Holy Heck...

I found out in January that I had been nominated as "student teacher of the year" at SDSU by one of my former professors.
WHA???
I was a little stunned/shocked, but very, very honored to receive the nomination. I even got a bit teary-eyed. But, I quickly moved on thinking there was NO way I would actually receive the award out of all of the other candidates. I was just excited to put "Philip Halfaker Award Nominee" on my resume. That was good enough in my book.
Then, a few weeks later, I received a letter in the mail telling me all of the steps I would have to take in order to be considered for the award. My initial response was, "there is no way that I'm going to win this thing anyway, so why even bother??" But, my encouraging husband and mother convinced me that I needed to at least TRY. I pessimistically did, thinking my efforts were a waste of time.
So, imagine my surprise when I received this in a letter last week:

Dear Ms. Russell:


It is with great pleasure that I inform you that you have been selected as the Philip Halfaker Outstanding Single Subject Student Teacher...

Holy heck.
How did that happen?
The letter went on to say some other pretty amazing things, and I got a little bit more than teary-eyed.
So, Graham and I went out to celebrate, by getting ourselves some delicious Mexican food at Lucha Libre. I mean, how else do you celebrate than with beans, rice and cheese?? There's no better way to party in my book.

To top off the scholastic achievements, my brainy little boy recently got accepted to SDSU. While my husband likes to pretend that I'm the "smart one," I could never claim a 4.0 GPA like he can! He's such a hard worker, and I am SO very proud of him. Now, he's that much closer to this:

On a side note...I think I've been playing "draw something" way too much lately, as evidenced by the above picture.