Spring Updates!

       I've got some crazy news! 
But first, hello internet world, it's been a while. 

I wish this had been a lucky jersey because a lucky
jersey might have helped the Caps get past the
second round of the playoffs. Ughhhhh. 

      A long while, actually. I apologize for my absence! It's been a busy spring so far. However I am armed with some extra time in my schedule, some new ideas, and a whole lot to update on in a quick update post! I have spent quite a bit of time the last few months doing what I usually do every spring, panicking over the end of the hockey season and then slowly killing my nerves by watching my team in the playoffs. I am a Washington Capitals fan through and through and EVERY SEASON they just screw me over in the playoffs with their lack of playing as well as they should. Sigh. Of course the games are 3 hours plus overtime, and of course there is one every 2-3 days, so I lost both sleep and time to get things done. Laundry piles up, social obligations fall to the side, and all I wear is my giant hockey jerseys and leggings. It's a rough time. And, like they do every year, the Caps fell in the second round again this year to our biggest rivals, the Pittsburgh Penguins. Life is so rough. So, so very rough.

      Work has been super busy- wrapping up my caseload management responsibilities, getting test-prep planned, getting through test prep, and then on top of it all supporting coworkers in all of their personal endeavors. Half marathons, babies, buying houses, babies, weddings, and mostly people having babies. I love that I work at a school where there is a huge culture of both teamwork and shared celebration. We love to support each other through all of life's journeys, not just the ones we are on in our classrooms. I've done a bit of baking for these celebrations- a bouquet of cupcakes for a "bride wars" themed bridal shower, cute little cupcakes for a baby shower, and this sprinkled beauty, which admittedly was a severely huge amount of cake, for another baby shower. We've got another one coming up in a few weeks, and for that there may be some cookie pictures on my Instagram page.

      My husband and I have traveled quite a bit, too! We visited friends in San Antonio for spring break, went to a wedding in Atlanta, and....for the big news....we went to Munich, Germany for a few days in March! Aside from our honeymoon in Jamaica, this was my first big international trip and it was quite a trip! From the long flight over to exploring a new city on my own for 2 days (hubs was doing work related things), it was both fulfilling and exhausting. The even crazier news is that we are MOVING to Munich in September! Hubs will be working there for 1.5-2 years in a post-doc position. Holy moly! He applied several months ago as it was his "long shot" scenario, and after  months of him waiting to hear back, then getting invited for a visit, then him giving a talk on our visit and then more months of waiting to hear back after our visit, we finally know for sure we are headed across the pond in a few months. This beautiful city pictured below will be our new home!

I took this picture from the top of St. Peter's church in Munich, right across from the Marienplatz (tall tower on the right)
and Frauenkirche (tall church on the left) on my first day in the city. 

      I've got so many posts I have wanted to post but haven't for professional reasons; look forward to additional posts about traveling, moving, and managing all of life's daily requirements in between the moving and traveling posts! I'll still be baking, running (if I ever recover from a sprained ankle that is nagging me), teaching, bullet journaling, and I'll definitely be back to the blogging on a more regular basis.

Clip Show

     My husband and I are Netflix "binge watching" all of the seasons of Malcolm in the Middle. We do this, during the school year; it's nice to have some time to snuggle up on the couch after a long day at work. Last fall we made it all the way through the Castle series, seasons 1-8! We may sound lazy, but we really only watch an episode at a time, and some evenings we won't end up watching due to other commitments. So really, I guess we don't "binge watch," we just become series monogamists? Maybe? Is that a thing? 

     Regardless, while watching Malcolm in the Middle, we rediscovered the lost TV art of the Clip Show. Aka, when you don't have material for a whole new episode but you have an episode spot in the season to fill, so you do a clip show of previously filmed stuff and make it a new episode that's sort of a flashback. 

     I have some new posts in my brain, but don't have the material juuuuust yet to write out those posts. So I'm doing a clip show of my own and sharing some old photos I took that are still entertaining to me. Here we go! 

These are my mother's crazy dogs. She actually has more dogs than this, but at the time, I was taking random pictures with my then-new DSLR camera and happened to catch this mirror shot of all of them looking at the same thing. The mold on the mirror (it is a relic from my great-grandmother's house, and I believe it has been cleaned since) gave the image an antique-y feel, and I just laughed when I zoomed in and saw all of the dogs looking at the same thing! They are VERY energetic and crazy entities, so this moment of stillness was a rare occurrence.  

This is another of my mom's pets- she is a camera ham, she loves attention, and she loves naps in front of open windows. She was being very cute one day years and years ago, and looked right at me when I took the picture. This photo was taken at my childhood home. It was an old farmhouse without central heating or air conditioning. In the summer, the windows were always open. While we endured the heat, humidity, and suffered on the breeze-less nights, the cats were in heaven. Except of course for when they tried to swat at bugs outside the screens and then knocked the screen out and fell out the window, or just hit their faces on the screens. Cats may always land on their feet but I'm not convinced they're a very intelligent species...

Senior year of college some friends and I went camping during spring break. Wild and crazy, I know, but we were the kind of students who had spent all of our previous spring breaks on volunteer and mission trips. Plus, we were flat broke. I worked at the gym on campus and got discounts renting camping equipment. The four of us decided to venture out into wild and wonderful West Virginia and camped around the Blackwater Falls area. We hiked the Seneca Rocks area. It was early March, so everything was cold and icy, but starting to have that fresh Spring glow.
















More pets...what can I say! I love capturing various animal expressions. This is a former roommate's dog, Bubba, who is unfortunately no longer with us. She left to explore Europe for a bit and I stayed home and hung out with Bubba. He was so depressed without her! He would lay around by the doors, sleep in her bed, and refuse to go outside unless I was going with him. I tried to spoil him with treats, trips to the dog park, and snuggles, but he was still downhearted. This picture captures his depression so well. I love it. I miss this guy!


This photo was from my grandparents' house one Christmas many years ago. I have not been back to visit them for many years, and I am deeply sad/sorry/regretful about that. Hopefully that changes soon, but for now I'll take the nostalgia of this photo. I had just gotten my DSLR that winter and I was trying out some of the editing and filtering.

There's nothing particularly exciting about this last picture, but it's really memorable for me. When I was in high school, I went on a field trip to Williamsburg, Virginia, where we were supposed to complete a photo scavenger hunt. It was one of the best field trips I've ever gone on, as a student or teacher. We had certain requirements for the scavenger hunt, and it was exciting to see what each group had put together when we returned to school. I later attended college in Williamsburg, and while taking a random walk down DoG street one day, I remembered the photo I took for the scavenger hunt, and recreated it.