Holy Busy Batman!

So it's been a while since I've written.  It has been crazy busy in my neck of the woods!  In Michigan and many states, school doesn't start until after Labor Day.  In Tennessee however we get the lovely honor of starting school the first week of August.... This means I have been teaching for 6 weeks already!

This year, on top of teaching, I also have a student teacher.  Now many people enjoy having student teachers and think hey, less work me.... Now I will probably in the long run enjoy having a student teacher, but to be honest right now I am struggling with it.  I love teaching my kids and getting to know them and I struggle with giving up the control in my classroom.  I know that my mentor teacher had to do the same thing and let me take over their class for a short amount of time.  I totally get that and would be totally willing to do that, but the way this student teaching program is set up, he will be with me the whole year.  What I am struggling with the most is that my  "grade" as a teacher is based off of my students' test scores and those test scores are based on what I teach them, and if I don't teach them, then how do I know they learn it?!?!  I know that last sentence sounds absolutely crazy because duh I will be in there and know what he is teaching, but ahhhhh it is still killing me to think about the fact that for an entire chapter I won't be the one standing up there delivering the lessons. 

Student teacher has been just one of my struggles, but I am working through it.  I am slowly giving him things to do and feeling better about it :) 

Ok, so back to busy busy life.  School is not the only thing keeping me so dang busy!  I have also been spending many of my weekends riding my horses!!!  Now that is a good busy for me which many of you already know.... This summer I didn't get to ride as much as I would have liked so I am very thankful that I have gotten to spend at least one day, almost every weekend, riding for the past 8 weeks!  

The two best things that have kept me the busiest since my last post has been my visitors!  AHHHH I LOVE visitors!!!!!!  My first visitor was my wonderful Gram!  She came to see me for a week right before school started.  One of my favorite things is when she comes to visit.  Normally we scatter some work in with our play, but this time it was wayyyy to hot and wayyyy to humid to do any of the painting we had planned haha or so we told ourselves.  Instead we spent our days in the pool, golfing 3 days and she watched me play softball which is one of the things her and Gramps used to do all of the time.  We didn't do a whole lot, but spending that time and doing all that golfing is always so much fun and I made so many memories! 

The second visitor I had was my bestest friend in the whole wide world Alyssa.  We have been best friends since 8th grade when she moved to Hamliton.  We spend time apart and don't talk all the time, but we are still sisters at heart.  When we get together its as if time hasn't past.  She gets here and we fall right back into our old ways of watching football and singing songs as we road trip!  I even took her out for her first time golfing!  Now, we weren't very good at golfing, but then again who cares when you are laughing so hard you are almost in tears!  And that was just the first hole!  

Now this post is kind of all over the place and doesn't even half of the stuff keeping me super busy and stressed out, but it does shed some light on why I hadn't posted in so long!  I promise to be posting more in the next few weeks, including some awesome fall recipes and horse camping stories and I've got a trip with the one and only Alyssa in 2 weekends!