Saturday, August 30, 2008

Back To School


So we all went back to school this week and BOY what a week it was. I don't think teaching has ever exhausted me as much as this week did. Each night I looked forward to 8:30 when Cole would go to bed so that I could go to bed! Even the boys were worn out, On 2 separate days a neighbor friend came over to ask to play and they were too tired to go out and play and they were both out like a light 5 minutes after going to bed. By the end of the week we had a little more energy but we were ready for Family Pizza and Movie night by Friday. We watched The Goonies, the boys loved it and went to bed at 9 with no complaints! Normally Friday nights I get the, AWWW c'mon it is the weekend we don't have school, nope not last night.


Cole and Peyton both love their teachers,which is good, Peyton had 3 of his best friends in class with him, which is kind of scary since he is a chatterbox, but I am sure his teacher has already found out since on his 3rd day of school he got a note home for not following directions and not listening. He swears he could not hear his teacher, and he thought he was staying where he was supposed to, so I am not sure what it was but he was good the next day. I am thinking about getting his hearing checked though, one of the things that was associated with that Branchial Cleft Cyst he had as a baby was 70% chance of hearing loss later in life, not significant hearing loss but some hearing loss, and I have been wondering with his slight lisp and the other issues he has had with his ears in the past if maybe he does have a slight hearing loss or if he will outgrow these things. IF hearing is fine I am going to call and see if they can have a speech therapist evaluate him at school t o see if he can get services through Denton to correct his lisp. I kind of don't want to do this, because he is my baby and it is so sweet when he says ZZZZANK YOU! But I also don't want him to get to 5th grade saying it.

Cole of course, is my model student, and was named so in his class this week. He takes after his aunt, he loves to brown nose the teacher and he is such a good kid, he always makes me proud. HE is really enjoying 3rd grade so far. HE was really worried about homework, but after a few days of hearing from the teachers he has he thinks he can handle it just fine.

They are both loving ESD and told me I could wait until 5:15 or even 6 to come and get them because they are having so much fun, but then again they did not have homework this week, so we will see when they start making them do their homework before they can play :)

Now onto my school week, well schedules are still not worked out, they gave us a new system called Zangle, which screwed everything up as to how we have always done stuff and lo and behold appearantly we have always been doing t wrong and no one higher up has ever told us we were doing it wrong, so it has been a night mare, the new teacher even came in on Friday and said if they had still had her old position open back in Canada, she would have turned in her resignation and gone back to it. She has had a lot of bad things happen since she took this job and she is wondering if maybe this was not the move for them to make. She has poor circulation so they decided to move to Texas to get out of the cold of Canada and moved in with some friends in Gainesville, whihc was only suppose to be for a few weeks, but they found they could not buy a house here because they have no american credit, only canadian, so no one will loan them money and they own their 2 houses outright in Canada and MOntanna. Mom has said she can do it, but they decided to sell their house in Canada first so they can pay cash for a house here, or only finance a small amount. And according to her houses sell within weeks in Canada, but hers has sat on the market for 3 weeks and no sale. Ok I really do not know Canadian Real Estate but this sounds a little extreme to think a house will sell that quickly unless you are in a hot market, but whatever. She is still driving in daily from Gainseville, a 1 1/2 hour drive one way, she wound up enrolling her daughter in Gainseville schools until they can get a place here, she bought a brand new Infinity the week before school and it has had electrical problems from the first week and it has been in the shop for over a week now and she has not gotten home before 9 most days. Yeah I think I would want to quit too.
Now my days have been hectic I have not had a conference period all week, I am already dealing with paraprofessional issues, and fights happening, but I am nipping this early on so we are not in the principal's office once a week, and I am not sure I am liking how we are doing our new teaching. I like the fact we are meeting as a large group, but it feels frantic, unorganized and I don't think we are reaching all the kids I proposed on Friday that maybe we do 2 group activities a day and then split up into smaller groups so we are going to try that next week. I think that may work but I am sure there will be a few more tweaks along the road before we get it running smoothly.

SO anyway, it is the weekend and I laid in bed until 10:30 today watching cooking shows, and I got up to do laundry only to realize I had enough soap to do one load and that load is almost done so I need to run to the store and buy some more. We plan on lying around today, I am going to make up the next 2 weeks menu and go shopping for groceries tonight, and I was given some Hawaiian Falls tickets by my classroom aide yesterday, which are expensive, but her son worked there, so I surprised the boys with and we will go Sunday after church. No crafting for me this weekend, well maybe a couple of Starbucks Frappacino boxes turned into a pencil box crafts fro Colettes room, but other than that I will be relaxing and working on the ARD paperwork for my new student who came over from the Jr. High without any! Have a great week, and hopefully I won't be too tired to post some new pics.

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Good Bye Summer!




Good Bye Summer

I am so sad to see you go. I really THOUGHT I was ready for school to start, but now that I MUST go back tomorrow and face my my new and old students I am not so sure. I am sad to see my baby boy start first grade and I see my 2 boys get older and taller each day, and I want my 2 toddler boys back that climb into my lap and "nuggle" with me. I am going to miss sleeping in each morning and napping during "Yes Dear" at 2:30. I miss going to the water park, or planning a picnic and staying up until midnight.


I am scared of having another bad school year like I had last year! It was horrible because of an aide we had, but I am paranoid that the teacher she worked under might pull me into all the drama she is experiencing. I am worrier by nature so of course I have worried about, what if I am trying to be set up to fail, or even worse yet, just plain screwing up on my own. I work very hard and try to do EVERYTHING by the book, but already this first week is stressful for the simple fact one of my new students has no paper work and I must test and write goals for this student by FRIDAY!


Now is the time I need GOD rooting for me more than anything and I am feeling so scared he is too busy with other problems to look at my paltry worries, I mean there is a war going on and people loosing their loved ones. I know that is not the case and that is Satan playing with my emotions, well that and it I am hormonal right now. Any prayers that any readers could offer for me in the next few days would be appreciated. I do not want to fail!

I know this was not really a crafty post, but it does have photographs my hubby took in it, well all but one, I took the cool shell shot.



I hope that everyone has a blessed week and think of my boys as they go back to school on Tuesday, they are not ready either, but for different reasons from me, they just want to stay home and play video games all day long while I am at work :)

Thursday, August 21, 2008

You Love me! You Really LOVE me! Thank You!


NO really, not the 2 people who read this, well I guess you do love me you are family. Anyway, my inservice presentation went well today. I had been working on my inservice for about a month now and gave my presentation today, and it ended with my group saying that was the most useful information they had gotten at all the sessions. I was giving a brief overview of TAKS-ALT to the new teachers, and well you know me, I don't teach by standing up and preaching I try to get down and personal and making it more conversational, and besides I gave them all several lessons they could start the school year with, so hey what new teacher wouldn't like some lesson ideas they do not have to come up with, that is why we are teachers, we never come up with ideas on our own, we steal them from other teachers :)

Anyway, Hopefully this weekend I will try to start my Etsy Store and I am going to post these as a set to sell,and another set I made. This is a Thank You set using STamping Up sets, and of course I am not in my craft room right now so I forget the name to the set or the exact colors, but hey I do know the cute patterned paper came from a scrap pack from Walmart! :)

You have a great day, I am relieved my presentation is over and I can now go to bed at a decent hour and sleep real good. I have hardly spoken for a whole week as I was preparing for school and my big inservice presentation and Matt had to keep sushing me because he said I was in rare form and would not shut up.

I actually have to go make a card for my new aide in school she has done the work of 4 men in 3 days in my class.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

WONDERFUL!


Oh I wish everything was wonderful. I just wish the first day of school would get here so I could sleep and relax again! In the meantime, enjoy my "WONDERFUL" card. This was just a simple card made with SU Pick a Petal Stamp set. I like this set, I just never can make anything with it I really like. This one is not too bad, it is very clean and crisp, which is nice for a change! Anyway I may not be back on again until after school starts next week, btu then again I might be on all weekend, you'll never know unless you check it out! But probably not since the weekend before school starts is always a big weekend for me and my boys, I pamper them big time for the end of summer and then end it by going on a special date with each of them alone. It's out Mother SON time! I just hope they always allow me to continue with this tradition, I love it!

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Texas BlueBonnets




So here they are, it only took me 4 months to finish these, I think I finish things faster during the school year because I set my mind to it knowing my time is precious, but in the summer I find too many things to distract me like, turning Peyton's old Buzz Lightyear bedroom into a Medieval Castle room, it is painted and that was a feat in itself! Note to self, NEVER EVER EVER paint a ceiling Dark Blue and plan to change it later! UGH! But it is done and he can sleep in there now, we are working on a coat of arms and canopy, but funds need to replenish first! I hate having ot be a responsible adult that pays bills instead of playing with my money!

Anywho, here are the pics of the Texas Bluebonnet Tea Glasses I painted for Mom and Dad's 39th anniversary, which is on August 23. I made her a set of 6 glasses and I am going to paint her a matching pitcher too, but that will probably be for Thanksgiving, school starts next week and I may be a little busy for a while. They turned out quite well I modeled them after an actual picture of bluebonnets Matt had taken. But I find that each glass and each bluebonnet is very different, I found new ways to paint them each time I sat down to paint, but they look good.

Hope you enjoy!

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Happy Birthday!


I do not know why I have NEVER tried this technique before! It seems so basic, stamping on patterned paper. I just happen to have to some cute scraps, in fact a whole box full of cute scraps I can not only make magnets for my white board with, but now I can make some super cute cards with on those stamps I have that I have in the past grown bored with because I don't want to color them. I actually made 2 Happy Birthday ones, but I shut down iphoto and forgot to get that pic, and my computer is running real slow I need to reformat my hard drive, so for tonight this is all I am posting.

OH OH OH, I finally also finished my moms glasses, I have to download those pics and post them, plus JD and April were in town for the week I will post some other pics later.

On another note I am going to bite the bullet and open and Etsy store. I am going to put some card sets up and see what bites I get, if any, and I am also going to post some of Matt's photographs, he has so many industrial and nature pics, I think we could actually sell stuff, I hope maybe we could make enough money to buy Christmas gifts for Matt's family as I have already started buying for the boys, and if we were to do well with his pics, maybe it could just buy new carpet for the house, but I seriously doubt that would happen, but even if I made $20, I would be happy. I will let you know when I get my store up, ti might be a week or so.

Anyway I do not have the recipe for the card for those of you who might want to copy it. If you need to know stamps or paper just message me and I will get it for you!

Giggles,
Heather

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Everything...


Ok I made a bunch of cards a few weeks ago with the thought being that I would post one a day until I had time to make more. Guess what? I did not do it. In fact I hardly got on my computer to check e-mail. I am not ready to come back to the real world and go to work. Oh well, I am working on a presentation for school, well I am suppose to be working on a presentation for school, but instead I am posting a pic of one of my cards I made. I plan on finishing my moms bluebonnet glasses today so I should have pics of those up soon.

THis is from my always stamp set except this time I did not use the bird I love so much I used the hearts, and although Matt says I have been using brown too much I just could not resist using it again. I also used my cuttle bug to emboss the background. Unfortunately I am away from my craft room so I cannot get the color of paper I used as it has been a few weeks since I created and I just don't remember the exact colors. Oh well Enjoy!