Lot's Happening!

Life continues to be exciting at the Yoder house. I won't even make excuses for the lack of posts the past 3 months. I can hardly believe February is just around the corner. Lots has happened since the beginning of November.

I had a wonderful trip to Brazil. Mom, Dad, and I stayed with my aunt Debra and grandpa at a beautiful condo right on the beach for two weeks. I enjoyed daily walks on the beach, time in the pool, lots of wonderful food, and good time catching up with family. A highlight was meeting my cousin Bruno's fiance and attending my first Brazilian bridal shower. It had been 10 years since my last visit to Brazil. How wonderful to return.

Since returning I have started a new job at Prairie View Elementary working as a paraprofessional in a functional skills classroom. I am being stretched everyday and learning valuable lessons that will help me when I have control of my own classroom.

Seth and Joel moved Crystal Valley Computers to a new location in Middlebury. They now have over twice the space and are excited about their location at the busy intersection of US 20 and SR 13. It was a lot of work to move everything, but we had lots of help from family and friends. Seth is relieved to be settled and is excited about all of the space they have to work with. Busy continues to be good and for this we are grateful.

My brother Colin proposed to Mackenzie at Thanksgiving and I am ecstatic about the upcoming wedding in September. We went dress shopping last weekend and I've enjoyed being involved in the planning.

I am looking foward the upcoming spring. Tennis conditioning at Bethany is starting in a week and official practices start in 6 weeks. I am going to have a great team this spring and am excited to spend more time at Bethany again.

Here are a few pictures from the past couple of months. A family picture taken on Christmas at Myron and Sheilas, a siblings picture from Rebekah's wedding, a Christmas picture ( I was very excited about the jumbo box of Goldfish crackers, and a picture from the wedding shower in Brazil.

Well I guess that is a quick update of the highlights. Hopefully it won't be another 3 months before we write again.

Sarah

Another milestone reached

I am feeling pretty good this morning. I have officially completed all of my schoolwork. My student teaching is complete, my final portfolio has been turned in, and I am heading to the airport in 20 minutes for a 2 week trip to Brazil! It doesn't get much better than this except oh wait... I have a job waiting for me when I get back!

I have spent the past month searching webpages for jobs at any school in the area. I have been amazed at how few jobs are available. I guess I should have known with unemployment being so high in Elkhart County. Two principals have told me that they are being flooded with applications (100+) for every job they have open. People are desperate for jobs. I guess I just got lucky with an open teaching assistant position at Prairie View Elementary in Goshen. Knowing the principal definitely helped! I am excited to begin working in this setting when I get back. It will be a new experience for me to work with younger students and particularly students with special needs. 

The best part is that because of the hours and location I will be able to continue coaching tennis at Bethany and finish out the year serving as a class sponsor. I feel very blessed. I expend so much energy worrying and somehow things always seem to work out! I need to do a better job of having faith.

Well that's all for now. Brazil here I come! 

Fall Begets Winter

This past week I gazed out the front window of the shop and watched the snowflakes disappear into the soaking wet parking lot. This finally confirms that the summer has gone and winter is here. For me, there are two seasons. The season when I am cold, and the season when I am not cold. It is now the season to be cold. Uncomfortable jackets, no shorts and t-shirts. No sandles. I think you can tell which season I prefer.

Time is ticking by at an amazing pace. Rebekah has been married for over a month. The business has been open for more than two and a half years. Sophie has filled our hearts with love for over three years. Sarah and I started dating more than nine years ago! We have reached the half way point of being in a relationship for the majority of our lives.

Sarah's student teaching is winding down. She has greatly enjoyed her experience and believes that she has finally found the career to which she was called. Things at Crystal Valley Computers are going well. I am faced with the struggles and delights of being self employed daily. Working with computers is not a deeply emotionally filling calling, but for some reason I believe it where God wants me.

Wedding Pictures

Off and running...

It has been several weeks since we've written, and its been an eventful couple of weeks. Rebekah and Chris got married. It was a fun weekend and a beautiful wedding. It was so wonderful to have our family in town. Grandpa and Aunt Debra came all the way from Brazil. Aunt Marg and Aunt Lisa were up a few days before the wedding as well. Colin and Mackenzie stayed at our house and we enjoyed having them around for the weekend. It is so wonderful to have family around!

Rebekah and Chris enjoyed a week at Seabrooke Island, South Carolina while the rest of us went back to the real world. I am finishing up my 4th week of student teaching and my 1st week of real teaching. I picked up two sections of government class this week and will add World History next week. I was fairly nervous the first day, but since then have been much more confident. The whole teaching thing feels very natural to me. I've enjoyed the creation process of making lessons and the actual class time with the students. It is a lot of work though! The next two weeks will be managable, but I think adding US History and a third prep will make things much more difficult in 2 weeks. My plan is to use the upcoming long weekend to get a lot of planning done.

In other news, Seth and I both have birthdays this weekend. The big 27. Wow that feels old. We are planning to spend time with my family Friday evening and his family Saturday. Rebekah is trying to talk us into a day trip to St. Joe on Monday too. We'll see how the weekend pans out though.

Life continues to change...

Well life has changed. I just finished my first week of student teaching, 1 down and 12 to go. The first few weeks will be a lot of observation and then I will start taking over one class at a time, building up to full time teaching for a few weeks, and then handing classes back to Brent. It has been fun to be in the classrooms and experience a different part of school life than I have been used to for the past 4 years. It is hard to walk by my old office and see someone else in there though.

Sophie has completely healed from her eye injury. She ended up wearing the dreaded cone for 2 full weeks. We were so relieved when that finally came off. Oreo (Jeff and Mariko's dog) is here for the weekend while they are in Chicago celebrating their anniversary. It's fun for Sophie to have a playmate for a couple of days.

Rebekah and Chris are getting married a week from today! Craziness! It has come so quickly. I am excited about next weekend and all of the activities we will have going on. Colin and Mackenzie will be staying with us for the weekend and the big news is that my Grandpa and Aunt Debra are coming from Brazil for the wedding. They surprised us this past week with that news! It's been several years since I've seen Grandpa and a very long time since either of them have been in Goshen.

Another piece of big news is that Christie is engaged! I got the exciting phone call last night and am so thrilled for her and Scott!

Sad Sophie

I can feel summer winding down with August quickly approaching. Big changes are just around the corner and I am feeling a mixture of excitement and apprehension. After four years I will be leaving my admissions office and moving into student teaching with Brent, a social studies teacher, at Bethany. The past few weeks I have begun to clean out my office and make space for the new admissions director. I am surprised at the amount of things I have accumulated over the past 4 years. I have one more week in the office and then starting August 11 I begin my student teaching responsibilities. This will keep me busy until mid November. From there I will be searching for second semester teaching positions or some other paying job to finish out the school year. I am hopeful something will fall into place fairly early on because I don't do well with unknowns, plus we will need some income from me. The whole being adults with responsibilities thing is kind of a drag!

On another note I finished my last class earlier this week. Over the past 18 months I have completed 11 classes through Goshen College and Indiana University and passed 2 state licensing tests to get ready for student teaching this fall. It felt amazing to take that last final and cross the last class off my list of things "to do." It has been a busy year and a half, but we survived!

On a sadder note, we had a medical emergency with Sophie last weekend. She and Della (Seth's parents new dog) got into a little scuffle at the farm and Sophie needed to be taken to the vet for stitches just below her eye. Thankfully the cut did not injure her eye, but unfortunately the incident happened after hours on Saturday evening, so we had to drive over to Mishawaka to the Animal Emergency Care Center in order to have a vet look at her. We left for the vet's office at 9pm and didn't get home until after 1am on Sunday morning. All in all it was a long evening, but also quite an adventure. Sophie is not happy about having to wear a cone for 10 days though!

keeping busy

Can it really be the end of July already?! Amazing! I am always amazed at how quickly the summer weeks pass. I have been enjoying short mornings at work and lots of free afternoon and evenings to do whatever I feel like. Highlights from the past couple of weeks include a trip to Cedar Point with KP and a group of kids from Bethany, a weekend visit with Colin and Mackenzie to celebrate Rebekah's birthday, and time at home to scrapbook, read, nap, and more recently paint!

A couple of weeks ago Sheila came over to help me with a few projects around the house and together we tackled painting in two bedrooms and our porch railing. After learning a few lessons from an expert I tackled our downstairs bathroom alone. I must say I am feeling pretty proud of myself! Painting is very addicting. It is amazing what a fresh paint of coat does to a room! I think I will try and do our other bathroom yet this summer. I know it isn't that interesting, but I included pictures of some of my projects!

In other news Seth and I spent the weekend in Shipshiwana for his Yoder family reunion. It was good to have the entire family together. It had been several years since I'd seen some of his cousins. We enjoyed the Farmstead Inn, the ping pong tables, local shopping and restaurants, and time to play games and catch up with everyone.

Summer update

I am in the midst of enjoying my two week summer vacation. I had this week off and next week as well. Truthfully I have been pretty boring this first week. I have one more class I need to finish before student teaching this fall and I decided to get it done in one week instead of having it hang over my head all summer. I am happy to report that I have 7 out of 8 lessons done! It helped to have Wimbledon on TV all week. I could justify watching so much tennis because I was working on school work at the same time! I should finish the last lesson sometime this weekend. It will feel great to have this last class done!

The rest of the vacation I am hoping to do some fun stuff! I want to spend some time at my parents pool, Sheila is going to help me do some painting, I want to catch up on my scrapbooking, and I plan on taking plenty of naps!

The highlight of my vacation so far was a day trip to St. Joe with Rebekah, Chris, and Zimms. Last Saturday we decided to go to the beach and rent kayaks for an afternoon. I had never kayaked before and was excited to try something new. It was a beautiful day too. We kayaked for a few hours in Lake Michigan. It was hard work! Afterwards we had a Chinese picnic and walked around downtown. We enjoyed the safari animal display! Rebekah's favorite animal was the rainbow giraffe!

Long overdue...

I guess it is long past my turn to up date this thing! This past spring was so busy for me and things have just begun to slow down now. I tell the girls on my tennis team that I don't want to hear excuses from them, but here I go anyways, giving excuses!

I finished my 4th season as the head coach of the Bethany girls tennis team at the end of May. We had a good season and I am really excited about the future of the program. My varsity team had 1 junior, 4 sophomores, and 2 freshman this spring. I am so excited about returning everyone next spring. We finished the season 9-9, even with all of our inexperience. This group is going to be my next sectional winning team!

I finished my classes at Goshen College at the end of April and since then have taken one more class through Indiana University's education at a distance program. I have one last class to take this summer to fill in my missing credits. It is amazing to look at the my to-do list from a year and a half ago and know that I only have one more class plus student teaching to complete. It has been a crazy year, but I am really excited about the upcoming changes.

At this point there are a lot of details up in the air. I have applied for an open teaching position for next year and have found a few other openings at local schools I plan to apply for as well. The question will be if a school will be willing to give me a job, even though I won't be fully licensed until December. I am crossing my fingers and hoping to get lucky. If for some reason it doesn't work out though I will do my student teaching with Brent at Bethany this fall and look for a second semester job.

School ended a few weeks ago. It is always strange to be at the school in the summer without all of the students around. I directed a science day camp last week for kids in grades K-5. This is my 3rd summer running the program and I added some teaching responsibilities as well, just for more practice. This week is another set of camps that I am in charge of as well. The Bethany boys tennis coach and I are running a tennis camp in the morning for middle school students and I am overseeing other camps throughout the rest of the day. After this week things will slow down a lot!

Seth and I are also excited about seeing Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat tonight at the Round Barn Theater in Warsaw. Grandpa and Martha were nice enough to offer us their tickets since they are out of town and Grandpa is recovering from surjery. I know we will enjoy the show tonight.

Well, that is a marathon catchup. I am excited about the rest of the summer. I have projects to work on around the house and of course Rebekah's upcoming wedding in August. I will also continue to pray and trust that details will begin to fall into place for next year. I don't handle uncertaintly well, so this is strecthing for me.

Sarah

Flying Months

Wow, a whole month has gone by without a post. Again I will redouble my efforts and attempt to post more often.

The past month flew by. Sarah has been very busy with Tennis at Bethany and is gone nearly every evening. She also had a week where she visited Pittsburgh with students from Bethany for interterm. It was a good (albeit fun) experience for her.

Work has been good, with some weeks being crazy busy, and others being a bit more laid back. Our business continues to steadily increase and we are very excited to be making such headway even with the state of the economy in Middlebury. Having Joel and Daniel to work with has been quite the blessing and I can't imagine better guys to work with!

I am beginning to put together the 3.0 and 3.5 men's USTA tennis leagues for the summer and am very excited about it. It is always a lot of fun!

It sounds like the Loves may be looking to get themselves a dog! Seeing someone get a new dog always makes me happy. I love Dogs and if I didn't live in town I would defiantly have a couple more. I also think it is very important to rescue dogs rather then getting them from a breeder or a pet store. There are some great documentaries on Youtube about the conditions and the thought processes in puppy mills. The ones I have seen are abit too long and graphic to put on here.

Instead I thought I would include an 'adopt me' video. The problem is that I really like two of them , so I think I will need to include both.

Spring Break

For the past week Sarah and I were at Lake of the Ozarks Missouri, thanks to my parents for letting us trade in their timeshare and thanks to Joel and Daniel for watching the shop on short notice!

We left on Tuesday morning and arrived back home today.  The drive was around 8 hours and was comfortable thanks to Sarah's parents selling us their beautiful car at a price we could afford! Two things jumped out at us right as we arrived.  

First of all, the luxurious amenities in the room which we are lacking at home.  

Secondly, the amazing view from our front porch (and I am NOT talking about the lake...).

Wednesday was great!  The weather was perfect and we began the day with some sleeping in (Seth) and going to the club's workout room (Sarah).  Then I ran Sarah around the tennis courts for a while and taught her how to add some topspin to her forehand.  

Of course, we had to sample some of the local gourmet cuisine.

The next day there was an unfortunate turn of events when I woke up with a very strong headcold.  Somehow I went for almost two years with no major illness and I get knocked on my rear by a cold/flu during my only week off work in those two years!

Thankfully it was mainly just sinus issues accompanied by a fever, but it did put a damper on our plans for the next few days.  I mainly stayed inside and slept while Sarah went out and bought all of the Crocs in the nearby outlet mall.

We also became very good at the game Sequence during my 'indoor' time. 

Finally, Friday night I decided to brave the outside world and we went out for dinner and a movie.  Sarah and I are a big fan of the animated films, and the only one that was playing was Monsters vs. Aliens.  The movie was just alright.  The animation was cool, but that's about it.  By far, the best part of the movie was the clip below:

We are stoked about this one!!

More snow?

After a week or two of good weather I was hoping that spring may be around the corner. However, mother nature had other plans in mind and I was unpleasantly surprised this week with buckets more of snow. (Yes...buckets)

Other then yearning desperately for spring, things are going pretty well. Business has been steady even through the terrible economic conditions of the area. We have been blessed with an incredible employee in Dan Love. Things sure couldn't have worked out better on that front.

Sarah has been very busy with work and school. She is feeling a bit overwhelmed. Still, she is looking forward to the girls tennis season starting up this spring.

I found a neat video that only some of you will enjoy. Some of you may find it sappy, so if you have no imagination or passion you should not play the video. :-P

One of the greatest literary heroes ever...or at least one of my favorite. Plus a great song. You can't go wrong!






By the way, the hero I was referring to was Sam of course.

We are off and running...sort of

I was just starting to feel back into the swing of things when cold winter weather gave us a 4 day weekend! Not that I am complaining!

Seth is in Chicago this weekend playing in a tennis tournament with his dad. Rebekah is in town, although I really haven't seen her much. She and Chris are visiting different venues trying to decide on a reception location. Today they are driving to Lafayette for a Purdue basketball game, Rebekah's birthday gift for Chris.

I had the house to myself all last night. I got the first half of my semester's work done for one of my classes. (Yes! I was feeling productive!). Seth always said I was crazy. It is so hard for me to have a complete syllabus and not start working ahead. It is like a long to-do list just waiting to have things crossed off. Why wait until later, if I can get it done now! I also did a little scrapbooking. Sometimes it is nice to have the house to yourself for a day!