Is this a teacher thing?

My roommate and I got home from a staff/board potluck shortly after 8 p.m. on a Friday evening.  It felt later than that and we both decided, after talking for a little while, to go to bed.  Happy Teacher's Friday Night. :)

Set Puzzle

Do you know the game Set?

Well, there is an online version.  My cousin, Lynola, and I do it almost every day, and we email each other our times.  We are happy if our times are under a minute.  Over a minute is a bad day, and anything under 30 seconds is great.  The other day I set a record of 16.808 sec.

Anyway, today I figured out that we have been doing this puzzle almost daily for around 8 years (though I am not exactly sure when in 2010 we started).  If we spend about a minute a day on the puzzle, in the last 8 years we have each spent about 48 hours on the online set puzzle.  Wow.

Reading

A couple years ago, I heard about a challenge between a mother and daughter to read a new book each month.  I love to read fiction, so when I decided to try the challenge for myself, I modified it to reading a non-fiction book each month.  I didn't quite achieve my goal, but in some months that I did not read an entire non-fiction book I did read fiction books I wouldn't normally go to, ones that challenged my faith and my perspective on life.

I have been blessed and challenged by many of the books that I have read in the past couple of years. Here is a list of what I can remember.  

2016
The Story - Max Lucado
One Thousand Gifts - Ann Voskamp
Living Water - Chuck Smith
Abba's Child - Brennan Manning
The Cure - John Lynch, Bruce McNicol, Bill Thrall
I Don't Wait Anymore - Grace Thorton
A Good and Perfect Gift - Amy Julia Becker

2017
January: Tortured for Christ - Richard Wurmbrand
February: The Broken Way - Ann Voskamp
March: The Five Love Languages - Gary Chapman
            The Jesus Storybook Bible - Sally Lloyd-Jones
April: A Slice of Pi - Liz Strachan

May: The Passion of Jesus Christ - John Piper
June/July: Spiritual Rhythm: Being with Jesus every season of your soul - Mark Buchannan
August/September: Experiencing the Trinity - Joe Thorne
September: Get Married: What women can do to help it happen - Candice Watters
November: The Purity Principle - Randy Alcorn
December: The Greatest Gift - Ann Voskamp

Two things I like about washing my hands at school:

1. Foaming hand soap
2. Hot water

You know you're a teacher when . . .

You meet a parent at the grocery store and they greet you, "Hello Miss Vis" and you wonder if they even know your first name, after teaching their child for a year and a half.

Morning Devotions

Some mornings my morning devotions come more easily than others.  

On days like this one,

it is so easy to praise God for the beauty of His creation and how His creation reveals His character.  It makes me sad (and reminds me to pray) for my neighbor who thinks the view is magical, but doesn't recognize the God created it.

I am so thankful for the beauty of God's creation, which I get to enjoy everyday, and for my senses that enable me to enjoy it.

First Day of School - stream of conciousness

So, that day when you are really sore from doing a workout you shouldn't be sore from, on a day that just happens to be the first day of school, and because the sun is out after school - aka around 6pm when you finally leave even though it was a half day - you go for a run to enjoy the weather and you feel your sore muscles with every step. 
But, in all that, you feel so blessed because the first day went better than expected, the sun is shining after a number of gray rainy days, the ocean water looks so blue, the mountains are beautiful, there is a rainbow in part of one of the clouds near the sun (apparently rare for the cloud to turn into a rainbow), and despite feeling sore and stiff you actually feel really good while running; seeing the sun peek through a hole in the fast spreading clouds after noticing you have a partial shadow, and thinking that maybe God did it just for you. 
And, feeling incredibly blessed by a good God and a good day.