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!

Grad School Update-Decision Soon!

For curious family and friends, our current standing on grad school admission is as follows:

UNC-CH: No
Pittsburgh: No
UT: Yes (PhD-no funding)
Rice University: No
U of Houston: Yes (Masters-no funding)
USC: Wait List
FSU: Wait List
W. Mich: No
Va Tech: Wait List
Texas A&M: ?? (the last hold out)

We will wait until April 15th to hear from any schools that may offer Reid a late acceptance letter.  If nothing changes it looks like we will be heading to....Houston University! Go Cougars!

Reid got offered acceptance to their master's program earlier this month.  His old prof from Chapel Hill told him that he believes Houston has the best master's of modern philosophy in the county.  This news as well as UH's placement record has Reid very excited to attend the program.  He's taking all the wait list notices and the few rejections with glee as they signify one step closer to being able to say yes to Houston's program.  While it's hard for me to understand all the excitement about 6 more years of school (ugh!) I'd like to think he's feeling something like I did trying on lovely wedding dresses.  He's ready to say, "yes" to the dress...errr....school!

Guess I better get rid of my wool sweaters and get ready to beat the heat!

That Was Then...This Is Now...

Reid and Ronda on March 27, 2010...

...so happy together!

Reid and Ronda on March 27, 2011...

...duking it out for a chance at the Final Four!

Guess what we did for our anniversary??  Thankfully, neither of us is any worse for wear after a hard fought game from both sides.  Kentucky pulled out the win, but the Heels fought hard.  Both Reid and I made a promise during the game to only cheer FOR our teams and not against the other's.  Either way the game went, we knew we'd have a reason to celebrate.  And celebrate we did! A lovely dinner out at Sawasdee Thai restaurant complete with coconut ice cream and sticky rice, this old married couple was asleep in bed at the late hour of 10:00 pm having fallen asleep cuddled up with a good book and each other. :)

March Goals and Updates

The month is off to a great start.  We were out of town last weekend on a church planting/young adult retreat trip to Harrisburg, PA.  It was an incredible time of fellowship! Needless to say, I'm behind on posting goals.  They're are a bit repetitive, but like I've said before, baby steps...One thing you won't see anymore is the goal to keep Sunday free of school work.  It just doesn't work for us, and it makes me feel guilty for something I don't need to feel bad about.  So I'm taking it off the list.  My school calendar/hw plan attempts to keep Sundays free, but if I get behind I use it to catch up. Here are our other goals!

March 2011 Goals

Spiritual Goals:
1) Follow the TCC 2011 Bible Reading Plan.
2) Memorize the first two verses in the stack of index cards on my desk at work.
3) Pray about our marriage and my heart as a wife.

Personal Goals:
1) Wake up when Reid wakes up each morning and earlier on the days we run together.
2) Continue to re-post Craigslist ad for my (first) wedding dress til someone makes an offer. Research consignment shops

3) Buy wedding pictures from online database. I still plan on doing this, but it's not in the budget this month, but I'm keeping it up here so I don't forget!
4) Continue working on:  Vintage Postcard Calendar Journal

Family Goals:
1) I'm not sure we have any of these right now.  We did talk about tightening up on our budget, but we have made no firm goals. 

Real Food Goals:
1) Use the Simple Dinners meal plan subscription I got for Christmas to make at least two real food meals per week.





Grad School update: Reid is 1 for 4 which is pretty good odds for PhD programs. Rice sent him a letter this week telling him he was not admitted.

February Recap!

This is month has gone by so fast! All of the sudden it's March first, and I honestly haven't thought much about accomplishing my goals.  Thankfully some of them are in my daily routine now, so here's how I did.

February 2011 Goals

Spiritual Goals:
1) Follow the TCC 2011 Bible Reading Plan. Behind in the OT, ahead in the NT!
2) Memorize the first two verses in the stack of index cards on my desk at work So far I've only written the verses out. No memorizing.
3) Pray daily for the unreached people groups sent to my email each afternoon from Joshua Project. Unfortunately most days I find that I am deleting these from my email.  I'm thinking of take one group a week a setting aside time each day to pray.
4) Pray each morning for our class prayer requests. Reid and I have just sort of naturally been doing this at breakfast.  We take one or two people each day.

Personal Goals:
1) Wake up when Reid wakes up each morning.This is going well! We've even added jogging/running to our mornings on Mondays, Thursdays, and Saturdays!
2) Continue to re-post Craigslist ad for my (first) wedding dress til someone besides a spammer makes an offer. No hits yet, but I did sell three pots and a brita water pitcher!

3) Post the video camera on Craigslist. I've decided NOT to sell this.  Thanks to a friend, I learned how to actually download images to my computer!
4) Buy wedding pictures from online database. I still plan on doing this, but it's not in the budget this month!
5) Continue working on:  Vintage Postcard Calendar Journal I'm keeping track of this each day, but I haven't actually made the cards yet.  Can't find the right supplies, but I'll keep looking.

Family Goals:
1) Take the day off from school work on Sundays. I honestly forgot about this goal.  We've been filling up our Fridays and Saturdays so I've been using Sundays for reading. I'm not going to be a slave to this goal, but I want to re-evaluate my time usage this coming month.
2) Talk to Reid about other goals for the coming months. This seems like an ongoing conversation that we pick of for a few minutes here and there, but we never seem to have long periods of time to just think through it all.

Real Food Goals:
1) Research the make-up of the glass jars mom bought me (for making kombucha).I've decided to sell these, and buy some smaller ones.
2) Use the Simple Dinners meal plan subscription I got for Christmas to make at least two real food meals per week.This is going well!

I probably need to think through my goals for school.  I'm pretty behind right now, but I'm loving my classes and all the counseling reading I get to do! March goals coming soon...

Grad School Update

Well, folks, we're 1 for 3.  On Saturday night, Reid and I were checking our email after a long day of working at his office (he needed to organize his inventory closet, and since I live for that kind of stuff, I helped him!).  He casually leans over to say,  "I got into UT." At first I didn't understand what he was saying, and then it hit me.  He was admitted to his first PhD program.  A wave of joy and pride swept over me and I may have squealed a little (read: a lot). Reid took it in stride, UT not being his top choice.  We called all the parents.  My dad's reaction: "Thank God!" He's experiences bouts of panic and anxiety at the fact that his son-in-law may become an Gamecock next year.  Tennessee orange is way better than South Carolina red (or burgundy). So for now, here's where we stand: UNC-no admission; Pittsburgh-no admission; Tennessee-acceptance (without assistanceship for now). We're waiting to see if money becomes available at UT.  Also Reid's top choices have not yet notified him. His picks are VA Tech, South Carolina (*cringe*--what will my Clemson Tiger family think!?), and Rice (*cringe*-but this time, because it's too close to Houston for comfort...anyone who trained for TFA there understands).  We're praying the Lord opens up opportunities for admission with funding! We're not sure what will happen, but it's nice to have the acceptance letter to remember that with God all things are possible!