It's Official! Both Reid and I are going back the classroom...

Well, it's official.  We are moving to Houston, TX.  Early on Wedneday, April 13, Reid accepted the offer to attend University of Houston's Master's program in Philosophy! He'll be a student again.

We hope to visit the city to look at housing and jobs soon.  I've already begun a preliminary job search, and they seem plentiful.  I talked to Vance County Schools and my teaching license is still up-to-date (I'm certified English 9-12 and Special Education, General Curriculum K-12).  According to Mrs. Brenda at VCS, Texas has reciprocity with NC! Yay! Thankfully these days a teaching job isn't hard to find anywhere.  In fact, my first teaching gig was at Edison M.S. in downtown Houston over 5 years ago.  I taught five sweet eighth grade students Language Arts for a little over a month as I was attending training with Teach for America. 

I'm a little nervous about it all because I feel like I've forgotten how to teach.  It seems so long ago.  I also never quite figured out a good balance between my teaching and personal life during my three years as a high school English teacher.  Life looks a lot different now (namely: I'm longer Miss Harding, but now Mrs. Powell!).  In a lot of ways I feel clueless, but I'm confident that God will use this time to teach me many things.  I learned a lot (of HARD lessons) those three years of teaching, and I know God will use this job in the future to do the same. 

Should be interesting having one student...

 (Can you picture Reid and these guys studying: Plato, Political Philosophy, Philosophy of Language, Modality and Metaphysics, Bacon and Descartes, Sidgwickian Ethics, Free Will and Moral Responsibility, The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence, Aesthetics, Theory of Knowledge, Consciousness, Perception, Meta-Ontology?)

and one teacher in the house! 

(Can you picture Ronda behind her desk? Except add 28 more student desks and that'll more accurately represent the public school classroom!)




Please pray for us as we prepare to move!

Before and After! (How I cut Reid's hair and didn't mess it up...too much)

**I started writing this on April 2nd, but didn't finish until today...

We took our normal trip to Wake Forest Farmer's Market  this morning to buy farm fresh eggs from Jesse and his grandfather.  Jesse likes to talk junk to Reid about Kentucky since he's a Duke fan.  Despite his affiliation with our arch-enemy, we love Jesse and his yummy eggs.

After the FM we headed out on a not so usual trip to Louisburg for Ray Family Farm's Farm 'n' Learn event.  Lots of fun was had (just ask Reid about the delicious Beltie burger he's been talking about since he ate it for lunch).  After potting our own tomato plant, getting up an up close look at four-day-old piglets, and filling a bag with wonderful pastured pork and grassfed beef, we headed back home.

Reid had planned to get a hair cut, but didn't feel like waiting in the Saturday line at Great Clips or forking over the $20 bucks it would cost.  I tentatively offered to cut it myself.  After having decided that the worst I could do was force him to buzz his hair off, we called a friend to see if we could use his clippers.  As it happened, our friend Tim was buzzing his boys' hair at the time so it worked out perfectly.
It took me a whole hour to cut his hair.  I botched my attempt at his normal 3-4 fade, and so we ended up having to buzz it.  Reid was gracious through it all; after all everyone's gotta start somewhere.  Next time I'll try again and hope it goes better.  For now, here is my handsome husband with his new do!