Goodbye, 2023!

2023 was a great year! Carter is in his last year at Zarrow International School which is crazy! He has started touring middle schools to decide where he would like to go. Elise is in 3rd grade which is also crazy to me! It's the first year she's been older than my students. I'm still teaching 2nd grade and loving it. Our school adopted a new reading curriculum which has been so much fun to learn and implement. Ty is continuing to enjoy his job and is looking at other possibilities within his company. He has been busy making me things to upgrade our house. Everything is looking incredible! We lost our sweet, Skippy boy this summer and miss him daily. We brought home 2 brothers, Milo and Otis, to fill the void of losing Skippy. They are an absolute blast and I love them more than I thought possible. I didn't think I'd ever love another cat as much as I loved my Tibber Tabbers, but they are awful loveable! We are looking forward to the changes 2024 will bring with a trip to Boston in the spring and Carter starting middle school in the fall.

January

Mom and dad traveled with me to Houston to the marathon so I could take the kids. We stopped in Dallas on the way.

We celebrated mom, dad, and Jeremy's birthdays.

February

Carter got to perform in Circle State, an honor choir.

I was again the cookie manager for our Girl Scout Troop and Elise sold over 600 boxes of cookies!

Ty built me book shelves by my bed for Valentine's Day.

We celebrated the 102nd day of school.

March

Ty and I went to Vivia Zarrow, a fundraiser for the kids' school and I finally won a piece of artwork in the auction.

We visited Ang in San Antonio over spring break.

The kids got to dress up for Book Character Dress Up Day at school.

Carter's Odyssey of the Mind team qualified for state and then again for worlds.

Elise had her 8th birthday party at My Little Dollhouse and chose Maribel as her party princess.

Elise turned 8 years old!

I got to go on a field trip with Elise to a Bone Museum.

April 

We celebrated Easter in Topeka.

Elise had a piece of her art work displayed in the district art show.

I found a golden ticket at an independent bookstore in my hometown and won a free year subscription to Libro.fm!

We got to meet Joy Harjo at an author event.

May

We celebrated Mother's Day.

Ty and I went on a date night to an author event with TOM HANKS!

I got to go on a field trip with Carter to the Will Rogers Museum.

We celebrated Ty's birthday, but I have no good pictures from the celebration so I thought this picture was a good subsitute.

I also went on a field trip with Carter to the aquarium.

June

My school district was the only district still in school and we went through June!

We did our 2nd year of Girl Scout Day Camp.

Carter went to Girl Scout Day Camp as a Tagalong.

Elise got to go to a water park as a perk of being in the 600 Club (selling 600 boxes of Girl Scout cookies). There were a few tickets for tagalongs so Carter went too.

We went to a movie in the theaters for the first time since Covid.

We went on a family vacation to Minnesota for Grandma's Marathon.

We celebrated Father's Day in Minnesota.

While we were in Minnesota a terrible storm went through our area. Part of a tree knocked out our gas meter and our house was without power for almost a week. We lucked out that we weren't at home and got back the day after power had been restored. We were also super lucky that my parents went to help my brothers with clean up and cleaned up our limbs so the gas company could cap the gas meter. They also cleaned out our fridge and freezers so we wouldn't come home to a stinky house.

We got to see our Florida fam when they made a summer trip to Topeka.

We completed the summer reading program, Elise's 9th and Carter's 11th.

My aunt, unle, cousins and their families visited from NJ/VA and we got to go see them.

July

We celebrated the 4th of July.

The kids went on vacation with my parents and got to see Mt. Rushmore.

The kids were gone so Ty and I celebrated our anniversary with a bike ride, brunch, and relaxing in a hammock.

Ty and I celebrated 12 years of marriage.

We celebrated my birthday by spending the night at a cabin and having an elephant bring us breakfast.

We lost our sweet Skippy boy at age 17 and adopted brother kittens. We named them Milo and Otis.

August

I welcomed 26 new students to my classroom at Meet the Teacher.

The kids had their first day of school.

We went to the Taste of Summer Festival for the first time and ate so much ice cream!

September

The kittens really started warming up to Tesla.

Elise got her ears pierced.

Carter's field trip to Woolaroc was cancelled so instead we walked to a nearby park. I had already taken the day off work to chaperone.

We went to Woolaroc that weekend since they didn't get to go on their field trip.

Elise got sick and was home from school for 3 days!

October

The kids got to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month at school with a special assembly.

We carved pumpkins.

We stayed in town for fall break and did lots of fun activities.

We went to the pumpkin patch with friends over fall break.

We went to the pumpkin patch at the Endangered Ark Foundation with mom and dad.

November 

We got to meet Ben Clanton at the Books to Treasure event at the library.

We went to the Endangered Ark Foundation with Girl Scouts.

Carter played in his first chess tournament.

We celebrated Thanksgiving. Ty wouldn't get in the picture since he didn't run the race and this is the only group picture I had.

December

We visited Christmas at the Ark.

We visited Santa at Bass Pro.

We had a surprise birthday party for my grandma's 90th birthday.

Carter went on a field trip to the Van Gogh Immersive.

Carter turned 11!

Carter had his birthday party at the skate rink and invited his entire class.

We celebrated Christmas in Topeka. I didn't have a group pic, so I went with this group pic of us girls in matching shirts.