Author: Andrea

    Lately, I have been thinking a lot about the idea of time suck and the way the hours can waste away to nothing if you are not careful. I have seen multiple speakers talk about budgeting your time and time blocking. It makes so much sense to me.

    You see, as a teacher, every summer becomes a battle between knowing what I want to accomplish in my time off and the ridiculous time wasting that seems to happen. Dave Ramsey says that you need to tell your money where to go or you will wonder where it went later. This same concept applies so well to time. Have you ever gotten to the end of a day off and wondered just exactly where all those hours went? Me too.

This summer, I want to do better. 

    How do you do better? Well, for starters, you need to decide what is important to you. For me, this summer, I want to focus on writing more, consistent work on my doTERRA business, my marriage, exercise and health, getting ready for the new grade level this fall, and maintaining my household/completing some projects around the house. 

   It will be important for me then to write out my schedule and create routines that support the work I want to do in each of these areas. I think with a solid time blocking plan I will be able to accomplish my goals while also giving myself permission to take time off and relax. I mean, it is summer after all. We will need to visit the midday happy hour at the beer garden every once in a while. 

    So this summer I am planning to be intentional with my time. I will focus on the things that I want to accomplish in order to use my time in the best way I can. 

   Who would like to join me in this plan? What is most important to you? Do you time block your schedule? Any tips or tricks are greatly appreciated!

It’s Saturday and that means it is time to reflect on the week and celebrate things both big and small. Join our community and celebrate this week by linking up or just stopping by the host Ruth Ayres’ blog to read others’ celebrations.

I have been having a hard time balancing all the things this Spring. And the result has been very minimal blog time. I have been thinking each week about the things I want to celebrate, but not making the time to sit down and write. That is something I want to change and I will be working on my time blocking to make sure it does change. 

Since I have not written in a while, I am just going to share a list of the biggest celebrations from this Spring:

1. I interviewed for and got a new position in the same school district for the upcoming school year. Next year, I will be teaching 2nd grade at Milwaukee Spanish Immersion. This represents a big challenge for me, but I am ready to take on that challenge. I have been at the same school for all 17 years of my career so it is a big move! I will be in a brand new grade level and it will be my first time in my career of truly teaching in Spanish. Time to brush up and make my husband only speak Spanish with me this summer! 
2. We traded in our car and leased a new car. This brought me closer to goals of paying things off because it frees up some money each month with a lower car payment. The debt snowball now has even more momentum. (Check out Dave Ramsey’s information for more about debt snowballs and budgeting…it is changing my financial picture in a very positive way)
3. I am growing in my leadership skills and really gaining momentum with building a doTERRA business. I love my essential oils and am thrilled to teach others about them. It makes me happy to be able to empower people to improve their health.
4. I attended a baby shower and a bridal shower in the month of May. It is so great to celebrate new beginnings with people who I love. The bridal shower was for my cousin so there is a lot of family time to look forward to coming up Labor Day weekend!
5. My cousin decided to take a 4th grade position at her school. This is awesome because now I know what to do with the bulk of my class library. It is a relief to know I am handing it off to someone who will use it and who will love the books as much as I do.
6. I had fun last night at a team event and I now have a pretty vision board on my office wall. I loved spending the time thinking about my vision for the future and finding words and images to represent it.  

What do you have to celebrate? I would love to hear from you in the comments!

     I am grateful today for the opportunity to work with kids. Children work so hard to understand the world. The questions that they bring up truly show big hearts and open minds. Just being able to work with kiddos and hear those questions and see the way that they are forming their understandings of the world, gives me hope for our future. Yes, there are some kids that are being brought up to think in ways that will not promote peace and justice. However, there are many children who will grow into people with open minds and big hearts. I am grateful for the opportunity to give them things to think about and guidance along this path. 

     I smile all the time. So when it came time to pick something that makes me smile to write about, it seemed like it might be hard to pick. But then, I thought about my days at school lately, and I knew what I needed to write about. 

    I am so grateful for all the love that comes my way through drawings and letters from my students. I have a wall behind my desk that is dedicated to being a gallery for things I am given. It is overflowing with drawings and little notes. Each time a student gives me something, it makes me smile. I am sure that is why I keep getting things. The students in my classroom see how it makes me smile when I get things and they really love to make me happy. 

    It is sometimes hard to remember why I like doing what I do. These little notes and drawings help to bring focus to why I am there. Each small gift from a student gives me a small moment to celebrate. That is priceless. 

     Every morning, I spend an hour with myself. I use the quiet hours of the early morning to read, write and reflect while I drink coffee. As an introvert, this quiet time by myself is like a battery to charge my soul. If I don’t get this time, I am a little off the rest of the day. 

     For the last year or so, I have also added meditation into the morning routine. Taking the time for stillness has really helped me to learn control of my emotions at high stress times. I use guided meditations to help me to center myself and begin my day in a peaceful place. 

    I am thankful that I am able to have this morning quiet to begin each day. 

     I vividly remember the first time I heard that people were working on a technology to create the internet. I was in my first year of college, in 1996, and fascinated by the fact that I could send message to my friends at other universities. At that point in time, the University of Minnesota had come up with an e-mail system that could be accessed from ones university account. It was like science fiction coming to life. We were hearing rumors about this thing that would exist where people could look up information right from their computers. It seemed so unbelievable that something like that would exist. 

       Fast forward to 2016. We have computers that fit in the palm of your hand, maps that are scary accurate at telling you where you are, virtual tours that make you feel like you are in that place, and video calls that let you see your loved ones face to face and feel like you are in the same room. Twenty years have passed, and hardly anyone can imagine doing things the old-fashioned way. Many people have a smart phone and look things up all the time. I pull my iPhone out during many conversations to look something up. We have apps that track our health data. There is an entire library of music on our phones or in our computers or both. It is incredible how these technologies have continued to improve. 

    I am grateful for the technology that helps us be informed and to keep track of our loved ones.