Simple Joys!

The past couple of weeks have been filled simple joys! It started with a delightful Easter picnic at Garden of the Gods. The return of springish weather has reminded me of how lucky I am to live in a place surrounded by such beauty. I also love the people I have here to share such a nice picnic with. It was even complete with a little Easter egg hunt and WAY too much food!















Then we had a treat in our classroom. Last semester, we wrote letters to the kids I worked with in Malawi. They were so kind to write us back! You should have seen how excited my kids were to get the letters. It was fun to see them so eager to write back to their friends half way around the world. That was probably the most excited they've been about writing all year. I showed some of my pictures of Malawi again for the kids that weren't in my class semester. I love sharing more of the world with my kids. One of them even had this realization that "they're kids just like us!" Yes, yes they are :)

The letters also were such a joy for me and made me miss this place. In my mind I was just there, but the letters written back from the current 2nd graders were the kids who were kindergartners when I was there. So crazy! Those kids also have way better handwriting and my kids definitely took note. I think we have abandoned all handwriting instruction here and it's showing.

Last weekend I was so blessed to have a visitor!!! I love visitors :) Candiss came in for the 3 day weekend and we got to enjoy my favorite things about Colorado Springs. We hiked, took lots of pictures of the beautiful creation around us, had a picnic, made homemade pizza, shopped in all the cute shops, ate at some of my favorite places, and even finished off our time together with Mango Tango Pizza!!!!!!! For those of you who don't know, Candiss and I are equally obsessed with mangoes and it's pretty much how our friendship started.

On our first hike we ran across the sign above. Of course being such experienced hikers we thought we knew better :) Haha! We definitely could not get across the ice flow, but we were determined to see the waterfalls. We went back down and went up the other side and it was definitely worth it. This is what we got to see:

A frozen waterfall!!!

You just can't beat quality time with good friends. It was a much needed break and refresher.

School updates: we only have 5 weeks left! I can't believe I'm almost done with my first year of teaching. I definitely have mixed emotions. I'm super excited about having a break, but not ready at all to give up my kids. I feel like this week God gave me an even greater love for them. I was just looking at them on Friday and realizing how precious they are to me. Each one is so unique and I love them each individually for their own reasons. I especially felt an overwhelming love and compassion for I. one day. He has such a hard life and struggles so much with school, but has such a great heart at the same time. He cares deeply for his family and he's just longing for someone to model for him how to act. We celebrated yesterday because he read 28 words in a minute and he started out the year reading 0 words. Praise God for breaking through all the days of frustration and giving him the perseverance to become a reader!

And to wrap it up for now I'll leave you with one of my favorite moments from the past couple of weeks:

I'm giving directions in class one of the days right after I had come back from the DR with a nice tan and B. randomly comes up to me. She touches the skin on my arm and says, "Ms. Eastup you're a different color now. I liked you better the other color." All I could do was laugh. It's good to work in an environment that always keeps you humble :)

I hope that this week you'll recognize and appreciate all of the little joys in your life!

Fun Happenings!

I had been doing so good, but now I apologize for going so long without updating. So many fun things have happened in the past month. I'll start from the beginning.

I ran my first half marathon in Colorado!!! I ran with my friend Maria, and it was her 1st half and my 10th. A celebration for the both of us. We ran in Boulder, which is such a great town. And we endured some pretty brutal weather, but had fun nonetheless.

Then we had Spring Break! I have decided that Spring Break is even far more exciting for teachers than it is for the kids. Just a little while back my roommate and I decided that having such a stressful job called for a real Spring Break. Our solution: book a trip to the Dominican Republic. We could not have been happier with our decision! It was a week of total relaxation, forgetting about my real life, reading, playing sand volleyball, eating as much fresh fruit as I possibly could (they even had mango), and enjoying a little taste of the DR. It was wonderful!

Our resort was nestled in a coconut plantation, so we were surrounded by palm trees.


I got to try sugarcane for the first time. I decided it's delicious!

I just had to include this picture because this is our friend Romeo. He worked on the entertainment team at the resort, and was one of the craziest people I have ever met. He ran around like a mad man all the time. You could always hear him saying, "Oh my god! I love my job!" And this was usually just because he was constantly surrounded by women in bikinis. He also tried to convince both Allison and me of how beautiful mocha babies would be. He provided so much laughter/awkward encounters throughout the week. Here we're enjoying La Fiesta de Coco!

We also took a zip-lining excursion up in the mountains of the DR. We were excited to get to see more of the country and get a better taste of what life is really like there. It was gorgeous! We had so much fun on that trip. The longest zip-line was over a half a mile long right over a river and jungle. I loved it!

This is pretty much my happiness from the week captured in a picture :)
There's nothing quite like a sunrise over the ocean that will make you praise God for his creation and sing Glorious! I got up for sunrise almost every morning and then would go for a run on the beach. Life doesn't get much better than that!

Transitioning back to "my real life" has been pretty rough. My life is always joyful, but I got a taste of pure happiness last week that has been hard to let go of. But it was still great to see my kids again and be refreshed to finish out the year strong. It's going to be over before I know it. My kids brought me a lot of laughter and joy this week as we wrote about pulling pranks and jokes on people in honor of April Fool's Day. And they think they're so funny when they pull their little jokes on you ALL DAY. "Ms. Eastup, there's a bug in your hair! Haha, April Fools!" "Ms. Eastup, I can't find my pencil. Haha, April Fools!" Oh it never gets old.

And most recently, I was reminded of the simple joys of decorating eggs for Easter. So much fun!

I wish you a very Happy Easter!

"For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He shall stand upon the earth..." Job 19:25