Big News!

Yep, that's right! Most of you have probably already heard, but we are expecting our own little bundle of joy in the middle of May! Also known as Dutch baby (I posted on facebook that I had a dutch baby in the oven... I had been waiting for weeks to post that!), and Baby J (short for Baby Jonkman, of course).

Apparently we really surprised most people and did a good job of throwing them off to think that we weren't trying to get pregnant yet. Here's the story... I have not allowed myself to think about babies since we got married because in GR, I was working and bringing home the bacon while Matt was finishing school and working part time - this was NOT a good time for a baby. Then we moved to Merced and Matt was working full time for not so high of pay, and my job was unstable and part-time at best. That combined with no family nearby to help out, still meant no babies! However, once I knew I had this teaching job last spring... the discussion began :). Knowing it takes most people several months to get pregnant, we decided that we would try for 2-3 months to get pregnant, to aim for a summer baby so I could be home for longer before going back to work (unfortunately, 2 teacher's salaries combined with college loans still doesn't make for a stay-at-home mom possibility :( ...), and if it happened it happened and was in God's plan, otherwise oh well. If it didn't happen, we would wait until next year to try again. We were surprised ourselves when I was pregnant after the first month!

That's the story... I am 12 weeks along and feeling as good as can be expected I think. The morning sickness (which was not very bad at all) is pretty much gone, and I don't feel any extra tired than the school day makes me anyways. I cannot wait until around Christmas time when we find out what sex the baby is!

Another little story of God's provision for you... although we were very disappointed to have to move last spring, our current house has plenty of room for a baby room (while still having a spare/guest room) and space for playing and toys in the living room. I am excited to see how God will keep providing for us and blessing us in the next several months :).

That's all for now... must get back to all that school work! Here's a little something to leave you with...

Meet Baby Aurora

Last weekend I flew to Seattle for a few days to visit my family and meet Jordan and Allyson's newest little one, Aurora Christine. She was born on October 20, and is 2 weeks old. I had a wonderful time, even though it was a super quick visit. I got to spend a day at Jordan and Al's, cuddling with Aurora, playing with Evangeline, and loved every minute of it (even all the diapers I changed... I must say, newborn diapers are much more pleasant to change than 2 year old diapers!). Aurora is so sweet! She looks a little bit like Evangeline did, but definitely different at the same time. I just can't get enough of her red hair, it's gorgeous. I am so glad I got to see her when she is so tiny and new yet. She will be so much bigger by Christmas!



Dustin and Jenae and Lucca came over to my mom and dad's one night for dinner, and Carissa and Brandon, and Jordan and Al's fam came over another night. I was only wishing Matt was there with us too, but I love him just as much for letting me go and staying home to take care of Samson and keep working.

My mom was watching Lucca on Friday, so I got to play with her a bunch there, lots of auntie tea party time! That little girl is ALL girl! So funny! We took her to Target and she wanted to look at, touch, or hold everything pink! She wanted to sit in the pin car seat on display, and even carry around a bright pink bra that she saw hanging on a rack!

I got to see my friends Tash and Christina very briefly, and had a nice morning of shopping and browsing in U-Village with my mom :). I can't wait until Christmas when I get to see everyone for longer. Although it is never long enough, no matter how long we're there, it seems.

It's the weekend! Still not sure what the weekend will hold, but I am fine with that. Yesterday my school had a half day because they had their big Family Fall Festival last night and needed to get set up for it. It was nice to get most of the week's planning done after school and be done by 4! However, we returned by 5:30 for the festival. It was so cute! We mostly visited with people, people watched, and I had to help out with the book fair a little, but the kids there were having a blast! There were big inflatable toys, a trampoline/bungie thing, dunk tank, and tons of booths with carnival games. It smelled AMAZING there! There was kettle corn that they made right there, cotton candy, snow cones, a bake sale, and dinner too.

This month has been flying by already! And next week I have a field trip to one of the California missions, and Book Character Day on Friday. That is our school's replacement for Halloween... the kids dress up like a book character and there's a costume competition, and then they put on a talent show in their cute costumes :). Then the week after that is a half week because of the ACSI teacher's convention, but I get to go to Seattle instead! And somewhere in there, Allyson will have her baby ;).

School has been going well. My kids are taking notes on note cards for research papers for the first time ever. It is SO hard to teach them to take notes well. I wish there was enough time in the day to just sit down with each of them one-on-one and guide them along... classic teacher's dilemma, I suppose.

Well, onto breakfast this morning, the farmer's market, and we'll see where the day takes us from there :).

Teacher Credentialing

I just found out today that my application was accepted to get a California teaching credential, using the Michigan one that I already have. I am now certified in both states... however I need to do some more research now and figure out/decide which one will be easier/more beneficial to get the necessary requirements to renew it/ get the next level one. I have less than 3 years left on my Michigan one to get the requirements and 5 years for California. However, I think the Michigan one may still be easier to renew... oh the joys of being a professional!

Camping In Yosemite

About a month ago now, we went camping for a weekend in Yosemite. We stayed at the Hogden Meadows campground and drove to Hetch Hetchy for a day to hike and explore. We had never been to this area of the park. It was very different from the valley and surrounding area. There is a huge dam and reservoir there, and in the spring and summer there are waterfalls. They were pretty much dried up by the time we got there though. Anyways, we had a very nice time while we were there, it was a nice break from school. However, we decided that we weren't sure we'd do it again on a weekend during the school year, because it was so much work to be able to go! Oh well :) Here is a link to my facebook album that has some pictures from Yosemite, amongst other things.

Proud Teacher Moments

The most teachable moments and the best lessons tend to be those impromptu decisions things I have added in at the last minute. Of course, it's never the parts that I sit down on the weekend and spend time planning for ;). Well, I had a few of those this week that I thought I would share.

We have been learning about plants and specifically flowers in science. We had an activity where I needed to find a bunch of different kinds of leaves for the kids to sort and learn about classifying. So Samson and I went on a walk and found the leaves, but I also came across a vine/bush-like plant with great leaves and great big open flowers on the side of the road (no, not in any one's yard...). I thought, "What a great example of petals, pistil, and stamen!" So I picked a few and brought them to school the next day. They LOVED seeing a real example, and you could actually feel that the pistil was sticky to catch the pollen on it. Fabulous! I also found a coniferous tree with needles on it to show the difference between deciduous and coniferous... my kids love learning about plants where there are real leaves, flowers, needles, and we are growing bean plants too!

In history we are starting to learn about the trail of missions along the coast of California. We are using a different curriculum then our normal textbook to do this, but our textbook has some information that is not in the new curriculum that would be helpful to understanding it. So... I thought I would just read to them the highlights of that history chapter. But how to get 22 4th graders to pay attention while I read to them from a textbook for 10-15 min? I thought, if they were older, I would just make them take notes. But we are only just learning to take notes. Hmm... dilemma. 15 min before that class, I decided I would give them a piece of paper and tell them they had to write down just 3 notes on what I read to them. They blew me away! A few hard workers wrote over half of a page. Even the kids who have a hard time paying attention or are slower with that kind of thing, they would zone out for a min, but then realize they still needed more notes and pay super close attention. Several kept asking questions, even, for clarification so that they wrote it down correctly. What?! Seriously?!

Anyways, the good moments are always intermixed with the not so great ones (both by me and them!). I guess I needed that moment in history... right before we made flower models in science with tissue paper and pipe cleaners. They turned out well in the end, but they couldn't follow directions for the life of them! Ha ha, oh well, you take what you can get :)

Happy Weekend :)

Keep On Keepin On

Nothing too exciting happening around here lately. Last week I had parent teacher conferences. My school does them kinda different, we had half days all week, and then conferences in the afternoons. I ended up having one entire afternoon off from conferences to get some planning done, which was very nice! And half days made for less grading last week too. The conferences themselves also went well. I have some great kids and great parents. I love it when parents know (and admit) when their children aren't perfect and can work with me to help them improve! Very supportive parents certainly makes things much easier on teachers :). My kids also did fabulously in dealing with half days all week. I was a bit worried because they usually don't handle schedule changes very well... every Wednesday they still get thrown off by having chapel.

We have moved on from learning about the California Indians to explorers, and now we're starting on our big fun mission unit! Which also means we're starting on researching for our mission research reports, yikes! It's hard work guiding and teaching kids to take notes, make an outline, write a draft, make improvements... pretty much to go through the writing process, but for the first time ever! We practiced with the writing process to write a narrative a few weeks back, so hopefully they will remember a thing or two still! We have another field trip coming up in a few weeks to Mission San Juan Bautista as well.

We have been having wicked hot weather lately around here. Last week was in the high 90s and low 100s all week, yuck! That's even out of the ordinary for around here when it's almost October! Someone must have clued the weather into October's approach, however, because yesterday started the big cool down to 70s for the coming week :). We even had a few rain showers, errr, sprinkles, this weekend (we haven't seen that around here since the end of April, I don't think, lol... I welcomed those drops with open arms, it was much more fall-like!). I am having an even harder time getting into fall this year with the warm weather, hopefully this week things will get better. I am just itching to be a little chilled and cozy up with something warm to drink (versus living in beaters and boxers and not wanting to keep using the ac in October!). I wouldn't mind at all if it were nice and cool when I visit Seattle at the end of the month :).

We had a nice productive and lazy at the same time weekend this weekend. Friday night we had a football game for Matt's school. Saturday, Matt had to help run a car wash at school while I stayed home and cleaned our disgustingly dirty house. Then we headed to Visalia to help celebrate Matt's G-parents b-days that evening. We got back kinda late and were tired from getting up early Saturday, so we ended up skipping out on church this morning, sleeping in, making cinnamon rolls, and having a wonderfully lazy morning together :). Then we both slowly got schoolwork done throughout the day, intermixed with catching up on tv shows, doing laundry, and making dinner, cookies, and yogurt, phew! i feel much more ready for this week though. And now it's time to snuggle up with a little more tv before bed!