My Talents

It's another week and time for another link-up with Miss Monica at I Heart Grade 3. The topic this week asked the bloggers to write about our talents. This is a hard one. While there are many things I enjoy doing that others would call talents, I admit that I don't usually feel that I am talented at them. However, I have picked a few of these.
I love music. I started piano lessons when I was six towards the end of first grade. While I took two and a half years off in middle school (because I simply wasn't practicing), I continued my piano lessons throughout high school (which amounts to almost 9 years of lessons). I really do enjoy playing the piano. Even with nine years of lessons, I am only adequate. Of course, not getting very many opportunities to play for awhile during college and the early years of my marriage did not help my abilities. However, at the school I just left, I was the only teacher who could play piano, so I played daily. We had daily devotions and weekly chapel that involved hymns as well as the service of Matins for chapel. I admit, my piano playing has improved greatly over the past five years due simply to the fact that I played every day at school. While I sometimes was frustrated with having to play (especially when a hymn was giving me trouble), I will miss accompanying my students this year. (Becuase I left, the school got the PTL to buy a recording of all of the music in the hymnal. It cost $700. I apparently am not cheap to replace!)
I also love to sing. With the exception of 1 year in high school and this past year due to living apart from my husband during the week, I have sung in choirs since second grade. (This year I did get a few opportunities to sing with choirs as well.) I especially love to sing more challenging music, especially that of Bach and Mendelssohn. In May, I had the opportunity to sing with Opera Theatre of St. Louis in their Spring Sing event, which was a way to kick off their festival season. For that performance I got to sing with the season's cast, as well as famed operatic talents Christine Brewer and Denyce Graves. It was a lot of fun and a good way for me to get back into singing shape after a year of very little choir time!

Photo Credit: J. David Levy and Opera Theatre of St. Louis

Denyce Graves and Christine Brewer are by the piano.  I am a little harder to spot, but I am there!

Check out the link-up!

My Favorite Picture

It's time for another link-up!  This post will be short as I have had a crazy weekend at the International Literacy Association conference (more about that later.)
My favorite picture is a painting painted for me by my friend Karen Duke.  It is a painting of Ebenezer, a devotional spot at the camp where we both worked (and where I attended as a camper and also met my husband).  This might be my favorite place in the whole world.  Because of that and the fact that my friend lovingly painted it for me, it is my favorite picture.

Check out the link-up to find other bloggers!

The Best Trip of My Life

Well, it's time for another link-up!  This week's topic is "The Best Trip of My Life."  This topic seems especially timely, as I just got back from a vacation to Ontario, Canada.  While the vacation was wonderful, I cannot say it was the best trip of my life.  I have been very fortunate to be able to visit many places in my lifetime.  My parents viewed travel as important and took us different places every year.  They instilled a love of travel in me, so my husband and I take a real vacation every year.  This means that I have been to some incredible places.  I have been to many (but not all, although it is a goal) of the US states, as well as to 8 foreign countries: Canada, Mexico, Germany, Austria, the UK, Jordan, Egypt, and Israel.  That makes picking my favorite trip quite difficult.
As I was talking about this with my husband, he mentioned the trips I talk about the most: Great Britain (all three times I have been), Austria, and Alaska.  Since I have been to Great Britain 3 times already and would love to go back again, I decided I would pick my last tip there.
My first trip to Great Britain was a family vacation while I was in middle school. The second was on a high school choir tour.  The last time I was there I got to take my husband and see him fall in love with some of the same things I had loved for years.  We started off in London.  I love the Tower of London and the New Globe, while my husband could have stared at old manuscripts in the British Library for hours.  After that, we headed to Stratford-upon-Avon, where we did all of the traditional Shakespeare things.  We also got to see a fabulous performance of Antony and Cleopatra by the Royal Shakespeare Company.  We then headed to York, where we visited Yorkminster (of course), the Jorvik Viking Centre (which I love), and got to do a ghost tour.  Finally, we went to Edinburgh after a detour to Hadrian's wall.  My husband fell in love and decided he wants to retire there.  We stayed in a one-bedroom flat right on the royal mile, a block from Edinburgh Castle, which is one of my all-time favorite castles. There is so much history in Edinburgh, which makes it a great place for us to visit.  One of our favorite finds was Craigmillar castle.  It is a little out of the way.  It is largely a ruin.  It was very quiet when we were there.  It is the kind of castle where they give you the run of the place, so you can take your time and dream and imagine.

We also walked out of our flat one day and into the middle of the dress rehearsal for the installation of the new governor of Edinburgh Castle.  They did the entire ceremony, including the pipe and drum corps.  It was amazing!  While I don't have another trip planned to the UK anytime soon (our vacation destinations are planned through 2020), I do hope to visit again!
Check out the link-up to find other bloggers!

Where I Was 5 Years Ago

Once again, I am linking up with Miss Monica over at I Heart Grade 3.  This week's topic is "Where I Was Five Years Ago."
Five years ago my husband and I were living in St. Louis and getting ready to move to Chester.  We had a signed contract on our first house.  I had just left my job teaching Pre-K and was getting ready for a new teaching job at a small Lutheran school teaching a first and second grade combined class.
My husband had just graduated from seminary and was getting ready to be ordained and installed at his first church.
Five years later we have moved again.  I sadly had to leave my small Lutheran school and am preparing for a job at another small Lutheran school, this time with 3 and 4 year old preschool.  My husband is the pastor at his second church.  We own our second house while still trying to sell our first one.  A lot can happen in five years!


Check out the link-up to find out what other bloggers were doing 5 years ago!

My Favorite Quote

It's time for another link-up with Miss Monica over at I Heart Grade 3!  This week I am sharing a favorite quote.  While there are many, many great quotes out there, one of my favorite is from one of my favorite authors, C.S. Lewis.  He has written so many gems, especially from The Chronicles of Narnia, but this is one of my favorites from Mere Christianity:

"Enemy-occupied territory---that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us to take part in a great campaign of sabotage."  

Check out the link-up to find favorite quotes from other bloggers!

One Item that Means the World to Me

Once again, I am linking up with Miss Monica over at I Heart Grade 3!  This week the topic focuses on an item that means the world to me.
Well, once again, I can't pick just one thing.  However, I will pick a collection of objects that I don't know if I could live without... my books.  I love to read.  I developed a love a reading from my parents.  When I was a kid, you could only check out 20 books from the public library.  We went to the library every two weeks.  I often read all 20 books in only a couple of days (especially during the summer).  Fortunately, we had a very large library of our own at home, so I was never without reading material.  I also learned to reread books I love.  There are books I have read so many times (such as the Chronicles of Narnia), that I can practically recite the entire book from memory.  Even now, I often feel that I single-handedly have made our school book fair profitable.  I save money knowing that the book fair is coming and that I will be buying books.
When people come to our house, they often say that we have a lot of books.  I suppose that is true, but, for all of the books we have on shelves, we have boxes and boxes of books in storage that we simply do not have shelf space for.
A love of reading is something I try to pass on to my students.  We routinely talk about favorite books and authors.  I make sure my students know where to find favorites in both the classroom and school library.  I give my students lots of opportunities to read.  When we read, we get to explore worlds that we would never be able to visit otherwise.  I think this meme explains my life pretty well.

Photo Credit: Grammarly

Check out the link-up to find some other fabulous bloggers!

My Teaching Quirk

Once again, I am linking up with Miss Monica at I Heart Grade 3.  This week's topic is "My Teaching Quirk."
As my former students and colleagues can tell you, I love to be silly with my students.  I like to laugh in my classroom!  So much of the day is very academic, and, frankly, no matter how hard I try, there are some things that are just not that exciting to learn.  However, my students can settle down and be serious because they know there will be silly times as well.  I dance like a crazy person to Go Noodle videos with my students.  I act out new vocabulary words with very exaggerated movements.  I come up with crazy examples of words for word work or silly math problems when we are tackling something new.  I play dodgeball and six square (my school's version of four square) with them.  At our school's recent sock hop, I had a good chunk of the students dancing to "Footloose" with me.
I enjoy teaching.  Sure, there are tough parts and times when it is important to be serious and really get down to business.  I can't be silly all day long.  All the same, I want school to be an enjoyable place for both my students and myself.  I am a little bit crazy myself, and I bring that into my classroom.  (The fact that I was a camp counselor for four summers probably contributes to my craziness with my kids as well!)

Check out the link-up to find some other fabulous bloggers!