Woods Walking

Saturday evening Kent and I took the girls, including Leah, to one of our favorite places for a little walk through the woods. It was a perfect fall evening!!! The girls, all three of them, had fun playing in the creek and exploring the trails.

September!

It's September, and it feels like Fall!!! I love sweater wearing weather, and it appears to have arrived. Every morning, the girls and I study the leaves for signs of the changing season. I love Fall!!!! It has always been my favorite season!

In the next month, we have a lot of fall activities to squeeze in. I want to go camping in the mountains, go apple picking, visit a pumpkin patch, and there are several Fall-ish harvest-y type festivals in the surrounding areas I want to attend. We also have an upcoming fifth birthday to plan. Just FYI, Sophie requests a Halloween theme with costumes for those of you who are local.

In early September, we celebrated Eddy's birthday. She turned four this year!!! That means more cake and more fun for my little ones!

Sophie has started a new ballet class, and she loves it! She says her teacher is really nice, and when the kids make a mistake, she helps them instead of yelling at them (you might recall her former teacher in LA). What a concept! Madeline has started a gymnastics class, as well. She goes for 90 minutes on Friday evenings. I kind of like the 90 minute class as it allows me time to run home and tidy up and catch up on an errand or two.

School!

The day after Labor Day was the day our lives got ridiculously busy. I started teaching fifth grade, and Madeline started her year in third grade. Madeline and I are at the same school for the first time ever! It's quite convenient not having an additional drop off or pick up, but it does make being super productive before and after school more difficult, and it makes for a pretty boring morning and afternoon for Madeline. I've been working some fairly long hours adjusting to a new school and new curriculum, but hopefully, that will change as I get use to everything.

Sophie really likes her new school, and Madeline goes over there on Monday afternoons when school dismisses early for teacher meetings. I may look into Madeline going over there an additional day a week or check into the after school program at work. Luckily, I was able to get Madeline into the jumprope club which meets twice a week before school, and I am hoping she'll enjoy it while giving me some uninterrupted time to prepare for the school day.

Here is some good stuff about my new job: My students are bright and very polite. They like to read and work! Some of them are very talented athletes and musicians. They have very involved parents. We don't start our school day until 8:45. I love when Madeline walks through my classroom door at 3:45. It surprises me every day even though I am expecting it. We have fairly unlimited resources and can pretty much order the teaching supplies we need. Our copy machine staples!!! My students have art, music, PE, band, strings, chorus, library, technology, and Spanish during the school day. We have already had one day off due to inclement weather (flooding). The other fifth grade teachers are all very nice. I was told at a training not to worry about test scores as 99% of my students could pass the state test on the first day of school. What?!?!

And here are the things I am getting used to: Dismissing students until 4:00 means I am not likely to get home until 5:30 most days. My work laptop is a Dell, and I hate it. I miss my Mac. I get 20 emails a day, and have to remember to check frequently throughout the day for important school information like announced fire drills and stuff. The parents of my students also correspond with me through email, and I am just not in the habit of reading through/responding to email during the school day. The kids have so many special activities that it is hard to squeeze in curriculum. I miss not having my good friend Jodi next door to me all day.

That about sums things up so far!

Kings Dominion and Bye-Bye Summer

Madeline got her birthday wish! We made it to Kings Dominion, and we had a pretty good day. The weather was great. No rain, no storms, and it wasn't too hot. We rode rides for the first six hours, and the girls enjoyed most of them, although a couple turned out to be too scary. Their favorite part was the area called "Water Works" where there was a lazy river, a spray ground, and a wave pool. We spent a little over two hours there.

This part was confusing to me. We went without a stroller, and Sophie walked the entire day which included nine hours of amusement park rides and water park activities. She was not carried once. The ride home took over an hour, and I tucked her in about 9:30. She was still awake and looking at books at 10:30 and never fell asleep on the way home. How is that possible?!?

Things Got Busy!

The cake before. Does Madeline look excited or what?

Things have gotten quite busy! But, let's rewind back to a couple of weeks ago. My big girl turned eight!!! She had two requests for her birthday. One request was to decorate her own birthday cake, and the second one was to go to Kings Dominion. We haven't made it to Kings Dominion just yet, although it is on the agenda, thanks to a certain hurricane. Thank you very much Irene. We lost power for a few hours, but other than some heavy rain and wind, we were just fine. Back to Ms. Maddie's birthday. She did decorate her own cake, recieved some amazing gifts, and had not one, but four cakes. Uncle Josh and family came into town, and we had a little celebration with them, Aunt Jen had a little cake with her while babysitting (I was in training), Ralph and Shirley had a cake for her while babysitting (I was in training, again), and we celebrated another time in honor of all the August birthdays (Maddie, Kent, and Dawn) over at Blake and Jen's. Whew! That's a lot of cake!

She requested a shell border and for me to put her name on it, but that's all I was allowed to do.

Trying out her new skateboard.

Little girls! Lots of em!

Besides Hurricane Irene, we had an earthquake, on Madeline's actual birthday, no less. Pretty amazing, really. I thought I had left earthquake country behind, but apparently I have not. I was at a teacher training in a high school at the time, and besides some confusion, things didn't seem too bad. I was surpsrised to come home and find several pictures knocked from shelves, some open drawers, and this spilled vase in the bathroom.

A picture from the August birthdays party. It's a bit dark since it was evening, and the camera is still without a flash.

And, I got new glasses. And, I started my job. I haven't had a full day with students yet, but the county has kept me so busy with training after training that setting up my room and actually planning lessons has kept me at work until 6 lots of days this week. It seems there is never enough time for everything, but that is nothing new. We'll have some first day of school pics this coming week. Should be exciting and exhausting!