Brief overview of the trip

We started in London, and enjoyed a lot of the sites from the outside.

After London, we made it to Portsmouth and crossed the English Channel to Normandy to tour the beaches and soak in some history.

On to Lyon and a visit with Bertlinde.

Hiking in Switzerland was breathtaking (literally!).

Attending the wedding of Annemarie and Volkmar was a great experience.

Heidelberg was gorgeous and then we headed home.

Made it to Bertlinde's house without major problems but may have a lovely parking fine coming in the mail due to parking (illegally ?) In Lyon for the art market. We enjoyed some lovely cathedrals, a priory, and châteaus near Bertlinde's and went to see her home in the South. I need to learn some French cooking tips ...but would most likely gain too much weight. We've arrived at Interlaken after going a bit off the beaten path. Beautiful flowers, mountains, and we love the sound of cow bells.

Hello from Caen, so far the trip has gone well...but knowing a bit of.basic French would help quite a bit. Touring Omaha beach and American cemetary tomorrow. Will prove to be very interesting. Enjoyed London... much easier to navigate...perhaps because language was not a big factor? Hoping to make our remaining connections to Bert ok. Perhaps this will lead to more stories.

Summer relaxation?

School is out and it is time to kick back, relax, and have some fun. However, it seems that is not in the cards for me this year. There seems to be a long list that just keeps growing and growing...kind of like the weeds in my strawberry patch. To do list for the summer: 1. Finalize plans for trip to Europe (I absolutely hate vacation planning, but love the end result. Therefore, this is the biggest headache I have currently. I'd like to give the car rental agencies in Cherbourg a piece of my mind... who closes a car rental place in a port town at 5 p.m. when the Ferry doesn't arrive until 7:30 p.m.? THAT threw a wrench in the plans...) 2. Continue to look for different employment options (an ongoing task that started a while back). 3. Finish the kitchen remodel (perhaps by the end of June?) 4. Finish the bedroom closet remodel (perhaps by the end of June?) 5. Paint the upstairs office and move the bedroom pieces that have been in the basement for three years into their rightful spot upstairs (perhaps before the end of August?) 6. Finish planning a baby shower for a close friend 7. Continue running (We've started and now that I'm past the being extremely sore stage, I'd like to keep it up for a while) By the amount of to-do lists I've posted, one would think that we're getting a lot accomplished; yet to be fair I think I'm posting the same things repeatedly. On a slightly different note, the New Year's resolution of one new thing/day has hit the back burner though I'd like to come back to it soon.

Walk a few steps in my shoes

April's challenge - intentionally go for a walk every day. It doesn't have to be a certain distance or speed, but the goal is to go on a walk outside each day. I haven't been too focused on exercising over the last year and I figured this was a way to ease back into it. Perhaps a later challenge will be to run every day...but I think that's pushing it a bit at this point. However, with the amount of lemon curd, angel food cake, Easter candy, and school treats (we teachers seem to be fond of cookies, donuts, and all other sweets) I've been eating it should come sooner rather than later.

March Craziness

The idea for March was to write one "old fashioned" letter/note to a family member, friend, or acquaintance each day. Except for about three days this past week I met the goal, mostly due to a school mandate that forces teachers to write a quota of "good news" cards to our students each month. Most days I don't have to work too hard to identify a deserving student, but we are "encouraged" to write to all students throughout the school year. I must admit I have had a few students where the best thing I can come up with is something along the lines of "Congratulations, your student rose above his normal level of apathy today...", so those students have to wait until I catch them on a VERY good day so that my "good news" card doesn't have such a sarcastic ring to it. Though for most students its easy to identify a positive characteristic to highlight.

The problem that I've found with this month's goal is not writing the letters, but remembering to send them. Currently I have quite a few letters sitting on my dining room table, that need to be addressed and stamped. A few of you should be getting letters soon. So, Jenn, Mom, Grandma P., and a few others you've got mail coming! (Please ignore the date I wrote it...it will only serve to highlight my new level of procrastination.)

Not my best idea

Deliberately clean one thing (a room, drawer, shelf, etc.) for a month - it doesn't sound like a lofty goal, but I completely underestimated my hatred of cleaning. While I knew my aversion to chasing after dust bunnies was strong, I apparently didn't know its depths. (On the bright side, I gained a bit of personal insight this month.)

Despite my lack of enthusiasm I believe I cleaned at least one thing each day, but at times it seemed as if I was just attempting to keep the clutter from taking over. I had grandiose visions of cleaning out the office, mopping the floors each week, finally unpacking a couple of boxes that have sat on a shelf for the past 2.5 years. Unfortunately February looked more like a cycle of cleaning bathrooms, washing dishes, taking out the recycling, etc... and I still have a stack of insurance papers sitting on the piano (which needs a good dusting) from a meeting two weeks ago. Even though it wasn't that great of a month goal-wise, I think I'll return to this goal again later in the year...perhaps when I don't have so much school work to tie up my evenings and weekends.

Moving on to March's goal - write a letter (snail-mail style) to one person every day. The count so far:
3/1 - Tiffany
3/2 - Good News Cards from school to 4 students