Ski Rixen

One of Kevin's favorite new weekend adventures involves going to a cable park in Deerfield Beach called Ski Rixen. Basically, it is a series of cables and pulleys suspended over a lake so you can enjoy wakeboarding/skiing/kneeboarding without a boat. You start out on a platform that is level with the water. When your pulley comes around, it pulls you off the ramp at about 18 mph and it pulls you around the lake, with about 8 other riders. It sounds easy enough, but I can assure you it is not (more on that later).

You don't need your own equipment to ride, but they do require your own equipment if you want to try any of the ramps or rails. Of course, Kevin wanted to try the ramps, but his equipment was in Texas. So, when we made a a trip out there in September, Kevin came back with his board, helmet, and life jacket. This all makes me a little nervous, so I told him he better not break his face. He tried one of the ramps for the first time about a month ago and I was there to document it. I have included the first two attempts for your viewing pleasure.

I don't know why, but I really love that second video. Something about the way his hand flaps back and forth in an attempt to somehow balance himself. Makes me laugh every time.

We haven't been back since because we have been busy, but I am sure his jumps will get bigger and better, haha. Nonetheless, it makes him happy and, I quote, he "needs a little adventure in his life."

a few changes...

Since the last post, I was assigned to work at two different schools. I am at Olympia Heights Elementary School on M, W, and F. I am at Banyan Elementary School on T, Th. It has been interesting to say the least because the therapist that was there before me had not left much documentation and the files were definitely not up to date. I have spent the last 3 weeks trying to get things organized, figure out the school system, and pull the 80 kids I have on my caseload for therapy twice a week. I start at about 8:15 and pull groups of kids for therapy until almost 2 everyday. At that time, I am supposed to do all testing, paperwork, and meetings by 3:15 when the kids get out of school. I am not sure how they think it is possible, but due to the lack of funding in the schools they don't want to pay me past that time. This has been a source of much discussion/debate.

Since I was hired through a contract agency, I am voicing my frustration to them, but in the end, it is the district that is paying the agency...therefore the agency tells me not to work past 3:15 if the district won't pay for it. In theory this makes sense, but in reality I am not going to leave if there is work to be done, and I want to do a good job and actually make an impact with these kids. Side note: the previous therapist had not pulled the kids for therapy for the first 6 weeks of school, so the teachers thought I was the greatest thing when I came to get the kids :) Hahaha.

I hope I don't sound too negative because I am definitely grateful for my job and the kids are a lot of fun, but the politics of the school system is very interesting. I also found out on Tuesday that they are switching me to a middle school in place of one of my elementary schools because they are putting a district speech pathologist at the school I have been at. I am not sure the rationale or how that is fair after I finally got things settled, but I am embarking on a new journey come Thursday. In talking to my young women at church today, I found out that one of the girl's younger sisters goes to the school I will be working at. Mind you, the school is for grades 6-8. She had lovely stories about a kid who had a fresh tattoo (sixth grader) and beat some kid because he accidentally bumped into his tattoo, and about two girls sharing knives to cut themselves. Scary right? I think I was still wearing winnie-the-pooh sweatshirts in the sixth grade. Hahaha.

I will keep you posted on how things play out. Hopefully the kids receiving speech therapy will be the angels of the school :) I can always hope!!

bilingual by tomorrow

I have some good news!! I finally started my job yesterday after 6 weeks of waiting. The bad news is that they thought I was a bilingual therapist :( I am attempting to channel all those Spanish skills I had once upon a time so that I can fulfill my role as bilingual speech therapist.

I am on a Pre-K Diagnostic team that does assessments for kids 3-5 that have been referred for an evaluation. They are also seen by a social worker and a psychologist. All others members of the team are fluent in Spanish, which is not a huge surprise to me since I do live in Miami. When I first arrived we sat around and talked about how we are going to make this work since I am lacking in the bilingual department. I felt pretty awesome since I was only half solving their problem of being without a speech therapist. Fortunately, they were assessing a child in English that day, so I was in luck, kind of...I would bet my life that the child has severe ADHD. Luckily, I was able to assess him first, before he lost all wits.

Today I went to work with a therapist in a different region and actually administered one of the tests in Spanish. That was interesting. As a side note, my Dad told me last night that it was probably about time that I became bilingual due to my current location and that I should set aside a few days a week where Kevin and I only speak Spanish to one another. That could possibly be a disaster, but hey I guess it is worth a try. It just might be kinda quiet around our place...and I might have to revert to sign language.

So, I am going to work tomorrow in my current position, but that position might be changing, hahaha. I will keep you posted.

why i love miami

I had this idea last Friday night that I wanted to go and watch the sun rise on Saturday morning. Well actually, I mentioned wanting to go watch the sun set on the beach with a picnic, and Kevin reminded me that we are on the wrong coast for that, hahaha. So, we opted to wake up at 5:30 to get to the beach on time for the sunrise. We were heading to Hollywood beach, which is North of us, but it seemed to be getting lighter and we were worried we were gonna miss it, so we just took the next exit and headed toward the beach. We ended up at Hallandale beach, which was beautiful. It was a little cloudy, but the weather was perfect and I absolutely loved watching the sun come out for the day. There was something very relaxing and calming about the whole experience.


While we were sitting on the beach, a lady on a four wheeler stopped by a little roped-off section of the beach that we happen to be sitting near. I had no idea what she was doing, but she put on some gloves and began digging in the sand. After several minutes of digging deeper, she came up with a handful of turtle eggs. I felt like a little kid as I watched in awe as she brought out handfuls of eggs. Occasionally she would bring out broken shells, or throw something into a bucket. My dad would have been so proud because I went over and started talking to her. I was curious how they knew the turtle nest was there, and she said that it had actually hatched out the night before. They are trained to look for the tracks, etc. So, they rope off the area and dig it up the next day.

I learned a lot about turtles in the 5 minutes I talked with her. Apparently turtles can lay up to 95 eggs at one time. That is a lot of eggs!! They only have to incubate for about 45 days before they hatch out. She had 3 little baby turtles in her bucket that didn't crawl out of the nest because turtles can dig down anywhere from 3 to 7 feet when they lay their eggs. The rest of the eggs were never fully developed, thus wouldn't be hatching. It was kind of gross because she had to open each egg to make sure there wasn't any developement.

She offered to let me go down to the water with her while she released the turtles. They were just about the cutest thing you have ever seen. I tried to take a little video, but once the wave comes, it is a mystery where the turtle went, hahaha. Good luck little guy :)

Labor Day Weekend

Needless to say, Kevin was in heaven over the weekend as we spent time at the lake. I think that is one of the things he has missed the most about Texas (besides family and friends of course). Every time we see a body of water here in Miami, Kevin will say something along the lines of "We could totally ski on that water". He misses it a lot, but we were lucky enough to have a perfect day at the lake on Saturday. As mentioned in previous post, we took a last minute trip to Texas for the weekend. We flew in super early on Saturday, and after some delicious breakfast burritos courtesy of Bev, we headed out to the lake. The water was beautiful, the temperature perfect, and the company lovely :)

That evening, we went out to Babe's Chicken, which really does have the best fried chicken I have ever eaten. I ordered the chicken strips and they were delicious. We also stopped by an old fashioned candy store near Babe's and picked up a few treats.

Sunday we headed back to our old Grand Prairie ward for church with our friends Vance and Julianne, who also used to be in the ward. They were sweet enough to have us over for breakfast that morning as well. It was awesome to see old friends and remember why we loved that ward. Only the Bishop knew we were coming, so it was kind of fun to be a surprise! That afternoon, we got together with our old Arlington friends, which was a blast. The Sturgills hosted the afternoon and provided yummy food for everyone. We missed a few friends who couldn't make it, but it was so great to catch-up with friends and meet two new babies that were born after we left. We really do miss these friends a lot. Below is a picture of Maddy and I. She acted as if she didn't know me when we got there, but by the end we were reading books to each other. She always had creative titles for the books she read to me, like "The bugs you never, never, never, never, never knew even existed." Hahaha. Creative kid :)
Doug, Tracy, and Britton Myers. (Cooper was at home with family taking a little nap.)
Mike and Kevin just doing their thing. We really do have great friends back in Texas and it was great to pick up where we left off.
Me, Tracy, and Danielle.
Mike, Maddy, Hudson, and Danielle Sturgill.
We headed back up to Flower Mound for dinner Sunday night and enjoyed time with family. Monday was another day filled with attempted boating, hahaha. The water was so choppy I felt that I was in the ocean. It took all my balance and energy to stay afloat, so I could hardly do anything on the board. And I definitely felt it on Tuesday because every muscle in my neck and back was sore. It made us even more grateful that Saturday was such a perfect day.

Overall, we had a wonderful three-day weekend and were able to pack a lot in to the schedule :)

{Visitors}

I have been terrible at blogging recently, but wanted to document the visit from Jerry and Bev. They came to visit us at the end of August and were able to stay for the weekend. Jerry had to head back to work on Monday morning, but Bev stayed until Tuesday afternoon. And since I haven't started my job yet, I was able to spend the days with them while Kevin had to work.

We enjoyed their company and were able to show them around Miami and took them to the beach we like in Hollywood, Fl. It was actually slightly less humid than it had been during the whole month of August, so I figure they were just good luck :)

While they were here, we were discussing the upcoming holidays and when we would be able to go to Texas for a visit. As we looked at the calendar, we realized that things weren't very promising with both of our work schedules. Well, later that night, Jerry called the airlines and found that he had points available if we wanted to go to Texas the next weekend for Labor Day. We were excited for this opportunity, and had a great weekend (post to follow).

Thanks so much for two great visits in two weeks!!

our last minute vacation