around 6am most days to workout, but heck, the first number isn't a 4, so that's really sleeping in late for me. :)

Over the last few weeks I have been vacationing a lot and scheduling in my classwork in between and all around the fun.

Over the July 4th weekend, we went on our 11th Annual Lakehouse Vacation. We had so very much fun! As my girls have gotten bigger, this has become more and more fun for me. When they were little, it was good, but a beat down as relocating little kids to a lakehouse for a few days with 20 people and not very many bedrooms/bathrooms was hard work! But now... it's just fun!

Here's to 11 years of perfectly normal behavior!!! #maxwelllakehouse #awkwardfamilyphotos

A photo posted by emilymclemore (@faithhopeandart) on Jul 4, 2015 at 5:29pm PDT

Doug and Maddie missed out on the trip as they had other commitments, but the little girls and I played hard!

Then we came home, washed clothes, regrouped, and went to Galveston Island. Our girls had never been to a real beach or the ocean/gulf, so we surprised them with a trip! It was fun!! They knew that we had to be in a city 3 hours away for a wedding on Friday, so we told them that we would just go early and play. On Wednesday morning, we loaded up and headed out. When we got to our destination city and were eating lunch, Doug said what if we just kept on going and went to the beach. The little girls were shocked. Maddie had figured it out the night before as we were packing.

So after lunch, we loaded up and drove another 3 hours to Galveston.  It made for a LONG DAY. But totally worth it.

They LOVED the beach and the waves.

 

I enjoyed running along the seawall and doing handstands on the beach. :)

Galveston! Love. #handstand #healthymama #fitmom

A photo posted by emilymclemore (@faithhopeandart) on Jul 10, 2015 at 7:16am PDT

And if the beach wasn't enough, we played at the condo pool till exhaustion or hunger took over.

From Galveston, we drove back northwest three hours for a wedding. Kylie was the flower girl. The rehearsal was ROUGH! Kylie was not sure about this process. But Saturday dawned and a well-rested, full-tummied kid was ready for the day.

We even had time to visit Texas A&M for Maddie. I hadn't given it much thought..it was just a look see. Then as we were walking around the campus, she got mistaken for a senior on a real visit by a couple of male student workers in the library, and well.. this mom got a little teary!

And then it was time to get ready for the wedding. Kylie went from rambunctious kid to  

DIVA FLOWER GIRL!! She was adorable!!

Look at this girl.

My beautiful flower girl! #flowergirl

A photo posted by emilymclemore (@faithhopeandart) on Jul 11, 2015 at 5:01pm PDT

The reception was in at a vineyard. I couldn't pass up the chance to get some pictures!

We arrived home Sunday afternoon and went every different direction Monday morning.

And this week we even met with the builder for our house!! WOOHOO!! I really can't believe it. After talking about it for 15 years, we are actually getting ready to build a forever house.

Busy times. 

I wouldn't trade these moments for anything.

(Oh yeah.. and how are my classes? Well, I have a week and a half left of this semester, so let's just say I'm going to be busy. But six more hours will be finished! I'll have 18 graduate hours completed in eight months. wow. And only four classes remain. I can do this!)

A break between semesters

The school year is winding down. This means all kinds of crazy, but one thing it means is that I'm not buried in deadlines for competitions and I'm finished with my grad classes for the semester.

I am rather proud of my 4.0 for the semester. 12 hours of graduate classwork on top of our life meant for some stressful times, but I didn't want to make a B. So at least for this semester, all is good. :)

One of the things I am most proud of this semester is that not only did I earn A's in all four courses, but I feel like I really LEARNED useful stuff too.

And since last night I didn't have classwork to occupy my time and as I've mentioned before, I don't watch much television, I painted another painting.

I'm really focusing now on developing my own style. I love palette knife paintings, but using the entire color spectrum has bothered me. My painting mentor pushes us to use all of the colors, but I'm finding myself really enjoying a limited palette painting.  The painting below has no red in it.

I think for a 20x24 inch painting completed in an hour and a half, it's a nice piece.

More than that, it was fun.

Oh My! The Good, The Crazy, and The Eating Adventure

Okay, I realize that by now you all know that I live in fast forward and take on way, way too many commitments. My normal mode is half crazed and that's okay, it keeps me busy. But this past week and this current week have me way, way beyond my normal crazy. And it's all my own fault.

To begin.. last Thursday and Friday we set up the district art show. I'm pretty sure we have close to 5000 pieces in it this year.

Saturday I judged a bi-district one act play contest. I had a blast, but didn't get home till midnight.

Sunday, I wrote a paper for one of my grad classes.

Monday I started working on the Area one act play contest that I am managing this week. In fact, I really started answering questions from them on Saturday night!

Today, I got everything ready for the reception for the art show, worked on the contest, taught my classes, attended the reception, went to a softball ceremony where students honored teachers that made an impact in their lives (how cool was that!)  and came home and wrote a paper over school district purchasing procedures.

So now I am ready to show off pictures from tonight!

 

And here we are.. the tired district art teachers!

And here is Kylie.. pointing to her fish with a cookie in her mouth!

For the rest of the week, I am going to get artwork ready for a contest, work on the area contest, do my job and at some point write an in-depth case analysis for my organizational change course.  I am hoping to chill in 2020.

So in all of this, how is Eat to Live going? Well, I lost 3.5 pounds last week. I was on a roll until Thursday and then Saturday, I was a stuck at the competition, so my eating choices were not "on target." But I have felt FANTASTIC! AMAZING! and better. Even in the midst of more stress than I can remember and having my allergies go crazy. 

This week, I am hoping to continue the trend of healthy choices. I have come so very far! I am eating very little meat, LOTS AND LOTS of VEGGIES and FRUITS, beans everyday and drinking water. I have not been perfect, nor do I anticipate being able to make perfect choices 100%  of the time. My goal is to hit the 85-90% of the time mark.

The most amazing thing about this whole Eat To Live thing is that I'm SLEEPING! I am not a sleeper. I'm a take an hour or two (easy) to fall asleep kinda person and then I wake up four times during the night and finally get up at 5am because it is a relief that it's finally a "normal" time to get up. Well, last week, in the midst of the insanity and stress that would normally keep me up and sleeping even more poorly, I SLEPT at night! In fact, twice last week I slept ALL NIGHT! From 10:30pm to 5am!  That is HUGE! And for me, worth giving up sugar and fats!

I'll keep you posted, but I am loving this new eating adventure. I think I'm gonna love my waistline even more!

8 weeks later, 6 hours of grad school complete!

When I decided to just take the plunge and get my principal's certificate and another master's degree, the program I found at the University of North Texas looked perfect.  As in, completely online. I somehow missed the 12 hours in one semester part... OH MY!

Over the last 8 weeks I have written more papers than I wrote in all of my previous grad classes combined. Well, at least it feels that way.  It could be that since I finished my MFA in 2000, I have blocked the paper writing memories....

Anyway, this first semester back in the world of grad school has kicked my butt. I took Instructional Leadership and Campus Level School Law. We started January 20th and I submitted my final exam this morning. It has been a crazy 8 weeks. I now have 10 days off and then I'll start Organizational Change and School Improvement as well as Management of School Resources.

Over these next 10 days I really need to clean my house. The volume of junk that can collect in a mere 8 weeks is incredible. If I don't take control of the house now, it will be a year from now and we won't be able to find the door! We will become hoarders by default. ugh.

But.. I'd really like to paint instead. Or maybe even sort scrapbook stuff. (that's cleaning.. right?)

As for today, we are looking at a few houses and going out to lunch!

What have I done?

I've gone back to grad school.

Oh my.

I'm taking 12 hours this semester. ( It's 2 classes at a time in 8 week chunks.)

This is week 1.

I may throw up.

What have I done?

On the bright side, in a year I'll have my Master's in Educational Leadership and have my principal's certificate.

I may not sleep for the next year, but hey, I've never been a good sleeper :0)

My first Snapguide tutorial

http://snapguide.com/guides/begin-a-basic-cardboard-loom-weaving-project/

http://snapguide.com/guides/begin-a-basic-cardboard-loom-weaving-project/

For my grad class, I had to make a snapguide tutorial that I would use in my classroom. The above tutuorial is the one I made this morning.  It was so fun!! And super easy!!

Get ready, I'm about to make a ton of these!

Just when I think I'm going to take it easy... I decide to mix things up!

I signed up for a grad class yesterday. I haven't taken a class since I finished my MFA in 2000.

I'm excited, but a little nervous.  I've read the syllabus and already made my first post.

I'm planning to learn a lot, get some great ideas, and be ready for next school year. (crazy talk.. today is the last day of school and I'm already planning/dreaming about next year!)

So what am I taking? Instructional Strategies for Art Teachers! Doesn't it sound fun :) !

Now you know why I am excited.

So if you are an art teacher and you haven't found your way to The Art of Ed, you should. It's a really great resource. www.theartofed.com

I'll keep you posted to how it goes.