Flashback

I just wanted to take a moment to reflect on life one month ago. Chris was two days away from the bar, and life was very stressed. We are exactly one month away now from finding our results. Yay!

Thus being said, one should know that Chris used the guest bedroom/office/storage room/anything else possible room as his study area. At first, he studied at school. As time went by, he got tired of that and moved into the room. I took pictures to show exactly what it all looked like. Just know, that this past weekend, I finally got my room back.

The bed, desk and guilty party.

The desk. Please note the number of water bottles, coffe cups, and plastic cups.

But like I said earlier, I finally got my room back. Though we tried to keep it straightened, I eventually gave up. It got to where I would not even go into the room. I would just shut the door and walk past. You can see why. I'm just glad that's over with!

My Other Life

Well I figured since I live in two worlds, I'd share the other with you. I redid a bunch of things around my classroom over the summer and got so excited that I took pictures. When I first started teaching, I had red and white gingham and apples. The apples quickly left and the red and white faded out. I figured this year I'd go with bright colors... something that would help me out on days I would need it. Enjoy!

My new curtains!

A LONG bookshelf I inherited this year. And yes, the curtains are stapled on!

My Helper Chart and my cute door window curtain.

Backpack hooks. I just really liked the picture!

Feel free to come and visit any time- I'm sure I would enjoy some adult conversation every once in awhile!

Whirlwinds

My mom Facebooked me today. That's how life goes in our family. Haven't heard from you in awhile... we'll drop you a line. I normally call mom to chat on the way home from school, but I haven't called her in about 3 weeks. That's how I can measure the hecticness of my life: how long it has been since I called my mom last.

After Chris took the Bar, we headed to the beach. We had a GREAT time! What did we do? Nothing! We laid on the beach and the biggest decisions we had to face- where are we going to eat? Once we got back, we hit the ground running.

I had a week of workshops and meetings, trying to "prepare" myself for this year. Prepare is a complete understatement, since you have no idea what to expect. After that week, I was running circles around myself.

School started last Monday. I have quite a group this year. Interesting characters. None really bad, but some that may challenge me in new ways. I like a challenge, but not normally 17 of them! I'll make it short and say one note went home the first week, and I now have a Group #5. I haven't had a Group #5 since my first year of teaching. Group #5 is not good. Just know that it involves a group ALL to yourself and is in extreme proximity to myself. But we love Group #5. It's been a great second week with Group #5.

After that first week of school, we decided to up and haul ourselves early Saturday morning to Atlanta, where we enjoyed the rides at Six Flags and a Braves game that evening. My favorite part of the day was the grand opening... Leslie, this is for you. We enter the park and head to the Scorcher. After deciding to skip that until later, we continue on and come to the Goliath. Our first ride of the day. Chris and James take the end seats while Leslie and I hold down the middle. Well, Leslie holds down the middle. She is holding not only her own bar, but mine as well. I have never heard her scream so much in my life. Even above my screams, hers were piercing the air. It was her good scream too, for those that know her. The only time she stopped was to breathe. That was the best ride of the day! I'll fast forward throught the rest of it all, only pausing to say I had a near brush with death when speaking a little too loudly to myself when a several folks pushed past us while waiting for Superman to work again. I'm working on that!

That day ended in one exciting moment. As I'm driving us home, I call my brother who gives the the "play by play" of Michael Phelps' last gold victory. My heart was racing while I was driving through construction in Atlanta trying to avoid barracades on the sides and police hiding in the dark. We made it, and we were still able to make it to early service. What a day!

As this week is halfway over, I hope I make it through the rest! So, here goes nothing!

Restless Nights

As the world moves on, so do the seasons. This means that summer is pretty much over and school is about to start. Teachers, students and parents all anxiously await the first day. This is life from my side...

I love my job. Teaching fits me perfectly and I wouldn't have it any other way. But something has started over the last few months that never has before. I've been having dreams this summer. Nightmares, actually. About school. I don't know why. It's not cool. I don't like it. But I can't stop it either. Sometimes I can't sleep. This brings me to last night.

I went to bed at about 10:00. I figured I would start getting up early to get ready for next week. I was going to get up right before six. So I laid in bed, my mind just racing. To help you understand, we have a new reading/spelling/language curriculum that is so different from what we had. I also teach an extremely challenging group for reading that is stressing me out. With that said, my mind doesn't stop these days. After about an hour, I was still wide awake. I heard the fan, the dryer, my dog breathing. I kept singing random songs in my head too. So I went to the living room and read for awhile. This normally puts me to sleep. I finally got tired and went back to bed. About to fall asleep, it all started again. I heard the fan, the dryer, my dog breathing. I kept singing random songs in my head too. After about an hour, I got up again. I played online for awhile until I was tired, then went back to bed. After tossing for awhile, it all came again. I heard the fan, the dryer, my dog breathing. I kept singing random songs in my head too. So I got up, went to the guest bedroom, and read again. When I was about to fall out, I finally went back, crawled into bed after turning off the dryer, stubbing my toe on Rush's cage, running into the ironing board and tripping over the comforter. It took a few minutes, but I finally fell asleep. The last I looked at the clock was right after 1:00.

I try to figure out what in the world is going on. This will be my fifth year, so it's not like I am not used to it. The only thing that is helping me is putting myself in the children's shoes. The scariest thing for me is looking at them the first day, wondering what words will come out of my mouth. But the scariest thing for them? Has to be the new teacher, the new students, new routines and the unexpected. So, even though I lose sleep, have bad dreams, and go 24/7 this time of year, I have to tell myself that the anxiety the children go through is more than mine. And that's eighteen of them to one of me. That's what I like to think.

So to all of you mothers out there getting ready to send your children off to school, you are not the only ones that wonder if your child's teacher will be everything they need and more. We worry too. One workday down, a few more and 180 days of school left to instill everything I can into these young, wondering minds. So, here goes nothing!