Weekend Update + Monday

Saturday: As you know, my parents are divorced and my mother is re-married. My stepdad has two sons, Ricky and Chris. You may not know that my mom and her husband met each other in 1991. In that year our ages were~ Ricky 13, Amberly 11, Me and Chris 9, Ben 7. Ok, we were little KIDS. Saturday was Ricky's 30th birthday. Of course we had to celebrate! So Ben, Jenna, Josh and I met Ricky and Annie (his wife) and some of their friends at Cancun Cantina for drinks. We had a fabulous time even though Josh and I completely abstained from carbohydrated beverages. I was pretty proud of us for that. Anyway, there are a whole boat load of great pictures of us from that night but they are all on Jenna's camera. I had mine but didn't want to make everyone take the same picture twice -- that's a pain. So I'll be sure and post those asap when I get them from Jenna. And as I always, I will post the whole shebang on Picasa (and probably some on Facebook too).

Sunday: We had a mostly lazy Sunday. Ben and Jenna had stayed the night with us so I made a big South Beach breakfast of cheesy eggs and turkey bacon. [By the way, Josh and I decided to stay on the strict phase of the diet for one more week. We had both only lost 7 pounds at the end of week 2 and decided we would make up for our cheating (remember the s'mores?) by staying strict for one more week. ] After Ben and Jenna left I finally painted the third bathroom a pale turquoise. It looks much better in person than it does in the photos. Later that afternoon I decided to drive up to Eldersburg to my mom's to have dinner with her and Amberly and the kids. Josh was very busy cleaning and organizing the basement so he decided to keep at it to get the stuff done. At my mom's she and I and Amberly had the funniest conversation with Leo. It was all about what he was going to be when he grew up. First he talked about a police officer (like his dad) and wanted to know if he could wear a police hat. He was very excited about that. When he asked, "what do guns do?" I promptly said, "Or you could be a scientist!" His response? "What's that?!" The conversation went on. He was totally into being a trash man also and announced to Ben and Jenna when they got there that that's what he was going to be when he got big. He really had us cracking up.

Monday: Today was a big day, as you know. I reported for work officially at my new school. Since it would be a lot to tell you about the WHOLE day, here are the highlights:

• Our principal started the day by saying: I know you only want 2 things today, breakfast and time in your classrooms, so I'll keep this short. A truly understanding principal who cares more about the needs of his teachers than hearing himself jabber on all day long. Meetings only lasted until 10:30! The rest of the day I got to spend in my classroom. As a result, it's totally set up!
• Everyone was incredibly helpful. People donated shelves and furniture to me since I had nothing. I got an old random coffee table that I used to create a reading corner in the back of my room... so cute! Others offered me all of their lesson plans since I'm starting fresh this year, not to mention help with any question or concern, and plenty of good advice.
• OMG, my schedule. The school operates on 50-minute classes except 4th period which is 2 hours and has all the lunch shifts in it. My planning is the 2-hour block - holler! I also have one of my World History classes in the morning and one in the afternoon to break up the monotony. It's going to be sweet.
• And anyone who has ever dealt with custodial staff can appreciate this -- my custodian is nice! The woman at Banneker was not friendly and would never look up when you walked by her or anything. I may have blogged before about how I used to run when heard her trash-can rolling down the hall at the end of the day so I didn't have to deal with the awkward silence/small talk while she cleaned my room.

So anyway, as I predicted, I'm more excited today than I was before. Tomorrow is going to be a little more meeting-intensive because I have to go through a new teacher "training camp" but I bet I'll still come home excited :o)