Summer 2011 updates - photo album style!

Well, it has been almost 2 months since my last update, and it's partially because of my laziness with updating my blog, and partially because of my busy life preventing me from updating! Most of my updates go on facebook anyway, but I'm not ready to be done with this blog so every now and then I have to pop in and fill you in on what has been up in my world. :o)

So, here is my summer thusfar, in photo album style!

On June 24th, we said goodbye to another group of beautiful young women as they graduated and went on to bigger and better things in the "real world" :o)

On my last day of work, June 28th, I packed up at 4pm and headed off to Saskatoon to catch Bela Fleck and the Flecktones at the Saskatoon Jazz Festival. It was AMAZING! Check that one off the bucket list!

On Canada Day (July 1st) my saxophone quartet performed at Waskesiu, Prince Albert National Park, just for kicks. We actually drew a pretty decent audience!

And then there was the week full of celebrating the marriages of some wonderful friends:

My student teacher Nathan and his new wife Morgan - July 2nd

My earliest childhood friend Chelsey and her new husband Cory - July 2nd

My best high school choir friend Jessica and her new husband Kerry - July 9th

The day after Jessica and Kerry's wedding I headed off to the lake to get in some R&R time with the beans (getting cuter every day!), the lake, and mom and dad and their new kayak! We also helped Karyn and Nook move into their brand new home - I got to be on babysitting duty while they painted closet organizers, moved furniture, etc. Good deal!

Watching dad kayak around Brightsand Lake

Emily being an adorable little nut!

Avery laughing at Karyn's silly dance moves

Right after my week at the lake, I taught saxophone at the Saskatoon Junior Band Camp for one week. Here I am conducting my small saxophone ensemble playing the theme from "Star Wars" - super fun!

Right after Saskatoon Band Camp came IMC - my favourite place to hang out in the summer! This past week had students in art, orchestra, fiddle, and band. The art students decorated the sidewalks outside the main office and Burdick Centre. Love it!

My new quilt made its debut at IMC! For those of you who have a homemade bag from me, do you recognize any of your fabrics in it? :o)

Re-uniting with awesome friends! (Abby and Adam)

Yay, IMC friends! (Carolyn, Tim, and Christine)

It was an awesome week, but it went by so fast! (Abby, me, Adam, Sarah, Cory, Hannah, Emma, and Jessica)

After IMC I headed right back to the lake for our family reunion - a bunch of family members had driven from Vancouver, Calgary, and Winnipeg to spend the long weekend at Brightsand with everyone, including the twins whom none of them had yet met. Fun!

My cousins Brent and Scott, and Scott's wife Jenn catching some sun by the water's edge

Uncle Ron, Uncle Jack, Brent, Scott, and Jenn

Mom on her 54th birthday in her brand new kayak! So cute! (In this picture she was kayaking back into shore to get a new beer from Scott, as the one she had originally was frozen - and who can kayak without a proper beer?!) :op

The beans in their "Thing 1/Thing 2" Dr. Seuss onesies from Auntie Lauren

The fam: Dad, Nook, Uncle Ron, Brent, Scott, Uncle Jack, Auntie Diane, Karyn, Auntie Donna, me, mom, and Jenn

Cousins: Brent, me, Karyn, Scott (Sean missing)

Emily on her cute giant giraffe pillow from Auntie Bunzy

Sisters playing together with their big farm toy

A cool purple flower that I found on the beach at Brightsand

This cute little heart bum will be crawling soon!

The girls are getting so big! Now they can drink water from their own sippy cups. :o)

Uncle Ron feeding the babies

And there you have it! What a busy and fun summer it has been so far! Now Jeff and I are just hanging out around home for a bit, and I still have some unpacking and cleaning to do. Then I'll be checking out the musical "Wicked" in Saskatoon on the 10th, a Rider football game on the 12th with Jeff and his parents, and then a trip to Hamiota/Winnipeg to visit my grandma in the hospital - her cancer is back and we're sending tons of love and good vibes and positive thoughts for her to beat it, but we'd like to go see her and be there for support anyway.

I hope everyone that reads this is doing well and enjoying their summer (or winter, if you're a kiwi!). I miss you all and hope to see you all again soon!

IMC pics and NZ on Monday!

Here are a few photo highlights from the week at IMC so far. I am having an awesome time here (as always), working with some crazy fantastic people, and really enjoying having 3 of my own band students with me. I'd post pics of them in their super cute matching Canadian shirts, but privacy laws don't allow it. Ah well! Here are a few other pics from the week in any case:

It hasn't actually hit me yet that in only 3 days I will be heading over to New Zealand. I'm still in such an IMC mode - and, in fact, the reality of heading to IMC didn't hit me until we were half an hour from camp! Prior to this week I was so focussed on finishing report cards, marking final exams, doing band instrument inventory, etc. that I barely even had time to get excited. So now, on a logical level, I know that I'm going to New Zealand soon, but it probably won't hit me until I'm boarding the plane in Saskatoon! Or maybe even Vancouver. :op

I booked my Auckland Sky Jump for next Thursday morning (Wednesday afternoon in our time zone), so Jude and I will be doing that together very soon! Then it's off to visit Roger in Tauranga - SO EXCITED! Will update lots from NZ. Crazy to think that the next blog post might be from across the Pacific! Or more realistically, from an airport when I'm crazy bored. :op Til then!

Last day of schoooooool!

As the title would suggest, it's the last day of school and the students start writing final exams on Monday. I can't believe how fast this year has gone! It has been a great one though, full of funny moments and wonderful memories. My band program has grown so much this year, not necessarily in numbers but in successes. My Level 2 band got the elementary band scholarship from our local Music Festival for the first time in our school's history (yay!), my senior band tackled Ralph Vaughn Williams' "English Folk Song Suite" and actually performed it at our final concert, my Level 1 band rocked out the concert with 2 pieces that had been played by higher level bands earlier in the year, and my Level 3s played Percy Grainger's "Shepherd's Hey" beautifully (something I had always wanted to teach to a band). Students played solos and duets, in and out of school, students won Music Festival scholarships for their performances, we featured duets at our concert, senior band performed at Unifest in Saskatoon, senior choir performed for senior citizens at Pineview and Mont St. Joseph's.... I could go on! This year was musically one of the best.

This afternoon is our final assembly here at the school, and my senior band is playing a South African song called "Ipharadisi," on which we will be joined by younger students (mostly grades 7-8) playing African drums and singing. The senior choir is singing "Hands" by Jewel for the final prayer, and then will be entertaining the audience with "Don't Stop Believin'" from Glee. After the assembly we will clean out our classrooms and head off for the weekend! Unreal. Where did this year go?!

It's finally starting to sink in that this year is almost over and that I am actually heading to IMC next Saturday. Then to NZ the Monday after that. Too too crazy! I can't wait!

The countdown is SO on!

Today is June 16th. June 16th is exactly 2 weeks until the end of the month. After June comes July. On July 5th, I jump on a plane to New Zealand. So, if I can do the math correctly, in exactly 19 days, I will be on my way to kiwi land FOR REAL! After 2+ years of planning it and talking about it, it is finally almost here! This is actually crazy. I still have lots to do before I can say I'm "ready" to go (practice packing my backpack and make sure I have enough room for clothes, i.e. cutting out half of what I think I need to bring, fill prescriptions, hopefully find my favourite pair of glasses which I somehow misplaced in the last few weeks, etc.), but otherwise I'm very excited and ready to see everyone again after nearly 3 years!

In other exciting travel news, Jeff and I booked our Mexico vacation a couple weeks ago! We are spending 10 days in and around Cancun at Easter, and we booked a bunch of fantastic day trips and other excursions. We got a great deal on it too, and I ended up paying for the whole thing with money I made selling bags! It only took me a couple hundred hours of sewing too! Haha. What a deal!

It's now 7:15am and I am about to start getting ready for work. I can hardly believe we're almost at the end of the year! I teach today, then tomorrow I'm out on a field trip with our Grade 7s, then I teach Friday morning, then done! Friday afternoon is our final assembly/classroom clean up, then we have all next week to write finals. Next (next) Saturday (June 26th) I'm heading off to music camp with 3 of my students as well, so the time is flying by at warp speeds, as it tends to do in June. This year in general has gone really fast, in fact. I have been counting down to IMC/New Zealand for ages, and I almost can't believe how close they are!

LOVE!

PS - Nice new template, hey? Much better than that old green one! ;o)

Fitness update (with a side of Heath and IMC)

I started the fitness regime on April 18th, and since then I have worked out every day except one, which is now a total of 41 days, not including today (I'll be leaving for the gym after I publish this post).  The one missed day (ARGH!) was last Saturday, due to my friend Allison's wedding in Saskatoon - the day was just crazy from beginning to end, and the gym is only open until 5pm on weekends anyway so squeezing it in was just unfortunately not possible.  Of the past 41 workout days, I've been to the gym for all of them except 4 I think, and on those days I've done other forms of exercise.  The first 3 of those days were because I was out at the lake without access to a gym (but I brought my bike and running shoes), and I decided to forgo yesterday morning's gym workout as last night I spent 12 hours at the Canadian Cancer Society's Relay for Life, and I only slept for 2.5 of those hours; the rest was spent walking around the track with a crowd of other people who had raised $$ for the event.

I am noticing a change in how my clothes fit.  I bought a new dress for Allison's wedding last weekend, and it's a size smaller than anything I've worn in the past few years.  My favourite dress pants for work are starting to feel baggy and fall down.  When I put my hand on my stomach during band or choir to demonstrate some breathing technique, I notice that it feels flatter, and I can start to feel ab muscles.  I haven't made any big changes in my diet, but the consistency of my workouts are starting to pay off.

That being said, it's now 3:46pm and I am going to ride my bike to the gym so I can get a good workout in before the gym closes at 5pm.

And on a non-fitness related note, I leave for IMC 4 weeks from today!!!!!!  YAAAAAAY!!!!!!!  Bring on the summer!!!!  Oooooh!!!  And in only 2 weeks, my friend Heath from New Zealand will be flying to SK to visit me!!!!   AAAAHHH!!! :oD  I haven't seen him since we sang together in Wellington Youth Choir, over a year and a half ago.  He's in Whistler right now visiting his brother, and we booked him a flight a few weeks ago, so now our reunion is almost here!  It will be another 13 months until I go back to NZ too, so this visit is almost perfectly in the middle.  I can't wait!

I will post a couple pics of Relay for Life once I upload them from my camera.

Hugs!

What starts with an "s" and ends with a "lacker"...?

If you guessed Lauren and her blogging habits, then you are correct.  I have definitely not been slacking at work though... things have been very busy around here since the last update.  Everything is still going well though, and I figured it was about time for a photo update again.  So, in no particular order (because Blogger decided to jumble them up during the upload), here are some pictures from the last 3 weeks at IMC:

Kaleigh and me on Canada Day - July 1st (Week 4)

Kendall and me at the lookout in the Peace Gardens on our day off - Week 4

On our day off in Week 3 we went to Minot and I met his parents.  Here we're playing a fierce game of Bocce ball (Kendall and I won 15-13).

In Week 3, my campers convinced me to fit myself into one of the suitcase cubbies.  It actually wasn't too bad in there!

Tony, Tim, and Rob modeling the boxers Tony's wife bought for all of them... red with maple leaves and skulls.... ???

2 proud Canadians!  Jane and me - Canada Day, Week 4

Stephanie's name tag was misspelled, so I decided to take advantage of it by giving her nicknames that rhyme with StephaniNe every day.  So far she has been sanguine, turpentine, ball of twine, bovine, moonshine, clandestine, graphic design, and today she's sweet child o' mine.  Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

Ginger (in her lovely slippers) cruelly withholding a Pixie Stick from a camper right before lights out in Week 2 or 3

Kendall posing on top of the lookout - Week 4 (extra points if you can give me the movie reference for this pose)

Ginger and me at the end of Week 2 or 3

Cory, me, Villi, and Tharon (sax quartet extraordinaire!) before performing at the dedication of the Alme International Arts Centre - Week 2

While I was having dinner with Kendall and his parents on our day off in Week 3, his dad pulled out an old C-Melody saxophone that Kendall's grandpa had owned.  It worked, and they had reeds.... it was the first time I had ever even seen one of them in person!!!!  I think the last one was made in the 1940s-ish.

It was a musical evening all around!

So there it is.  An update.  Finally.  Like I said, life is pretty busy around here and so I try to keep up on Facebook when I can (check there for more pics if you're interested), but I know the blogging has been a bit slack.  Despite the few bumps in the road along the way, things are going smoothly at IMC.... and time is FLYING.

Next stop, Paula's wedding in Winnipeg on Friday!!!!

IMC highlights

This is why I love this place.  Enough said. :o)