I have been looking at Target, Wal-Mart and K-Mart for maternity clothes and if there was anything cute and that fit that was less than $5 I would get it. I figured I’d rather buy stuff on sale little by little as I find it instead of needing to go out and buy whatever is out there when I really need the clothes. Today I made an exception and went out to purposefully find things.

My belly started to stick out a little this week. Tuesday I took an afternoon subbing job and was told to dress warm because I would be outside for about 30 minutes of the day. I wore my corduroys and leggings underneath, and man was it tight! I was so uncomfortable and decided for Wednesday when I subbed that I would wear something loose. So I wore a long sleeve maternity shirt I got from a friend and my jeans (with leggings again) and I was totally uncomfortable all day long!

I was exhausted after a long day yesterday and didn’t get a substitute teaching job for today so I took advantage of enjoying the morning around the house and spent the afternoon shopping for maternity clothes. Some people at school told me that I should check out the Klothes Kloset, a second hand store in town, to see what kind of maternity clothes I could find, and I’m glad I did!

This is what I got from the Klothes Kloset. A pair of black dress slacks for $1, a blue sweater for $4, a blue dress shirt for $3.50 and the red dress shirt for $4. A total of $12.50 for 4 articles of clothing!

After this I decided to check out the department store in town, Herbergers, to see if they had any good sales, and yes they did! They have a yellow dot sale, which any items with a yellow dot (on the price tag) were ridiculously marked down, their summer items to $2.99! Here’s my great buys from Herbergers!

The red and black shirt was $8, Green shirt below $2.99, blue and yellow dress $2.99, purple sleeveless $2.99, denim skirt $8 and blue flower shirt $2.99. A total of $27.96.

When I got home I checked out the original prices on the items I bought at Herbergers, and it totaled $233! Wow I was shocked! That means I saved 88% on the clothes I bought at Herbergers! Total over all today I spent $39.46 for 10 pieces of clothing, averaging less than $4 each piece. Even though I did splurge and spent $8 on 2 items I really didn’t want to leave at the store.

So now I have 17 maternity items in my closet. One from a friend in a bag of clothes she let me dig through and she also found me $1 capris from Target. My parents got me 2 shirts when Tim and I were down in Texas, one for a Christmas gift and one I found for $4 at JCPenny in their town. I found a cute black dress at Target for less than $5 and at K-Mart I found some comfy shorts for $5 and a t-shirt for $3. I will still need to buy some jeans and other pants later on and maybe a couple more tshirts. One of my small group girls said she would see if her Mom has anything she can give me, so I’ll wait and see if anyone has something to donate to me, and then just wait until I really need anything else before making any  purchases.

What a great day!

Today was the end of my two weeks notice I put in at the highschool. It was a bitter-sweet goodbye. I’m really going to miss the adults I worked with at the school, but I’m happy to get to substitute teach again, and in the elementary school where the kids like to please you more than try to see how much they can get away with. I was shocked to find out that some of the students that I thought didn’t like me, were bummed to find out I was leaving. I guess that constant sarcasm is a sign of affection, but with being in youth ministry we’re trained not to use sarcasm, so I’m really not a fan of using or receiving it.

I really hope that I get to keep in touch with the friends I made at the school. And I gave 2 students mine and Tim’s contact info to stay in touch. I gave one girl my email address who I loved getting to help, she is such a sweetie and stayed close to me in class. And then there is a guy that I clicked with, even though we had our tough moments, that I gave Tim’s phone number to and when we have Sunday night youth group for him to start coming to. So we’ll see what happens.

I didn’t know how far I could push talking about God and Christ in the public school here. I would talk to co-workers about my life and make sure to give God credit, and I would bring up church and youth group to kids in the school. I wish I knew more of how far I could’ve taken Christ into the school so I could’ve witness fully. I’ll have to try to find students on facebook and work from there.

I’m sitting inside at our local ski hill resting. We came out here at 5, and it’ll close at 9, so we might as well take advantage of the whole night. Tim and I met and brought 3 girls from the youth group to come enjoy the evening since school was closed today. We were wanting to come in the afternoon, but when Tim called he was told they were out of rentals, which wouldn’t have been fun to sit and wait. This was our first time to come out and ski this season. It was really fun, I just needed to take a rest. I think between skiing and shoveling snow this morning, I’ve had a good workout today.

Skiing is such a fun time with youth, and we are so blessed to have a ski hill close by. We have fun with the youth on the way down and have a quality time to talk with them riding up the ski lift. Going in a group is great ’cause there is someone there if you fall (don’t worry, it wasn’t me that fell) and people to encourage you and keep you up and going.

Our exciting news of the day is that I had my monthly checkup today and Tim and I got to hear Baby Schmoyer’s heart beat today! And the other good news is that I have only gained 3 pounds in the last 11 weeks. I feel hungry so much, but then can’t eat much at a time, so I was wondering how I was doing, and know that I don’t need to gain a lot of weight right now, ’cause that weight would not be the baby. I’m still not showing, which I am really looking forward to, but I know I need to be patient and wait. It’s actually nice that I’m not showing yet ’cause that means I get to enjoy this time of being comfortable since it seems like my nausea has subsided for the most part! Everything is going well. No worries with anything. I could use prayer to keep me from getting stressed and worked up over the little things, especially the bad memory I have now. It really frustrates me that I can’t remember much short term stuff. I still can’t find my car keys that I hid before going to Texas, and I’m thinking I wont find them until we make the office into Baby Schmoyer’s nursery this summer. Luckily Tim has an extra set of my car keys.

I finally got around to uploading the pictures from Christmas onto my computer, and since I was on a roll I decided to put them online too. Tim and I spent Christmas Eve and Day at his brother’s house and then flew down to Texas for a week. We had a wonderful time. A week later we had Tim’s family over to our house, but we didn’t have the camera out for pictures, sorry. The last 2 months have been wonderful with being around so much family.

You can see our pictures by clicking on the “Photo” link at the top of my blog, or click on the direct link below.

http://picasaweb.google.com/rockinyp/Christmas2008#

Here is my intellectual thought for the day…. (bare with me…it’s late now and I’m tired).

While waiting for our last student to get on the bus today to start our route I saw that she was fine until she heard the buses start up, which kicked her in gear to rush, making her bag break, spilling all of her stuff out on the icy ground. That reminded me of so many times in life where I let myself stress and try to hurry which brings so many more problems for me, than if I just relax and do what I can with the time I have and keep a level head.

I have been trying to stay extra calm lately (which can be really hard to do!) mainly because I’m pretty sure that stress cannot be a good thing for the baby God is forming inside of me. I get practice every morning before school with something almost always coming up that will make me shorter on time. I figure it’s better for me to be a couple minutes late to work than to stress myself out and get worked up which would last the rest of the day.

I’m slowly learning that life is much better if I go with the flow and not let myself make a big deal out of the small stuff.

I’m still around, just been busy and not feeling the greatest. I’m 9 weeks pregnant right now. The baby is about the size of a green olive and gives me a hard day about every other day now, today being one of those not so pleasant days. I know it was bad today ’cause I got 9.5 hours of sleep last night and people still said I looked pale and like I’m not feeling well. I’ve had a little nausea that lasts most of the day, but nothing I’m running to the bathroom for. I don’t look pregnant, but my clothes are already starting to get tight. Could be all the wonderful sausage gravy and biscuits I got to eat at Mom and Dad’s last week. It was worth it.

Tim and I enjoyed Christmas Eve and Day with his brothers down near the city. Then the day after Christmas we flew to Texas to spend time with my side of the family. It was so nice to see everyone and be able to just relax. I really needed that, especially after not feeling to great towards the end of school. I actually had 3 days in a row that I didn’t feel sick! Praise Jesus!

Speaking of school, I will be getting to substitute teach again in a couple weeks. I have really enjoyed working with my supervisors, but the highschool just isn’t my place. I got my degree in elementary education, and so I look forward to the 1.5 hours I get with elementary and pre-school aged kids in the afternoon on the bus, I just have to get through 4.5 hours of highschool kids before I get to do that. A couple days before Christmas it dawned on me to get a short-call subbing license, and with this I can also sub next year after Baby Schmoyer is here on the days that Tim has off, to bring in some extra savings. In order to do that it would probably be wise for me to go ahead and get back into the swing of substitute teaching this year and get my name back in there so I can sub next fall. Thank you to those that I talked to about this.

So that’s whats been going on. I have pictures from Christmas, so I’ll put those online somewhere sometime. I’ll let you know!