Journeys Unexpected

Our Idaho Home Quick note: When I have access to all of my photos, I will update all the blog posts that have missing photos in them! Ugh! I hate moving! ;) Having had to move away from our cute little home in Idaho, I find myself once again living in the busy city. The area we are living in now feels much like Southern California, with all the people, cars, etc. I miss the smell of the crisp morning mountain air. I miss being able to breathe easily. My asthma has come back, but I've been able to find an essential oil that works better than the inhalers used to. doTerra has an oil called Breathe, and it works like magic! My first graders are super fun to be around. I remind myself often that while I'm feeling a bit crazy at their behaviors, they are only 6 and 7 years old, so they need to be taught things that I take for granted in older children. I've changed my room around several times this year in order to find something that works well for me, and I think I...

Originally published on 07/13/2019 To say that I miss my dog, Patches, is an understatement. Larry got her for me when she was just 8 weeks old back in 2012. She's been my buddy since that moment. I would come home from work and she would be waiting for me. Larry would tell me she would perk her ears up with the sound of every car outside. In California, we would go for walks around the block. She loved going on walks! We took her and Puddles with us when we rode with my sister-in-law and her kids from California up to Idaho and back. From the moment Patches got out of the van when we got home, she hated riding in the car. She got to where she would tolerate it, but it was never something she enjoyed. When she was a puppy, her ears weren't sure if they were going to stick straight up, flop over forwards, flop backwards, or do a combination of all! I'm glad they finally flopped forward. When she would run, her little ears would just flap! It was so cute! This is Pat...

Originally published 05/19/2019 As you know by now, I've been looking for another teaching position for this Fall. This past year has been rather tough on me (and in all honesty, hard on Larry, too!). Our finances have been at rock bottom. Our tempers have been rather short at times. Our supply of food runs thin sometimes, too. With a lot of help from our Church and family, we've made it through some very rocky spots this year! Green River, Wyoming As you also know, I've been going all over creation for interviews for these jobs. We've been to Utah multiple times, and even had a trip to Wyoming recently... that was a crazy trip back in 60mph wind and torrential rains! On the way out of that particular interview, I knew that I wouldn't get that job. I didn't feel a connection to the people in the room. I was glad when I got the call that they had asked someone else to have the position. Since that point, I was getting extremely discouraged. I'd been o...

Originally published on 04/11/2019 I'm sorry it's been so long since I've posted! Life has been crazy since about a year ago when my administrator from the school district informed me that my contract would not be renewed. If you recall, I tried teaching for VIPKID but that really didn't work out for me. I only taught a handful of trial classes (the parents didn't have to pay for those, so they could try VIPKID for free) and it just wasn't my favorite way to teach. Then, I tried a couple of other options to make money, including selling on Amazon... Well, let's just say that trying to find reputable sources to purchase products from overseas is much more difficult than it should have been. I also tried Click Funnels, but it seems like all I was doing was promoting a funnel that didn't do anything but promote the funnel. It was weird and I determined it wasn't for me. In August 2018, I found an insurance company that resonated with me. It's cal...

Originally published on 12/09/2018 You can read about our first day in Asheville, North Carolina  here . Our second day in North Carolina, I drove over to Bryson City. I wanted to purchase tickets for the Polar Express train ride scheduled to begin the season on Friday November 9th. It was a really, really good thing I did because I got the last two seats for the time! I'll write more on that experience later in the post... The colors in North Carolina were absolutely gorgeous! The trees were gold, green, red, brown, and so vibrant! Pictures do NOT do the colors any justice! Oh, and see the map on the dashboard in the picture above? That's from our really awesome Ford Fiesta! I plugged my phone into a USB port in the middle console, and it synced to the car! Momma's gotta get me one of them! Haha! Anyway, while I was in Bryson City, I wandered around some of the shops. In a small corner bookstore, I found two items I had not ever thought I'd find! Disne...

Originally published on 11/25/2018 As some of you old hats to my blog may remember, I began working for VIPKID back in April 2018. That didn't really pan out for me so I had to find something else. Back in August, I started looking for something in sales. I came across a post on ZipRecruiter about insurance sales and applied. Little did I know that first interview would begin a new journey for traveling! Larry and I were able to go to North Carolina earlier this month for a Leaders' Summit. I learned all sorts of good stuff about becoming a leader for my own team. I look forward to implementing that information very soon. We also decided that, since we were there, we would make the most of the trip... Boy, did we ever! The first thing you should know is that we thought we could check into our motel any time of the day. We took a red eye flight from Salt Lake City, UT over to Charlotte, NC, had a rental car waiting for us, and drove two hours or so back to Asheville...