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Monday, September 28, 2009

Happy Yom Kippur

Did you know today was Yom Kippur? You would if it was a holiday you got off work for. I'm lucky in that respect. I had the whole day to myself - though I would always rather spend a day off with Josh. He does not get off work for Yom Kippur. It's been kind of a busy day. I went to the mall this morning with three hopes in mind.
1. To find an adorable trench coat at Macy's
2. To get some answers as to why this MacBook likes to disconnect from the internet when left idle
3. To find a reed diffuser for our very small powder-room
It was a mostly unsuccessful trip. All I got was my trench coat. I'm thrilled with it, but I wanted the other 2 things too. Oh well. I think I've managed to get the second on my own and the third can wait a few more days I guess.

So right now I am just sitting here in our window seat watching some dark clouds roll in from the southwest and waiting for my cute husband to get home from work. It seemed like a good time to write a blog post. I really wish I had time to load up the pictures from this weekend when the kids were with us but I'm supposed to be leaving for my dad's in a few minutes so that will have to be a project for later. I can give you some of the highlights though...
  • Leo said on both Friday and Saturday, "This is the best day ever!"
  • Evan went to sleep on Friday night and Saturday for his nap with no trauma
  • I'm pretty sure all three kids had a lot of fun
  • Evan pointed to a picture of Jillian Michaels and said, "Mimi"
  • We got to watch my school's homecoming parade in full before the rain started
That covers a good bit of it. I'll try to post pictures sometime this week. We just bought a new tv, stereo system, PS3, and tv stand which we are supposed to be setting up sometime this week. So between class Wednesday and dinner plans on Thursday I may or may not be back before the weekend. I will try just for you though :]

Let me close with some positive events since I've failed to mention any in my past few posts...
  1. I've started my internship, and it's fun!
  2. Josh got a decent enough bonus from work that we were able to buy a whole new tv get-up! This means we can ditch the older-than-the-hills tube tv and the classy converter box that goes with it!
  3. We had a successful weekend with the kiddos
  4. I have a 4-day work week this week
  5. The first marking period is already 1/2 way over :-0
I think I'll save some of the others for a later date. There are more. I hope you enjoy the rest of your Yom Kippur and that it was a fun day for you!

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Fall Madness

Did you think I was gone forever???

Well I'm not. Still here. Things just got really crazy. The internship is going well but takes up all of my planning time at work. That's not too too bad considering I don't have to write lesson plans. But I do still have to grade papers. Those are backing up FAST. Part of the problem is that my weeknights have not been quiet and calm. Mondays I'm visiting dad and Wednesdays I'm in class. It just so happens that the past two weeks there have been other things going on every single other night. It's exhausting! I'm trying to take measures to lighten the grading load a little. I had my aid check homeworks today. However, our laptops were taken away to be wiped out and put on a new server. So I have no way of entering grades for a few days. Anyway, that's where I've been.

This coming weekend Amberly's three are coming over for a sleepover. We're so excited to have them - and Evan for the first time!! That will be an experiment, but I think he'll do fine. It's my school's homecoming weekend so we're going to watch the parade at 12:30 on Saturday and as much of the game as the kids will tolerate at 2:00. Then we can just hang out and have fun until it's time for them to go home. Sunday is our family picnic and Monday is Yom Kippur so I'm off work! Hooray!

Anyway. Another one of my problems is falling asleep... as in I feel like I'm falling asleep at all times. I've been trying to go to bed early like 9 or 10 every night, but it doesn't always happen. Tonight and last night both I swore I was going to bed at 7, but here it is 9:30 and I still need to take a shower. Looks like 10:00 bedtime tonight. Jennie and I started making cookies, and then I started downloading this program for my computer. And what do you know, I never graded any papers. Snap.

Let me get upstairs. I've clearly missed the blog. And I know you've missed me :] I'll try not to stay away so long this time.

Friday, September 4, 2009

1 down, 39 to go...

Soooo, week 1 of the '09-10 school year has come and gone. It was an interesting one to say the least. I definitely enjoyed getting to know my kids finally. It was, however, incredibly exhausting going back to waking up so early in the morning and being "on" and performing at 7:25 am. There were a few nights I was in bed before 9:30. Rather than giving you the play-by-play, how about the highlights?
  • HUGE classes, my smallest is 27 biggest is 31
  • Really really really nice kids
  • I only made it through 2 lessons this week (including the introductory syllabus discussion) because these kids participate and share way more than I was prepared for
  • One girl made me laugh when she didn't have her syllabus on the 2nd day. She told me, "well in my defense, I threw it away." Really? That's your defense?
  • We're trying homeroom (not the 10-minute variety that meets every day) this year which met every day last week adding an additional class to my schedule. Next week we don't have homeroom so I'm excited to see if the day passes faster.
  • One of my favorite students from last year is my student aide!
  • Today was a professional day in which I attended 2 meetings and skipped out on the third to go home and take a nap! LOVE it!
** And I'm gonna go ahead and make a big deal about this last one since it was probably THE highlight of my entire week......
  • I loved so much that I could pull up a folder on my computer and a lesson was sitting there waiting to be printed!!!!!!!!! I didn't have a single thing to bring home with me this week :] :] :] :] :] :]
I know it's early in the year and things will get more hectic. I'll probably end up bringing some grading home. But nothing was as time-consuming as having to create those two lessons every single day last year. Even grading, which can take a long time, is so much more mindless than lesson planning and therefore so much less exhausting. It's also a little less pressing in that if you take an extra day on something the kids won't be sitting around with nothing to do.

In short, I'm a happy camper so far. I've hit a little snag with my internship, but I'm confident it will get resolved.

In other news, this was also our first week living with Jennie and it went great! Tonight we had Josh & Jennie's little cousin Taryn staying with us. Josh and I took her to the playground this afternoon and then we had pizza for dinner. Tomorrow we're planning to hit up the MD state fair and see all the animals and eat some deliciously bad-for-us food!

Happy Labor Day weekend!!!