little bits of tid

[tidbits...get it?]

A few thoughts/stories from this week:

My mom's trip up here was wonderful. It was short but very sweet and we were able to visit Grandma and eat good food. I was thinking about it when she was here and we were all sitting around the table, how strange it will be next year to not have these moments with Aunt Linda and Uncle Alan. I've already told Brent we'll have to make some trips up here so we can once again grill with them and I can eat string cheese from their fridge [they get the good Kraft stuff :)] and he can eat an entire box of their cereal in one trip :).

Another bonus during mom's visit was that she got to come to church with me. I started going to Trinity this year and I absolutely love it. We are currently in the middle of a series on Joy and it was just such a wonderful sermon to hear. The day mom visited there was a "parade of joy" and people held up signs with somethin that could potentially steal their joy, and then they flipped it over and on the back was the reason they were still have to have joy. Mom and I were both in tears, and it was just a really neat sermon. I'm very thankful I've landed in that church for the time being. We even said the Lord's prayer at the end and I'm sure both mom and I were hearing Grandpa's voice in our heads as we said it.... at a pace so slow it's impossible to say along with him. :)

One more interesting thing that happened this week was that I got another dose of what it's like as a teacher, as I was able to hand back papers and assignments that I had graded. I got to hear all sorts of complaining and questions... but a few kids were pretty proud of the grade they got. English tends to be very subjective when it comes to grading, so I really know I'm going to have to learn to take a lot of the "oh mannnnn... why'd you give me this?" comments-- but I put in about 15 hours grading the papers and writing comments, so I was confident in how I had scored them. I also got my next batch of papers to grade [it's really never ending]... and I was so shocked when I started looking over one in particular: The assignment was to write a 2.5 page personal narrative on a significant event in your life that affected you/made you think/changed you in some way. I started reading one young man's---and I kept reading and reading.... AND THERE WAS NOT AN ENTIRE PERIOD IN THE ENTIRE PAPER, EXCEPT AT THE VERY END [ON THE THIRD PAGE]. There is one comma at the bottom of page two, and one elipsis [...], and a whole lot of "and then's." I showed it to the teacher I work with and we both just got to laughing so hard we were almost crying...

I really don't know what to say about that.

Beyond that it's been a pretty lowkey week. Yesterday Brent and I "celebrated" our 4 year mark. By celebrated I just mean that we called each other and said, "Hey, we've been together 4 years now." But still, worth mentioning.

And last but not least, I just spent the past 4 hours cleaning my apartment. All of my roommates are gone to play basketball this weekend and so I did dishes, picked up, swept floors, scrubbed the shower, and scrubbed and scrubbed and cleaned the entire bathroom. I really don't mind cleaning too much when I've got nothing else to do. It's kind of nice when no one's around and I can crank up to music and just clean. [I know my mom is probably thinking...what?! right about now...but it's true, don't let her fool you].

Okay, that's about all the little bits of tid I have for now. I hope you have a wonderful and restful Sabbath tomorrow.