Eleven Years

Wow - today it has been eleven years since I said "I do" and officially joined my life to the guy who shares the other side of the bed! When we took the plunge, we picked the date because it conveniently fell on Teacher's Convention weekend (no school for two days prior) and it is a date that DH would have a hard time forgetting. Got to love the man, he know's my birthday and his sister's birthday are in the first seven days of the same month, but can never remember which day belongs to which of us! I think the part I love the most is that he's such a great dad - Happy Anniversary babe!

Halloween 2009

The Ladybug Fairy

The Teaching Pumpkin
with friend

Moving

My grandparents are moving in one week - for the first time in about 8 years. My mom spent the day at their apartment packing up the kitchen. It sounds like it was a huge task. My grandmother used to do lots of cooking and baking, but hasn't much in the last few years. They found all sorts of pots and pans, cookware, baking items, spices - you name it, they found it - within their small kitchen!

Then they tackled the pantry. They have a deep pantry so sometimes things got lost in the back - lost for years lost. The descriptions of what somethings looked like when Mom pulled them out of the pantry made me feel nauseous just having them described on the phone. I can't imagine what it was like to actually be there and experience it first hand.

At the end of the day there were: (1) several trips to Goodwill; (2) boxes of items to move, to take to the church rummage sale, or to store at my aunt's house; (3) five bags of trash; (4) three bags of recycling; (5) a goal to clean our pantries this weekend by both my mom and me!

Keeping it all Separate

I've been bouncing around today from blog to blog - keeping it all separate. What do I mean, you ask? Weeellll..... I've got this blog, I've got a student blog, and I've got a parent blog. And the school sponsored website that needs to be maintained and the wiki I've been experimenting on with my class, and I'm feeling a little bit technologically divided.

There are good reasons everything is separate. This is my spot to be me, just me, the non-teaching part of me. My student blog is for fun stuff that they might enjoy and a spot for some literature response homework. My parent blog is a spot for weekly news and other info that needs to go home because the school website is not the easiest to work with. The school sponsored site has to be there and I've now made it virtually needless to update that - my homepage there is just a bunch of links to other places!

And the wiki is a work in progress - I've actually got to type up some directions for my students this weekend so that hopefully they can do some things without having to have me standing right next to them. It's been fun but also challenging to incorporate all of this technology - plus the mobile laptop lab and the smart boards at school! It's one of my goals for this year - I'll keep you posted on how it's going for me.

Minnesota Trip

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We had so much fun visiting with the family in Minnesota! Faith had the back of the van all rigged out for her own personal enjoyment! My dad and stepmom were staying in the same hotel so we had a pool party on Friday night!

My sister's two youngest were being baptised - they are three and two. They did great! It was a very different service than I'm used to, but Faith did a great job. I was impressed that she was able to tell me about and explain so many of the differences herself.