If at first you don't succeed, tri tri again

So after my first triathlon last year I've tried to do 2 others.  In both cases I was thwarted by timing at the last minute.

The first was rescheduled because of a massive forest fire in Boulder.  Now, the fire wasn't anywhere near where the race was supposed to be, but the firefighters took over the reservoir  as their base camp.  When things had settled down, they rescheduled the event for a day that I couldn't go.

The second tri  that I wanted to do was the day after my last day of work in Denver.  Yeah, we ended up taking off for Wilmington a few days earlier than expected, so we were driving the U-haul while everyone swam, biked and ran.

Yesterday, I finally made it to a triathlon!

I did the Wilmington Triathlon, which actually takes place in the town of Wrightsville Beach.  Julian's fellow intern's wife does triathlons as well.  We're the same age and so in the same starting wave.  It was a lot of fun to have someone to hang out with before and after the race.  Jules was working all day.

The best part?  I met my goals for the race!
My total time:  1:43:41
My 5k run time: 27:49

Grandma

We took a last minute trip to Denver this weekend to say goodbye to my grandma.

A couple months ago, she was diagnosed with stomach cancer. She had several large tumors.

She had been slowly declining until Thursday, when she went from being fully communicative and still ambulatory to barley able to respond. When Jules and I arrived on Saturday, she wasn't responding at all.

She passed away Sunday night, at home, with the whole family around her.

Grandma was the glue that held our family together. Now we are faced with figuring out how to be a family without her.

Oof, Kindergarten!

I have a class of 21 lovely 5 year olds, but man oh man, they are worlds away from the now-second-graders I left in May. I'm having quite the reality check as I teach them how we behave at school.

It's not that they're all naughty, most of them just haven't had to learn this stuff yet.

For the most part, at the end of the day, I'm happy and exhausted. (Just don't ask be an hour before school is out!)

My new school is very different from Vanguard. There is not nearly as much structure in place for the children or the teachers, but everyone has been so kind and supportive. That is one thing I LOVE about living here: everyone is so kind!

Oh, and in the end it turns out that my kids will stay in my class all day. I'll teach them literacy in Spanish, then math, science, and social studies in English. Yay! I love teaching math, science, and social studies, so I'm thrilled!