3 days

I have to head to work. But it's getting harder to get motivated to leave the house. The last two days were pretty tough. Two of the ladies were gone and we had subs. Even though they were two of our favorite subs, the kids seemed to know how best to take advantage of the change. Three days till spring break....fantastic!

Please pray that all of us who are working in the schools..have energy to finish strong, during these last few months of school. That our testimony's will be evident and we'll take every advantage to share the love of Christ to these kids.

update and stuffers

On friday night, Dusty, the Sticklers and I tried the new restaurant across from our house. It's called the Firkin' and Frog. It's a pub that has english ties. We had fun doing the trivia game on the big tv's and eating good food. Afterwards, molly and i went to our house and watched Anne of Avonlea and the guys went to the Stickler's house to concure the world.

Saturday morning i drove down to my mom's house. It's been quite awhile so it was fun to be down there for a bit. We had lunch with my dad's mom. My grandpa is doing so much better. He'll be 90 soon and had some pretty bad strokes last year. It's amazing how much he has recovered. He's using a wheel chair now but that's just because it's safer. He also has lost is preferral vision in both eyes but he can deal with that. For awhile he couldn't walk or talk at all and had lost a lot of memory and the use of his right side. He's doing so well and has gotten so much back...it was great to see, a huge answer to prayer.

Today at school i got bit pretty bad. I'm heading to urgent care later. I'll be totally fine and i'd like to just ignore it but it broke the skin a bit so i guess i better go get my shots updated. OH what a day. I should post a picture. The kid was in crisis and i was getting his shoes off him after he'd hit a kid. I felt the bite but ignored it. It's not the first time but this time it instantly swelled and bruised pretty good.... but it's just part of the job.

Sticklers and us in Florence. We had lunch with Molly's mom and my mom and then headed home!
Dusty and Augie are ol' buds...reunited after many years :)
Writing on the wall, in our new church building.
Showing our pastor how much we appreciate him by sharing our donuts.

Our Sparkies :)...go red team!
The Anchorage girls at the Ecola Reunion and a few add ons :)mmmm...cheese...At sunset, in Yachats

Dusteeeeee and Matthew, working on crossword

my day

So it's almost 1:30 in the afternoon. I'm spending my day watching The Office highlights, while in my bathrobe, and listening to Dusty as he saves the world. It's very exciting. I don't think i've ever spent this long just hanging out in bed. I suppose i'm sick but i still feel extremely lazy. So i'm laughing a lot and wheezing a lot. My temp has gone down and so i was going to go to work but then all i could think of was caring a kid across campus and then them escaping because i'm having a coughing fit and the top of my head falls off ... cause that's what it feels like. (it was early in the morning when i thought of going to work and i don't think i was fully awake) Oh well..there's always tomorrow.

Time to do something productive...

Time of worship

After i got off work yesterday, i went through my music on my mp3 player. I had a few doubles and wanted to add some more. Before i go to work recently, I've been sitting in my car and listening to some music and spending some time in prayer. It's been pretty awesome and i highly recommend it.

I used to love listening to worship bands practice . I'd go early to the chapel at Ecola and lay on the chairs and just listen and at Hauser and even a few times at Evergreen.

When we were in Junior High, my friend Naomi, Liz and i would take the sound track tapes of Braveheart and Apollo 13 and play them in the old wooden chapel at Camp Fircroft. We'd lay on the floor and just listen. Oh such sweet times.

To me, good music is like sitting on the beach, it's cleansing. Or laying in a field with a blanket around you, watching the clouds roll by or on a clear, star filled night.

Peter pan nights, oh how i miss thee. :)

I have many great memories of good friends, a guitar (or just voices) and beautiful nights, just hanging out and worshiping our Savior. Sometimes their was sand and a camp fire or a high cliff, or in old building in Bangkok(with the doors wide open for everyone to hear), sometimes on a boat ramp, other times it was sitting on the most fantastic couch known to man or on an outlook towards the ocean, or on a roof of a friends house.

What are some of your favorite memories of times of worship?

I'm really surprised i don't i have nightmares . On most occasions, i go to sleep hearing the World of Warcraft in all it's happy hostility. This morning i woke up to it too. Happy times.

Writing on the wall

I like writing on the stuff. I guess when i was like four years old, i was taking a nap in my parents room. During this time i also practiced writing my name in permanent marker on there bed spread. A few years later i practiced writing on the base of a lamp, in the living room. When i was older, before JHigh i think, i was waiting for my dad to get home and i wrote a novel on the porch (it was in pencil). Back in North Bend, a friend of ours built a house. She invited everyone over to write on the walls before it was drywalled. We wrote scripture all over the walls and dedicated the house to the Lord. It was pretty cool.

Our church is in the process of building a new building. The walls are up, windows put in, and the roof is on. Last night we had a time of worship and praise, then we headed over to the new building for more prayer and then we got to write all over the inside walls. It was pretty sweet. Some of the kids didn't know what to do with themselves, with this much freedom :) I love our church family.

There was time in my life that i loved to write. I was never high up there with quality or grammar or anything (if you haven't figured that out) but it was a great way to just get things out. But now it's easy to be in the mood only when there are highs and lows.
Anyways.... A few weeks back, most of the Anchorage 2000 girls from Ecola got together for reunion. It was a blast! Lot's of babies, lot's of chatting, many hours down memory lane and just catching up over the last 7 years..if that's possible. We lot's of laughing but also a few moments of everyone honestly sharing how things were going. mmmhmmm....i love the beach...it's cleansing.
Last weekend we watched the superbowl. Well Micah and Dusty watched the game and then Molly and i headed out to a baby shower after making food for our hubbies. A lot of the ladies talked about being glad for something to do during SB day but sheesh...not every lady hates football. It was good to be there :) and we even made it back for the end of the fourth quarter..Go Giants!

Tired but thankful

Ok i can't just post my last blog with out saying how thankful i am for a my students and also the staff i work with. Every day their are moments that just make me laugh and i am thankful i don't sit behind a desk. (I tried that and i really wasn't to good at it) We went on a field trip yesterday to the water resource center, a fish hatchery of sorts. The kids really enjoyed being outside and i know they learned lots of stuff. A couple of kids had never seen a fish before and so they really enjoyed feeding the 3 year old rainbow trout, in one of the ponds. Their were a few moments that made me understood why we only go out as a group once a month but the guide was a retired high school science teacher He did a great job keeping them on track and excited about what they were looking at.
I love my job and i know that God put us in this classroom for a reason. I just want the kids know that their are people on there side, who want to see them succeed and who care about them with no expectation of love back. Working with kids, really makes you go back to the basics and it makes you realize how much we have to be thankful for. I've learned so much from them and look foward to those moments of excitement and joy.

a long week

I can not even express how glad i am that it is the weekend. It has been a challenging week, to say the least. I love my job but there's moments when it feels like we are running hard against a wall that likes to yell, cuss, hit and scratch a lot. When you give so much emotionally and physically for the kids but they have so much against them that it's very easy to get discouraged when progress isn't always evident.
At the beginning of the school year, I was talking to a friend who is in her first year of teaching. She was talking about how well her class is going and how she feels like the discipline plans that are in place will never be used. I remember laughing at this point because for our class, behavioral plans are a way of survival. I truly love my job and i know that i'll be excited to go back and be a part of the last week of school before Christmas break but right now i think I'm going to go to bed.

(copied from myspace on request from my adoring fans :) haha)

Post from 8/16

Where the crap has the summer gone? Seriously....oh my goodness gracious. It's the 16th (happy birthday Micah) and we only have 20 days-ish till school starts again. That's exciting because it's a whole new year, new place of employment and lot's of other new stuff but still i feel like it should be July.

This summer has been a lot of fun though. Camping with Dusty's Portland relatives and the Sticklers, Women's retreat, Moving, Heatwole family camp, road trip to Spokane, our third anniversary, Summer school, Ikea opening and a bunch of other stuff I'm sure that i have forgotten, has made for a very busy summer.

It was hard to say good bye to the Clack ESD kids. I truly loved that job. It opened my eyes to a whole community of people that i have learned to adore. It was some of the most challenging moments but I learned so much i wouldn't take that time back for anything. The day after Labor day, I'll be starting at Ellsworth Elementary, in Vancouver. I'll be working 1 on 1 with a student. I'm excited about this new challenge but I'd really appreciate prayer for patience and endurance.

I'm also very excited about the fact that we are now living in Vancouver and will be able to get involved in our Church more(which is here). If we end up working at AWANA again, I hope to have the opportunity to invite some of the kids from school, to club.

Well i need to get some things done...please let me know how i can be praying for you. I'd also love to hear about some things that you are learning.

the MOVE is complete

I just wanted to say THANK YOU to all who helped us move this weekend. A few of us agreed that this was by far one of the smoothest and quickest moves we've been apart of. The U-Haul was loaded and emptied, and the Steele St. address cleaned out and had a walk through in about 4 hours.

Thank you also to Molly, Micah, Yvonne and Lillian for helping us paint. It took 2 days and was a huge project but we are so thankful we got it done before our stuff was in the house. I'll hopefully get pictures up at some point but we'll see.

MOVING!

So the plan is we will be closing on the new house, this Wednesday June 27th (happy birthday Molly!) On the 28th we are getting keys and priming like mad. :) Then we are filling the U-haul on Saturday morning and moving on up to Washington land!!

Please continue to pray that closing will go smooth! need more info or if you want to help from either the Oregon side or Washington side, email me bethany_ahrendt@hotmail.com.

New House.... please pray with us that this will work out!

New house preview

This has been quite a process! We knew that it would be but i guess i thought that once we found one then things would get rolling. We've put four different actual written offers on places that we thought would be right and one verbal but each time the door has been closed..some softly others more like slams. The one above, we are both very excited about. If things go smoothly we'll be signing papers on the 27th of June and getting keys on the 29th. So, if anyone would like to help us move or paint..please let us know :)

We've done the inspection and that went great...now it's all about financing :)...Please pray that we'll be patient and really be seeking the Lord in this time. What ever happens, we'll be out of this place by the 30th because our lease will be up. So if things take a few more days with the financing then that, then we'll be staying with Dusty's sister. Let me know if you have any questions!