Labor Day Weekend

The weekend has been good, & it's kind of only half-way over!


Friday after work, meetings, & preping- a little, I came home & spent a little time playing with my nephew before I headed to the Valley. I got to see my former roommates, & had a lot of fun. On Saturday morning, Amber, a few of her friends, & I went to Tempe Town Lake & rented kayaks. It was fun! This isn't a picture of ME, but this is the lake, & the kayak.

I also started reading Breaking Dawn, which I finished on Monday. I Love the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer, & I want to buy them all. I also want to read them all in a row, because I read 1-3 LAST summer, then earlier this summer I read the first & second books again, but didn't read the third one again before I read Breaking Dawn. My memory falters (to put it nicely), & especially with books & movies. I can read or watch again & again & have it be like the first time.

Another reason for visiting Mesa was to go to the Temple, & I was glad for that experience. It's a darn good place to be, especially when life feels crazy.

My plan was to come back on Saturday evening, but I was exhausted after rowing for miles in the sun, & playing the rest of the day, so I decided to come back Sunday morning. I did, & met Trenton & Seth at church!! YAY!

On Monday we decided to go out shooting. Trenton has a handgun (some of you may remember from an earlier blog enty...) & we went way out Perkinsville Road & found a place to shoot. I had to laugh, because when I've gone shooting with Mac, I'm GOOD. He even told me that with practice I might become better than him, but I couldn't hit ANYTHING with Trenton's gun! After a minute, he told me to just aim in the general direction we were shooting, & pull the trigger as fast as I could. He said it was great stress relief, & I guess he was right. It was fun anyway. I'll have to see if I can get pictures from Chelsea, because she was having fun taking lots of them!

Coming home, we had a ... pause, of sorts. We were driving back towards my Mom's house, when Cameron & Ethan, sitting in the back, found a centipede crawling around! We stopped the car, all got out, & Trenton & Cameron tried to find & kill the nasty little bug. They found it, but it went INSIDE the seat- in Trenton's brand new 4 Runner! We finally decided that maybe they'd hit the seat hard enough to knock it out, & that there was nothing we could do more without tools. We piled back in, but Mom & Chelsea didn't want to sit in the back seats anymore, & we didn't want to put Seth back there, so all three of them sat on my lap in the front seat. It was funny! Especially when Trenton reached down & tickled Mom's leg, & she thought it was the Centipede! She wiggled all over & screamed. Trenton laughed so hard he almost cried. It was an adventure, for sure! The sad part was that with our detour, I missed my good friend's birthday party! :o( That wasn't so fun.

Overall though, My long weekend, was a GOOD weekend!

Teaching: Week One!

Wow! Week one is gone! I'll admit, it was a little bit terrifying as I prepared for starting out a classroom, especially for Kindergarten, with little ones who don't know HOW to go to school, and line up, or walk in line, or write their names, or any of the basics that my kiddo's are starting to get already.

I started the week with 15 kids, and even though one didn't get there until almost lunch time, they all came. One little boy was absent the whole rest of the week... probably because of a swollen eye & a note home from the nurse saying that he shouldn't come back as long as his eye was red & swollen. I'm hoping he'll be back on Monday. I got a new little boy on Wednesday or Thursday, so that put me up to 16 kids. (an AMAZINGLY SMALL class!)

I have a little girl who is pretty much terrified to be at school. On her first day she didn't eat (except for one bite of pizza at lunch, because I begged her.) All day she cried off & on... a pattern that followed for most of the week, although each day got a little better- except for the day after I accidentally sent her on a bus that gets her home, but not the bus she was supposed to take. The next day she told me "you put me on the wrong bus." & I said " I Know, and I'm SO sorry Honey!" She forgave me & we moved on, & got her on the right bus the rest of the days. I felt awful though. (Especially because it didn't feel right to me, but I still put her on the bus I had on my list, instead of the one it should have been changed to.) Hopefully Monday will be even better, & she'll be great.

Oh, I think I forgot to mention that my class, although acting like a normal Kindergarten class, is labled Kindergarten ELD (English Language Development). I love the fact that this means I get to use my spanish... For communicating with the parents, (because it's illegal to teach in any language other than English). I Love My Class, but I don't necessarily like the segregation idea that creates at T.E.S. 2 ELD & 3 "Regular" Kindergarten classes. I like that idea even less when it means that one of my sweet little girls will be switching to a different K class on Monday, because she doesn't speak spanish. Why do they think they need to move her & change things for her when she's doing fine in my class? Poor kid. She just got used to Kindergarten, & now on Monday she'll have to start getting used to a different class, kids, & a different great teacher.

Monday I'll also get a new little boy in my class, because he does speak spanish, & only Spanish & that makes it hard for the teacher he's had all week to help him. I hope he'll do good in my class.

Oh, one more note about the first week of teaching... NEXT Friday is payday, and I'm really excited for that, because I'm tired of being the most broke I've been in my life. During the past couple of weeks I have maxed out my credit card, paid a little bit on it from my overdraft loan on my checking account, & repeated that process. It's kind of depressing. I hate debt.

Over 40!!

So, I was really excited last time I filled up my gas tank & checked my mileage!
I got over 40 Miles per Gallon!!!
What made this discovery even happier is the fact that most of that tank of gas was used with my new "commute" to work. So hopefully this will be the norm.
Yay!

** Update!
So, I have to fill up more frequently than I'm used to, since I'm driving much farther every day, BUT... I filled up again on Wednesday, and when I calculated my mileage.......

42.77 miles per gallon!!

Wow! I was so excited! Who knew that Hot Stuff could do so darn good!!?!