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I just had a huge rant going, but I decided to erase it and be at peace. All I will say is: please respect my choices. I know that not everyone will. If that be the case, please keep your opinions to yourself unless they are truly productive and helpful. I know it is difficult and that I am guilty of not heeding this, but am trying to be better.

In other news, we are 4 days away from being DONE with school. PRAISE THE LORD!!! I am very excited to move to the High School next year, especially since I will only be teaching one subject. In all my (3) years of teaching, this has never happened, so I'm not sure what I'll do with all my prep time! I am looking forward to working with the team there and somewhat more mature students. I am very excited that I get to follow this group through High School. I will have had them for 5 years at the end of High School- how lucky am I? As part of the end of the year, Chad always has an end of the year concert and his kids did SO well. His Intermediate Band will be moving to the middle school next year and he is VERY sad to lose them. This is the first group he's taught both years of band to, so theres a feeling of ownership there.

Summer is going to be busy, busy, busy. We were looking at our schedules and noticed that after June 6th, we will only have about three days to do any traveling together this summer. I will be attending workshops and teaching summer school at the end of summer and Chad starts rehersals for the Utah Shakespearean Festival on June 15th. We'll be working hard to get the house ready for Gryn- get all the stuff out of the front room and into his bedroom! We are really looking forward to that! Once Aug. 6th hits, there will be no more time to prepare for baby, we'll be back to work and he'll be here within a month of that!

Speaking of baby... we are 24 weeks tomorrow- almost to the third trimester. I am waking almost every morning to Gryn moving around and watching my belly move with him. He seems to know the difference between my hand and Chad's and always stops moving when Chad puts his hand on my belly. I spent an hour this morning laying in bed feeling him move around- just enjoying the time with him. It's miraculous and wonderful. My pregancy is great, I feel great, Gryn is doing great, we (mostly Chad I think) are very blessed! I hope I can say the same about my delivery! The one thing I am not enjoying is my belly being rubbed- in fact my students are going to make me a sign or shirt that says "DO NOT TOUCH" over the belly. My students are wonderful and fascinating to me, but that is another story for another time.

We have been asked quite a few times if we are excited about this baby (weird) and rest assured everyone, we are VERY excited for him! We are not as traditional as most with announcing everything that happens with my pregnancy and we have so much going on right now that it's not the ONLY thing we talk about, but we are still very, very excited. Hopefully next month we'll have another picture to post of him, we'd love to get a little peek at him again. No pics of me yet, my mom and Grandma are the only ones with those, I've been told my many women who have had babies that I am not very big for as far along as I am. Not sure what it means, but we'll get around to taking a picture of the belly at some point!

Toad Friend

Since we've lived in our lovely home, we've had this toad who is like our Punxsutawney Phil- once he comes out of his winter hibernation, we know the weather is going to be consistently fairly wonderful! We call him Toad Friend. I suppose we could name him something more creative, but we're sticking with Toad Friend (there is a serious lack of originality when I name things- hence the cat of my teen years: Baby Kitty, seriously, it's kind of sad). Now unlike most amphibians, this toad is unafraid of us, we can walk right up to him and even touch him (at least I think its a him, don't know how to tell the difference) and he doesn't hop frantically away like other amphibians.

Tonight it was very windy (weird for a place called Hurricane...) so Chad went outside to put our garbage cans away. He came back in holding a handful of green goop (or so it looked like from my point of view). I asked with a bit of disgust, "Honey, what are you holding?" He turned his hand so I could see it and it was TOAD FRIEND! He was just hanging out in Chad's hand, chillin'. He had been hiding behind the car and Chad almost ran over him with the garbage cans (SAD), so Chad picked him up and brought him in. I was SO happy to see our Toad Friend! Well, we were worried that he would warm up too much from being in Chad's hand and being in the house, so Chad put him back outside. Imagine, if you will, the scene in Lord of the Rings where Bilbo is leaving the ring for Frodo. The ring doesn't want to leave Bilbo's hand and it is sticking to it as it slides slowly down to the floor. That is what it was like for Chad to get Toad Friend off his hand. We watched him for a minute and felt extremely guilty as he watched us close the door. About 20 minutes later we wanted to see if he had gone to eat some of the crickets or if he had hopped off. Chad opened the door and I couldn't see him, so I thought he had gone, but Chad made this sad noise and I looked down- Toad Friend had hopped up to the door and was sitting at our door- like a dog or cat would if they wanted to come inside. OH MY GOSH, we felt SO BAD putting the dang toad outside! Its a toad, it lives outside, but we felt so sad that we couldn't bring him inside mostly because we didn't want to find a toad (especially Toad Friend) dead in the morning from overheating or something... We decided we need a toad door, if only it wouldn't act as a scorpion door or spider door too.

There's the story of the evening. And a picture of Toad Friend. The end.