Happy 50th Anniversary Mom and Dad

Today, Valentine's Day, is my parents' 50th wedding anniversary. It is hard to believe that my parents have been married 50 years. These day it is not as common to reach the 50th anniversary with higher divorce rates and couples waiting much longer to get married. My parents, however, made it. Thanks Mom and Dad for showing me how it is done. We will be having a nice family dinner together on Monday.

February

Things have been crazy lately. This working full-time has really made it hard to do anything like write on my blog, clean the house, clean clothes or even just get things done. Today is teacher prep. day, thus time to do all of the above.

Kyath has changed back to his old school. He was miserable at my school. I thought it was worth the fight to keep him there. But then my sister-in-law called me and convinced me that it would be better for him to go back to his old school. I didn't want to believe her. I thought about it all night and realized that she had been inspired to call me. I really felt the spirit confirming that Denise was right. Thank goodness for family.

We celebrated Valentine's Day and had a Greek Olympics on Thursday. It was really fun. We had many Olympic events including: the shot put (throwing cotton balls), Javelin (throwing straws), Discus (Frisbee), long jump, relay races, and tug-of-war. It was fun cheering my students on as they competed against the other 2nd grade class. We made sure to include Eros (Cupid) in the festivities and had children hand out valentines. I, by the way, came home with tons of gifts from my kids. I was touched.

I went to bed at 9:00 last night and woke up at 8:00 this morning. Boy, was I tired.

Well, enough computer time for me. I have to get back to getting the house in order. My dear sister and mother snuck in this week and did some laundry for me. They are too good to me. Unfortunately, I still have a lot of housework to do.

Just between Us

I probably shouldn't have written the post yesterday. My oldest son was upset when he found out that someone knew. I really need to be better at keeping those kind of things to myself.

Don called me today as I was picking up Dresden and Zander to tell me that Zander had to get stitches today. I really thought he was kidding. I mean, didn't he just get stitches a couple of months ago? Didn't he just get his cast off from his broken arm. Then I stopped myself and thought, didn't he just get stitches a couple of months ago? Didn't he just get his cast off from his broken arm? Do I need any more sign that Zander is accident prone? One of my neighbors jokes that there is an emergency room with her daughter's name on it. I think I am getting to that point.

Anyways, Don was playing with Zander. He was running around the house with him on his back. Don put him down on a piece of furniture and stepped away before Zander was standing firmly. He slipped off and hit his head on the edge of the cabinet. He now has five staples in his head. Don feels terrible.

Visit to the Doctor

I know everyone has hard kids. Well except for Melanie, Katrina, Debbie and Tawnie. Okay, just kidding. But I think my kids are harder than most kids. My trip to our pediatrician confirmed my belief. I am trying to be careful what I say because I know this is on the net and could come back and haunt me some day, so bear with me.

My pediatrician began asking me questions like, "What time does your child go to bed. Where does he sleep. When does he wake up. What kind of behavior has he been displaying. How long has he been acting this way." They were all questions that I was expecting. What I wasn't expecting was his response. He said, "I had no idea that it had gotten this bad." Boy, one liners can really get ya.

My favorite part was when he asked me if we wanted to get the chickenpox vaccine and the flu shot. I would have loved to. But I also knew I was going to pay a big enough price just for making him see the doctor. It was hard enough just getting him to the appointment. He kept trying to leave before we saw the doctor. Afterwards he was angry with my for talking about him. He has made sure that the rest of my day has been really hard.

Life with a little tint of green

Something or someone happened to my monitor and now everything has a green tint. Don't get me wrong or anything, I like green. In fact, the green tint makes my desktop picture and everything else with green look even greener and beautiful. The problem is the rest of the time. Right now I am typing on a grey screen. Weird.

I love coming home to my kids and spending time with them. Dresden just spent ten minutes kissing me. Those are the moments I will always look back on with joy. I try to spend one on one time with all the kids. I am really working on making every moment count when I am with them.

TGIF

It has been a long week, which is funny considering we only had school Wed-Fri. I had an in-service meeting on Tuesday and then taught Wednesday-Friday. It is mostly because the teacher I am replacing turned over full control to me this week. She told me that she would help in the background, but I am now the main teacher. Up until now we have been team teaching. We split up the subjects and took turns teaching. So teaching all the subjects has been a new development.

It has been fun being able to prepare and teach all day. I am always thinking of new ways to reach the students and teach them new subject matter. It is nice finally feeling like it is my classroom.

To every positive there is a negative. With having full-control, I am dealing with 1st year teaching issues. I can get the children to be quiet. But sometimes it is hard. I have different students for reading, math and my second science hour. So I have to start all over again getting control with each class.

Today there was something in the air. Some of the children had behavior issues. I say something is in the air because I wasn't the only teacher struggling to get the students attention. The principal actually had to go into a third grade classroom today to remind them of the school rules and that teacher is one of the best in the school.

I only had one student giving me a hard time. He has always been a little hard. But yesterday his dad won full custody of him. We have always had a hard time getting a hold of his dad. So all of our communication has been with his mom. His attitude today was that he could do whatever he wanted because there was no way we would be able to reach his dad. It was frustrating.

The week is over and I am grateful. I am grateful to spend time with my kids and straighten up my house.

What do I know about hard?

I keep thinking about what I wrote and how pitiful I sound. I have it so easy compared to so many people. I am grateful that I don't have more difficult challenges. Sometimes it just makes me feel better to complain.