Only in Tennessee

I had heard rumors about how bad spring weather in Jackson was going to be; however, I think it may be blown out of proportion (kinda like it was in the winter, remember this post?).

Severe weather came in Monday night and has stuck around until now (but according to the news, the sun is a bad sign because there is more to come --we'll see). School was cancelled yesterday and today with the possibility of it being cancelled tomorrow. Where we live in Jackson, we haven't seen the troubles with the weather that the news keeps reporting -- power outtages, fallen trees, and flooding. Since the school buses fear they can't get kids to school safely, they don't do it at all. I can't complain!

Even though we personally haven't seen any damage, I will say that I have never heard as many tornado sirens in my entire life as I have heard this past month. Jackson's reputation with weather has been bad the past couple of years (bad flooding last May & tornado damage a few years ago), so I think people take severe weather very seriously.

Personally, I have become immune to the tornado sirens. So instead of instilling fear & warning me to take cover, I have just learned to turn the tv up louder :). (Don't worry mom, I watch the news during severe weather; although, this is mostly due to the fact it's the only channel I can get because I lose the satellite signal. Oh well, it counts, right?)

Easter Break

Over Easter, we decided to go and visit my family. We originally were not going to go anywhere for Easter because we were going to be traveling for my cousin's wedding the previous weekend. However, with my new job, it just worked out to travel over Easter instead.

We left Jackson Thursday afternoon around 4:30 (5:30 Indiana time). I drove the first part while Steve napped. Things were going great until we hit the outskirts of Nashville (okay, I guess that's about 1.5 hours). Traffic came to a dead-stop. I'd never experienced that before. Generally when being stuck in traffic, cars usually creep along. However, that wasn't the case here. I ended up parking the car and turning the engine off as we sat for about 45 minutes. But before I turned off the car, here was another first:

While trying to figure out what was going on, a cop car zoomed along side the highway. Then, out of nowhere, a firetruck came up IN BETWEEN the 2 lanes of parked traffic! I was able to angle my car onto the side like all the other cars around me. However, 2 cars ahead was a semi who was stuck and unable to go anywhere. The car in front of me backed up as close to our car as possible, and made a way for the firetruck to get through with only 1cm clearance on each side.

The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful. We met minimal traffic; however, I think it was because we were on the road so late. We finally got to my parents house around 2am. We had a great easter weekend filled with family egg hunt and visiting my new niece Charlotte Joanna (Congrats Joe & Liz!).

We headed back to Jackson on Sunday afternoon. We again met traffic that was at a complete stop, but luckily we were close to the exit & able to bypass the traffic jam. Whew!

Steve had to go back to work on Monday; however, I got the day off! To make things even better, a storm swept through last night that brought power outtages, fallen trees, and flooding which meant school was cancelled for today! I have been able to catch up on school things (like making a new seating chart, behavioral plans, lesson plans, etc), unpack & clean up from our trip, as well as enjoy being a bum and lazy.

Word on the street is that there's another wave of storms tonight/tomorrow morning. More rain could cause some more flooding which may lead to another day off. We'll see what tomorrow holds :)

A Classroom of My Own

About the time I posted the last blog (P&G craziness), I got a phone call to sub for the week of April 11-15. I quickly accepted, hung up the phone, and went about the next week with my sister, brother-in-law, and nieces visiting. I never thought that accepting that one phone call would become another life changer.

When I showed up on Monday to sub in the class, I discovered that detailed plans weren't left. As a sub, you learn to just wing it sometimes. However, the whole entire week turned into "winging it". This week marked TCAP (Tennessee standardized testing) week. My first grade class didn't have to test. However, my classroom was in a hallway with several testing classes. I ended up combining my class with another in the 1st grade hallway all week. We did lots of activities like movies, art projects, and activity centers. The week ended up going well since all the first graders & first grade teachers were working together.

All week long, the other first grade teachers kept asking me if I was staying on for the rest of the year. I soon learned that the teacher I was subbing for was out for the rest of the year. I sent an email to the principal saying I was willing, but new that I may not be eligible because of my degree. In order to sub for more than 15 days for the same class, you have to have a degree. I wasn't sure if my Secondary History degree would count in an elementary class. Well on Thursday, the principal came into my classroom to let me know she had it cleared with the district and I am the new teacher! She also gave me some great feedback. She said that she had heard so many great things about me and how my class was doing. It made me feel pretty good :)

The other teachers have been so helpful in making sure that I'm involved in decision processes and planning activities. They even plan all their lessons together. They gave me the information on what I have to teach each day, I just have to figure out how to teach it. I also got really lucky in that I have really good kids (and there's only 13 of them!)

Coming from experience in a middle school, I have quickly discovered the "power of the corner". It's so much easier to say "Go stand in the corner" than having to make threats, sending to the office, or taking away points. Another great thing, is that you can get a kid to do anything for a piece of candy. I have 3 kids who all need stapled to their chairs, but I'm quickly learning how to keep them entertained (or tell them to stand in the corner!).

I can't believe it's only been 1 week. I feel like it's been longer, but all the other teachers keep telling me this week has felt long due to the TCAP testing. I'll go with them on that for now. It'll be hard to figure out the feel of a "normal" week. The next 2 weeks are only 4 day weeks (I get Good Friday & the following Monday off). After those two weeks, there's only 3 weeks of school left. I got this!

Sold!!!

Before 6:45 AM this morning, the title "sold" should have related to buying a new house; however, it's after 6:45 AM. Why does a simple time matter in the topic of a blog post, simply because at 6:45 AM this morning, P&G announced and blindsided all Pringles employees that Pringles had been sold to a Diamond Foods.

What does that have to do with the Ackermans, well. . . .

Yesterday, we put an offer on a house in Jackson. When went high on the asking price and knew that we had a solid offer. However, with today's announcement, we decided to retract our offer. This was very hard to do, especially since we've spent months of researching to buy the perfect house and knew that this one had the best opportunities awaiting us.

With P&G selling Pringles, Steve's job became very uncertain today. We know that he still has a job, but the uncertainty lies in the question of "Who will Steve work for?" In the agreement between the two companies, anyone hired on after April 5, 2010 has the option to remain with P&G (Steve is the only one in his department with this option and one of the few in the entire plant). So since he's a special case, no questions have been answered and probably won't be in the near future.

This is all we know:

Steve probably has the option to stay with P&G, if he stays with P&G he will (fingers crossed & prayers lifted) be placed in Cincinnati. However, there is the chance that he may be placed in another plant (the state of Utah was thrown around but I'm choosing to ignore that state for the time being). So with these options, chances are very high that we will be moving out of Jackson by the end of the year (we're leaning on this possibility but it's out of our hands & only God knows!).

Now, if Steve does not have option to stay with P&G, he'll remain at Pringles under Diamond Foods.

For now, it's a waiting game. A hiring manager should be contacting Steve with his options and things move on from there. But for now, we sit and wonder what tomorrow holds. However, we've decided it does not hold a new house in Jackson until we get some definite answers. We'd appreciate all prayers (especially about patience) on the above issues. God is in control. God is in control. God is in control. . .

History Surrounds Us

Steve's grandma passed away a few weeks ago and we went up to Huron, OH for the funeral. While we were there, we went through the house and found many family treasures. One of them was a box of letters exchanged between Steve's grandparents while he was serving as a Sea Bee during WWII. I nominated myself to go through all the letters, type (and possibly scan) them all up and put them together in some sort of a book. Needless to say, I have a big project underway. . .

I started the project by picking a random bundle of letters. It ended up being the very first stack (I've pieced together that he left 2 days before Christmas 1942) including letters from January & February 1943. I've only been through about 30 letters, but I feel like I've read years of their lives. I was even surprised to find out when they started dating (around 1938) and their desire for marriage so early on in the project process!! I can't wait to get through them all to see what other treasures are buried within the words.

All the letters that I have gone through so far are written from Carl to Kay. He was a very detailed and faithful writer. He wrote a letter every day to her, so the letters read more like a journal. He describes life in camp (located in Rhode Island), training, and preparing to head to the tropics. Whenever he explains something, he draws pictures and puts in side commentary -- you can really see his humor, character, and good spirit in the simple words he used. As I type up the letters, I think to myself, I wonder if he had any idea that his grand kids would someday read those letters. By his in depth explanations, I think he did.

Why I'm behind on blogging. . .

We still have not settled on a house. In the past week alone, we've viewed around 10 houses. One of them is really sticking out at the moment, but I'm just going to keep you all in suspense since we really haven't committed to a house yet. (Don't want to ruin another dream. . . ).

Last week was spring break for the schools in Jackson, so I had a lot of free time last week (spent grocery shopping, cleaning, hanging with friends). This week, however, is a different story. I've subbed 3 days this week which has drained me quite a bit. One day was for a 5th grade class I'd already subbed for, and the two other days were at the high school for Resource Algebra (haven't really figured out what that means, except for students who need extra help).

Next week (Wednesday to Sunday to be exact) my sister, her husband, and their three girls are coming to visit! Emily & Allie are on spring break and they wanted to spend it at their favorite Aunt Zee's in Tennessee. I'll give a full report on our shenanigans but here's some of the plans -- Memphis Zoo trip, possible slip-n-slide, crafts & craziness.

The week following after the Adams' Spring Break Extravaganza, I will be subbing for a 1st grade class for 5 days in a row! I think that one subbing experience will double the amount of times I've subbed at that school in the past 6 months. Ha!

A Crushed Dream

A week ago tonight, we headed out to see another house. Steve had found it online and showed me the pictures. My response was, "it's nothing special." Boy was I wrong. We just walked through a couple of rooms and I looked to Steve with a "this is THE house" kinda look.

The house is situated in a "ritzier" neighborhood, but was on the lower end of the price bracket. (For you house novices, this means a potential in making money on the house if we can sell it at the higher end of the bracket). As we walked through the house, our Realtor informed us that there were a couple of offers just put into the house and if we were interested, we'd have to make a quicker offer. There was only 1 downside to this house-- the "death" driveway. Okay, maybe it wouldn't bring about death, but it could bring about damage to the car. The driveway was very steep & required you to enter & exit on an angle (it took us a couple times up and down the driveway to figure this out).

After viewing the house, we headed home for dinner (after dinner is when we drove back to the house to experiment with the driveway to see if it was a deal breaker). Once we scratched the driveway off the "con" side of our list, we called our Realtor so that we could make an offer. We met her back at her office and wrote it up.

I was trying really hard not to get excited about the house, but I could just see us living in it. I had already figured out the paint scheme & furniture set-up. We had to wait the weekend to hear back from our Realtor. Yesterday, we got the call that the seller had decided on a different offer.

My dream was crushed.

Here we are a week later -- we fell in love with a house, made an offer, lost the house, and back to square one. We also found out that one of our "top picks" (Weatherstone) has been sold. We've gone through all the houses for sale in Jackson and have come up with a new list of potential houses. Hopefully, we'll get to see some of the houses this weekend and maybe fall in love with another house.