Twenty Wishes?

I just read a Debbie Macomber book called "Twenty Wishes". It is an offshoot of a trilogy called the "Blossom Street" series. I loved the books because they were set in Seattle, Washington which is one of my favorite places to visit, plus, the characters are warm and wonderful. In the series, there are many women from the neighborhood of Blossom Street who come together for various reasons and learn to knit at "A Good Yarn" on Blossom Street. They meet and freindships bloom and stories move on...

In the "Twenty Wishes" book, the main character, Anne Marie meets with other widows (young and old) on Valentines Day, who happen to all be friends through the knitting classes, and they decide to make a list of twenty wishes that they want to achieve in their life. They all have many wishes, some are to fall in love again, some are to do odd things that no one ever expected, and some are dreams of travel or buying something.

I think about what they have on their wish list, and I think of the wishes I have had, or have now...
I fell in love again, and am still in love with the most wonderful man I have ever met, I still have my wonderful teaching job of 22 years, my own kids are growing and one is off to college next fall, the other to his first year in high school.
I get to garden every spring and summer. I am learning all the crochet stitches, and am on my 3rd and 4th project!
I get to walk in beautiful surroundings every morning or evening when the weather is nice. I have great books to read, and am working on writing my own book-
And...I am also getting a business plan together for a Tea Catering company. I am very excited about the prospect of one day making a go at this. I have a great passion for tea, as you well know if you have followed my blog at all or hit it now and then.
Tonight I plan on working on the menus I will offer. I have already made lists of baking supplies I may need, and will make another list or 5 for other needed items for table and serving.
I think this last item it the wish I am most afraid of-but it is a wish all the same.

Like the women in the novel, I plan to make a go of a wish, and see where it takes me. I feel very blessed to have the person I love backing up my ideas, and giving support and suggestions that can only help me in whatever I do.
Thank you hon- you are my T (in Tea)...

With tea on the brain-
Time for tea!
E-

Foundations

    





Foundations- what are they? Sometimes I think of them as origins, or beginings...then years go by and I think with more experience, they become personalized, individual- or more so anyway. We take with us the things that our parents, grandparents, loved family members, and childhood memories instill in us. The lessons we learned, the interests we hold, our morals, values, and the like, are all what we hold as "foundations".
More years go by, and what becomes of our foundations? Do they sit and fester, as a bad thing that haunts us? Do we think about them and occasionally visit them in our thoughts and daydreams? Do we hide them, and ignore them, because it's too difficult to remember them and hold on to them? Or do we cherish them as heirlooms and try to abide by them in our daily lives?   
    
     What is it that keeps us drawing on our foundations? I often ask myself, how am I like my mother or my father? How am I, or am I at all like my grandparents? Since I lost three of my grandparents as a child, I never got to know their personalities very well, but I do know some of the things they did. I have a grandmother who passed in her early 50's. I was in 3rd grade. Her husband, my grandfather, died weeks later, he was in his later 50's. My other grandfather was 53, I was 3 when I lost him. Never knew much about him, except for what he looked like, because I have some good pictures of him, and that he was a baker, he started a bakery that his step brothers took over after her passed.

     My grandmother loved to bake and I know she crocheted. She was a very loving grandmother from what I can remember. My other grandfather was a fire chief, and he loved to fish. He also liked beer and playing cards at the station on their down time, but I don't know much about all that.

     I have one grandmother who is still with us. She is 95 years old. I don't know her much, I wish she would have been the kind of person I could have gotten to know, but she wasn't. I have seen her a few times in the nursing home she is in, but I am having difficulty finding the time to see her on a regular basis. I love her, but she was always hard to love- now at 95, there is no reason not to love her!

     My foundations are strong, and clear. I've never questioned them. My parents are to be commended for giving them to me, and helping me to see how important they are to my life even now. I need to be aware that my own kids need a strong foundation- and even though we live in a different time and attitude, it is still essential for a good and wholesome and life, with many benefits along the way.

    
     As I get older, I see myself understanding the joy that some of my grandparents got from the things they did to pass the time. I am beginning to appreciate the craft of crochet, baking, and fishing! I also like beer, but with moderation. :)  These things are becoming essential in my life, and I wish to share it with others in some way. What way I'm not sure. I am still toying with "Tea Catering", but I am scared. I am not a business person, I am a teacher- so I still need to draw all my thoughts out on this one. I love to crochet, it is such a stress reliever! I have made 2 cute scarves and am in the middle of my first afghan. Now I am obsessed with various yarns with their textures and colors. Heaven help me! LOL

     With my foundations in place, and my thoughts in a whirl for the future-
it's a good idea for me to have tea!!!

Time for Tea!!!
E-

Thoughts to Ponder

                                                                                  

Our staff did a great job this week in qualifying for AYP, or Adequate Yealy Progress in the state of Michigan. I am very proud to be part of such a great staff and work with such wonderful administrators!

We truly are strong at Strong Middle School!

Going through the process of this endeavor, I realized that I would like to re-open an old project that I organized last year with my 7th grade students. We had bake sales, organized sunglasses day, and made a lot of money to landscape the front of our building. With the help of Home Depot, we were able to purchase trees, plants, flowers, soil, mulch and pavers! The project was very successful!

I would love to open that can of worms again, but in a big way! I am thinking of constructing a greenhouse to grow plants, herbs, etc. and continiue the landscaping project on a grander scale. Students could grow and sell fresh herbs, vegetables, plants and the like to fudraising for our school's upkeep on the landscaping projects.

When I was in Califiornia last week, I met a wonderful woman named Beth who is a Master Gradener in her area. She told me of school garden projects that were being organized with the help of Master Gardeners. She kindly sent me an enormous amount of resources for me to research and get a quainted with. I can now contact Master Garders in my area of Michigan, and get help with ideas for our school!

This is exciting for me, because our school is very multicultural and the possibilities can be endless if we could reach out to our families to generate "growing" possibilities for ethnic cooking! What a great contrast in herbs, vegetables, ingredients and recipes we could come up with!

It's nice to still have passion for my job after 21 years-

So many thoughts to ponder...

With that said-

Time for TEA!!

E-

Writing...

     I have been looking through my many journals in my nightstand from years gone by, and I decided to begin writing again. I have had many literature and writing courses between my bachelor's degree and my 2 master's degrees in Reading and Literacy, and have always wanted to take the time to actually try my hand at writing. I have jotted down many ideas and thoughts about what I would write about, and the only thing that keeps popping into my mind is what Jerry Spinelli, author of several young adult books, said to us at th Michigan Reading Conference 8 years ago! Write about what you know! I have heard many authors say similar things, as well as professors, so I guess they can't be wrong, can they?
     I write what I know whenever I blog-
So what's the difference? I do enjoy blogging about things...and I don't care that no one reads them! LOL! I do it maily for myself anyway-to "practice" I suppose.
     Well, I have begun a writing piece that I want to share with my fiance', and I am very excited to show it to him. We both love a good story. We are reading all the time, and listening to audio books, and telling each other if we enjoy them or not, or whether or not the other would enjoy it so they can check it out of the library next! Sounds so nerdy, but it's the honest truth, and I love it!
     I am intereted to see what his opinion of my writing will be. He seems to enjoy my blog, so I hope he will have good things to say about my more serious writing.
     I teach my students all kinds of things about author's craft, voice, transitions, strong verbs, and proper noun verb agreement throughout their writing- and I wish I could just sit and write with them. (Sometimes I do...for modeling purposes, but I get carried away, and they love to watch me go!) LOL!
     So, if anyone is reading this blog-please comment on my style or anything else for that matter. I really do want to hear your comments and thoughts, good or bad. I can take criticism -well-I'm a teacher whose been coached for years- I want "fixers" and "keepers" in my writing world now- and you are the experts!

         With that in mind-
It's time for tea!!  Chai!  Mmmmmmm!
E-

Much Needed Weekend

This week has been a very strange one indeed. It was pretty roller coaster-ish with so many things on our plate. We didn't get much sleep last night due to a middle of the night call, and getting in late from our son's hockey game. As I sat in my car driving home from school today, listening to my audio book, I thought about all my classes and what we accomplished today and this week. I think they got the gist of the differences between myths and legends, but their reading comprehension lacked any connection to the plot of the text. I sometimes feel that my efforts are futile-what am I doing wrong I ask myself...is it me? Or them...?

I selected this painting for this blog because as I was still driving home in the cold and snow, I long to sit in the sunshine and have a nice brew of tea, in a calm setting with little disturbance. I am yearning for the day to come...I know this sounds silly, but I'm finding myself not finding the time I wanted to use on myself this new year as I wrote about earlier in previous blog. What happened to make time for one's self? The good intentions went away with the every day schedule life brings us.

Needless to say, we did have a wonderful dinner with my parents this week, and tonight we will have a quiet dinner since the boys are busy with friends- I just wish I could savor these times a little longer and enjoy them the way they should be enjoyed.  Does this have to wait until retirement? I certainly hope not...I have 9 years of waiting if that is the case!

Times are changing slowly as the boys get older, and things are seeming to slow down. I am seeing a vague light at the end of this tunnel...(snicker!) I just hope that I can remind myself more of enjoying the moment at the moment, not after the moment has passed.

With that thought-

Time for dinner-

then tea!!

E-

Time Out

I feel that I need a time out. Now that the holidays are over and we are left to bide our time throughout the rest of these winter months, I find it amusing how we have all these little things to do, but it's not what we really want to do. Sure, there are hockey games to attend, homework to help with, meetings to attend, and lots of house work to do- but why don't we take the time to do the things we really want to do, and put some of the less desirable things to the wayside for a while. The fact is, we'll get back to those things because we have to do those things, but making what we would like to do a priority is what I think will get us through this cold bout in a little more pleasant way!  Let's think about those things you'd like to do; clean out your in-box, straighten your jewelry box, donate clothes you'll never wear again, crochet, stitch, draw, take photos, blog, call a friend, meet up with a friend, watch your honey bowl on bowling nights, talk with your kids-I mean, really just talk...or have a nice hot cup of tea! (With a tastey scone of course.)

Have a wonderful day-

Time for Tea-

E-

HAPPY NEW YEAR...

2011...it's hard to believe it's here. Sometimes I feel like time moves so slowly, but this year, it hasn't at all. I'm not complaining, I just hate the fact that the older we get, the quicker the calendar moves through it's months, and all the events slip by and things change...
It's hard to explain how time can move slowly, or quickly, but change seems to take it's time. Change, I've learned is always a good thing. One may not know it at first, but with time, a person adapts to the change, and it becomes routine, not a challenge.
I guess my thoughts are to embrace change, good or bad, because it can be the turning point in your life, and you wouldn't even know it. Time is what makes change valuable-it's human nature to be afraid of new, but new can mean many things to many people.
Change is always new-hence the verb, "change"...the unknown-is so valuable to us. It's how you deal with it as we grow older. What we accept, what we don't, and what we change for ourselves is how we will form our lifestyles for the remainder of our time...
I want my new year to be a year of change-and I hope I can achieve that want. I want to begin preparing for a challenging yet fun experience in the business world, I want my son to go off to college and learn everything there is to know to be the best he can be, and I want my youngest son to continue on his journey at becoming a fabulous young man. I can't forget my fiance'...I want him to be happy and appreciated for the wonderful person that he is-humorous, caring, intelligent, talented, and loving. He deserves the best for 2011, and I hope I can help in that endeavor for him.
These are all my wants, I know it sounds selfish...but it is what I think time can help with-these changes for the new year...

Time for tea-
E-