Our Little Hoosier

Kerrigan was working on English today and needed help coming up with adjectives for various words. She kept telling me the noun and I was NOT understanding her pronunciation. She repeated the word several more times and insisted it was not "walk" - what I thought she was saying.

I finally asked her to spell it. R-O-C-K. But she was saying rawk. "Oh, I said, 'Rock!' You need to open your mouth when you say it." She tried. I laughed.

"Say it like a Michigander," I advised. Her reponse? "But I'm NOT a Michigander; I'm an Indianer!"

Finally something...

...worth blogging about!

Janae was supposed to write to a senator or state representative for a Social Studies project. She was to ask them which president they most admired. Some of you will remember this project from PACE 1053 - some of you have it to look forward to.

In all my years of teaching, I can't think of any students who received a response back. So when Tony was looking up the information, we found out we could email them. Wheels started turning in my head and I thought maybe her chances of a response to an email would be greater than snail mail. So we tried that avenue.

Just a few minutes ago, I checked my email for the millionth time today and lo and behold, something from Senator Lugar. Woohoo! I am sooo excited...but now it means she actually has to write a report on that president.

We will definitely be printing out that email and saving it in her special mementos box.

School Picture Day

I figured since Michelle posted hers, I could do the same for lack of something more exciting to post :)

I was kind of sad to realized that Kerrigan did not show her jack o lantern teeth. Guess I'll have to make sure to get a picture of my own to remember this time in her life.

First Day Deja Vu

Last year on the first day of school with all three girls gone, I found myself at the library with Tony. We both had our laptops. He was working, I was blogging. (Click here for that entry.) I distinctly remember having trouble concentrating because our company at Harry’s Bar Down Under (a coffee shop in the basement) was retired men having their morning coffee.

Well, yesterday was the first FULL day of school and again I found myself spending the morning with my husband. We were at Panera bread. He was working and I was passing the time reading while waiting for a store to open. We ended up by a group of young moms this time. And again, I had trouble concentrating due to their chatter, which got quite loud at times! I think I read each paragraph five times because I kept getting sidetracked by their conversation. Two tidbits have kept me laughing for the last 24 hours.

One conversation involved one of the mothers – seemingly a foster parent – who was going to be taking in a family of three very soon. You could sense the excitement in the group as they discussed throwing a shower even though they weren’t babies and how this was such a great way to add to your family without having an epidural ;) One lady said, “No really! This is great! My heart says, ‘One more kid; one more kid!’ But my husband says we are done. So I asked him, ‘Could we sign up to be foster parents?’ He answered with a firm NO and then proceeded to say, ‘Because the time would come for the kids to go back to their biological parents and you would be so attached…I’d be watching the news and an Amber alert would come on and it would be YOU they were looking for!’ ”

A few subject transitions later I heard this exchange: “So did anyone drop off their youngest for the first time today?”

Apparently someone named Heather raised her hand because the next thing I heard was… “Heather Drake! She is in FOURTH GRADE!”

I totally had to grin because I definitely know some moms like that!!

Personalized School Supply

Are your kids like mine in that they can never find anything personalized with their unique names or name spellings? I was in that boat for the longest time because all the stuff with Sarah included the "H". Now, when it's not important to me, it's more common to find Sara. It wasn't that my kids were LOOKING for personalized school supplies. But when I noticed that their tape had a very generic Staples label on it I had a brilliant idea.

Thirty minutes and LOTS of copying and pasting (thank goodness for the CTRL V shortcut) later, wahlah! Personalized tape dispensers for each :)

Sub for a Sub

I was called on to substitute for our Kindergarten teacher a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, I’d had a terrible few days with pretty bad nerves and I had gotten off schedule on some natural stuff I’m taking for that, so I really didn’t think I could handle it. I ended up standing in as monitor in the Lower (1st – 3rd grade) Learning Center, a position the K teacher also fills, on Monday. That Friday, I also accompanied them on a field trip. By the following Monday I felt like I had become reacquainted with them enough that I was looking forward to working with them again.

In the meantime, I’d received a call from Pastor Mowery asking if I could possibly give the Kindergarten class a try. They needed a substitute for the substitute. I agreed, knowing that I would be surviving the week purely on the Lord’s strength and none of my own.

It didn’t take me long to realize I was in my element again in the Kindergarten classroom and I came home Tuesday night making Tony’s head spin with all the anecdotes of the day. At one point I told him that I just loved seeing their eyes sparkle when they were having fun learning. He grinned and said he knew that I loved it because MY eyes were sparkling recounting it.

I came home energized on Tuesday, even stopping off at the library to find books for a special story time for later in the week. On Wednesday, I was feeling a bit more normal, but not exhausted quite yet. By Thursday, the kids were starting to get comfortable with me (loosely translated, they had more frequent moments of mischief) and my “not-early-enough nights” were catching up with me. I came home and totally crashed. But not before telling Tony about our fun story time – A Farewell to Winter.

We had stories and songs about all things snow! Each student had been asked to bring as many mittens and/or gloves as they could find from home. We piled them a few at a time into a “mountain of mittens” while reading the story of the same title. They had a blast (until we got ready to return them to their rightful owners and fellow bloggers, Travis and Jody Johnson’s middle child had a meltdown because she was positive that I gave a pair of her gloves to another student. She was so heart-broken I wanted to cry right along with her. Fortunately I had foreseen this happening and had taken photos of each batch of mittens by the labeled bag they came in so I was pretty sure, but just in case…thank goodness for cell phones, we were able to call her mommy and get it all straightened out.)

God totally gets all credit for my survival of a full week of work. And praise to Him and my daughter’s that they made Honor Roll in time to have the day off school Friday. More details of our day off to come!

P.S. You'll definitely want to click on those pictures for a beter look. The bare feet are due to the fact that about 20 kids were magnets for mud puddles during lunch break. They came in with soaking shoes and sopping wet socks.

My Love Language

Nothing says, "I love you" more than coming home after being Kindergarten substitute teacher four straight days, (now remember, I took a leave of absense and have been soaking up my days of freedom b/c even my youngest is in school all day, every day) knowing that we have used nearly every dish in the house and I haven't had time nor energy to even load the dishwasher and planning that I would need to do that immediately before I lost my adrenaline rush and stepping into my kitchen to find it spotless! Then finding out that Tony even sacrificed his lunch break to get it done.

P.S. No, this isn't REALLY a picture of my sink, but close :)