Christmas Letter Part III

My motto, in order to survive this past year, has been (you guessed it) “one day at a time.” As many of you know, I got a wild hair back in February to do something pretty crazy. I decided to participate in the MS150, which is a two day bike ride covering 150 miles of northern Colorado to support the Multiple Sclerosis Society. I, of course, was riding for my dad, and with the help of many family and friends (that’s you), I raised $1,500. The ride was in June, but in order to be able to ride two back-to-back days of 75 miles each, I had to train. My friend, Kari, was also riding with me, so we started by going to spin classes at the gym from February through April until the weather was nice enough to ride outside. Starting in April, we started riding anywhere from 50-100 miles per weekend. Let me give you a reference point: on actual riding day, it took us 5.5 hours to ride 75 miles and an additional hour for breaks and stops. In order to train, we were spending about 5-6 hours every Saturday and about three hours every Sunday on the bike. If you’ve ever ridden a bike for any distance, I’m sure you can figure out what hurt the most on my body. I spent a lot of time on my bike this summer, and probably rode over 700 miles. I’ve fallen in love with biking (and spent a lot of money on the sport), so I for sure plan on riding again this upcoming June. I might even be able to talk Collin and Shannon into riding with me (Jeff has already called me crazy for doing it, so I think he might be out).

Apart from training, I’ve also been finishing up my Master’s degree. I started the program in May, 2007, to begin my dream of being a teacher. As of August, I’ve been unemployed. I quit Enterprise after four years of dedicated service and have been student teaching at Columbine High School. I don’t get paid to be a student teacher (I actually have to pay to do this), so it’s been a long five months with no pay. I’ve been teaching freshman English, 9-12th grade Intro to Journalism, and assistant advisor with the high school newspaper. I absolutely love it. I finished my degree in mid-November, so I officially have my teaching license to teach Language Arts and Journalism for grades 6-12. Starting in January, I have a teaching job at Chatfield Senior High School for the spring semester, and then I’ll start looking for a permanent position for the 2009-2010 school year.

I, also, took a trip to Vegas in April with my four best friends. April was done with chemo in January, so we had to celebrate her successful fight with cancer. Rather than playing blackjack, we sat at the pool most of the time and relaxed in the sun.