No longer newlyweds!

Well today marks our 1 year anniversary! I can't believe it came and went so fast!
















That day was such a blessing! Our family, friends, people around us to encourage us. Today Jeremiah surprised me with a DVD of our wedding day and reception. We have had the tapes sitting in our office area for a year and I guess he took them several weeks ago and converted them to DVD and made a whole movie out of it. It was incredible!!

So many things have happened since June 20, 2008...

an amazing honeymoon-





some great concerts-



wonderful first holidays together







some fun adventures









Long hard road of school, student teaching and... GRADUATION







This year has been wedded bliss (no pun intended). Jeremiah has treated me like a queen, he is so special to me.

We have worked so hard this year on our marriage. Working through struggles, fights, differences, time restraints, money issues, and God came through every time in the end. I doubted so many times, God revealed Himself each and every step of the way.

Jeremiah, to my wonderful husband and best friend,

You have showed me how God calls a man to lead his family. You have loved me more than I could have ever imagined. You fight for me, protect me, cuddle with me, kiss me, care about my feelings and pray for me. You have given our relationship up to Christ and He is blessing us. Thank you for reminding me daily that I am worth the love that God gives and that you give to me because of Him. I pray that we grow even more in love each day, week, month and year and that we look to God for each decision in our life. I cannot wait until the year of our marriage that we can grow our family with children and new adventures. I can't wait for another year and what amazing ways God will show up in our lives. I pray that our ministry is a reflection of our marriage and that our love is a total reflection of our relationship with God. I love you Jeremiah Richard Hann, with all of my heart. One year... 100 years... I will always love you. You are my best friend and my biggest supporter- thank you.

With all the love I have,

Your wife

Real World

The closer and closer July comes, the more nervous I get that I am actually going to get my own classroom... Everything is up to me (for the most part). I have always been so confident in my abilities but now that I am accountable to myself basically (no professors, no cooperating teacher to fall back on... just me). I stayed up late last night just thinking (worrying haha) about if I can do it.

This Thursday I go and sign my new teacher hiring paperwork to make it official. I get all my information on my salary (still unreal!), benefits, schedule and new teacher orientation (at least there will be other people in my situation. I hope that once we get back from vacation I can finally see my classroom, find out what resources and curriculum I have and get down to work with lesson plans, choir music and many ideas! I am so grateful that my mom works for a city choir so I have TONS of music at my disposal and I have so many music teacher friends who will be of great help and support. I am the only music teacher at my school (minus the band teacher who travels to a few schools) so unlike a regular classroom teacher, I don't have a team of people that are teaching the same thing, going through the same thing, so that's the hard part about being a specials teacher, you are basically it.

I know that first year teaching is "survival year" but that scares me to think that I just need to "survive." I'm sure it will be tough, rewarding, eye opening and a blessing. I just want to get ahead of myself with the 3 weeks I have before meetings start to get at least lesson plans started... I can't wait to decorate my classroom, figure out my classroom rules and meet the over 850 kids that I will need to learn their names, faces, personality, etc.

I am most nervous about my colleagues and making "friends." haha it's like high school again (making friends haha). I tend to be an introvert when I'm in new situations (not in my classroom but around people my own age or older). I don't want to isolate myself but I know it will take time for me to open up and meet others... I just pray God gives me confidence, humility and wisdom. I will definitely have to rely on God moreso than I ever thought this next year. I can't do this on my own... I can do anything with Him though! :)

This is my beautiful new home for the next year :) This school is SOOO beautiful, I can't even imagine what my classroom will look like!!

Thoughts

Sometimes I look back at my life and wonder why God has blessed me so much... honestly. It scares me to think that I have not gone through much heartache or pain in my life. I have been disappointed, heart broken, felt alone and many other "hard" times but sometimes I think, "when does the really hard stuff come... and am I ready for it?"

I see the extreme pain that people are going through, so much even this week. I know God will prepare me for it when it does hit but have I lived such an innocent life so far that when real true pain hits- will I run straight to God and know that I am ok?

So many people have been in my mind the past couple of days, some of them people I don't even really know. But I think, God must know they are ready for something this BIG- does God want me to dive deeper in His Word, draw closer to Him, pray like mad and prepare myself for tragedy that is inevitable?? YES- I don't think I take that serious enough.

I have not experienced loss like most people have (death or abandonment), I have not experienced physical pain hardly at all (haha child birth might be the first way I break myself into that haha), and have had little disappointment in my life. What is the first big thing that will come into my life and am I too naive to think that it can happen at any point. I feel almost like knocking on wood as I write this post (God forbid something does happen).

Can anyone else relate? I am so blessed and yet humbled to think that God in His infinite wisdom knows when I will be ready and will walk with me through anything. Do I take His sovereign plans seriously enough to do something about it?

God and Junior High

Have you ever just watched junior high students who like each other? (or remember the days...?)

You spent all your time thinking about them, talking about them, writing about them... but rarely any time actually TALKING to them.

I watch these relationships play out every week (seeing as though my job and ministry revolve around teenagers) and was compelled to think that that is what my relationship with God is like sometimes.

I tend to think about God a lot, write about Him in blogs, status, etc., and talk about Him a lot to students, parents, others etc.

But I was convicted to think how often to I actually talk TO God. Not as much as the others I'm afraid.

It was a big awakening to think that I think it's silly for younger students to like someone so much, think about them so much- but not EVER ACTUALLY talk to them.

Am I like that?? Too often... yes.

Vacation Update

I am so excited that we decided to go out on a limb and use priceline for our vacation in 2 weeks.

There was one set back but other than that - it was perfect!!

We bid on 4 & 3 1/2 star hotels and got some amazing deals. We are spending 1 night in Hollywood and we bid $60 and got the hotel Marriott in Downtown Los Angeles :) It's beautiful! The set back- they charge you to park (and you have to valet park) -boo. So we are going to try and park somewhere close and walk, but we'll see.

We next bid on hotels in San Diego and that was a bit harder, but we ended up getting another Marriott hotel really close to Sea World but again we got hit with a parking fee (I think we will have an easier time finding a place to park in San Diego but downtown LA might be harder).

Needless to say when we averaged our hotel rates at $70 a night for amazing hotels! Heck even if we have to pay the parking fee, it still makes the quality TONS cheaper than the normal price.

We are so excited to find great deals for this vacation and spend less money than we thought :)

We did our research for priceline and got lots of tips and it definitely paid off :) Give it a try sometimes!

Vacation!

This is for you Lauren!

Well this summer were had many different ideas for vacation... we were not sure what this year would hold with my job situation so we planned on using some tax return money to get annual passes to Disneyland. This would ensure that no matter how type money continued to be that we would have a sure-fire vacation for the next year.

Well since the job offer at Country Place Elementary- we had been thinking of a less expensive summer trip since we want to save up to go to New York next summer (our favorite place ever!)

So my cousin told me about a deal that Costco has for a Southern California pass (it is on sale this summer). So we have decided we are going to get this pass which will give us a 3 day park hopper to Dland, 1 day to Sea World, 1 day to the San Diego Zoo and 1 day to Universal Studios!

Jeremiah has never been to San Diego or Universal Studios so we thought it would be so much fun to spend some time in Dland then spent the rest of the time in San Diego and LA. Gives us more of an adventure and will be fun to go a few places Jeremiah has never been. So now we have to make a few hotel arrangements (Pastor Greg might come in handy with his Priceline/Hotwire intelligence!) and might not be able to go hit up Saddleback but will definitely go to some church that weekend either in LA/Anaheim or San Diego (always fun to check out other churches and youth groups on our weekends off).

So that is our plan this summer. That gives us about a week to wind down, be together and get away and then I will jump straight into my classroom, meetings and ready for the school year.

For now I am relaxing, cleaning, meeting up with some girl friends I haven't seen in a while and getting lots of SLEEP!