Lunch Lady Land

TAKS testing is this week at most of the schools in the state. Student teachers aren't allowed to be in the room with the tests because they haven't been through all of the state mandated training that is associated with the security and validation of the tests. Yesterday I got to cover a 2nd grade class and I just loved it! They were a wonderful group of kids and I think I have finally found my favorite age group. Today my school has differerent plans for me. It should be interesting!

Must be Summertime

The boys found this in the back yard today. It must be summertime in Texas!

Catching Up

As usual, we've been pretty busy around here. So busy, in fact, that I put a calendar on my refrigerator and told the boys that they were responsible for writing their own activities on the correct days because I just can't keep track of all of it by myself. In an effort to get Sammy's pooping picture off from the top of my blog I am going to write a boring 'catch up' blog posting. Don't feel like you have to continue reading at this point ... it's not really very interesting!

I have three weeks of student teaching left. It has gone very well so far. I started out in kindergarten for the first seven weeks and have already spent four weeks in my second placement, which is in a 4th grade class. Both of my cooperating teachers are wonderful teachers and I have learned more from being in their classrooms than I think I learned in all of the time I spent sitting in classes at the college!

Chase started swimming lessons. They are not your typical cutesy swimming lessons like we used to take the kids to when they were smaller. These lessons are four days a week at the high school pool, with the high school swimming coach. He works the kids hard, but he is really good. Chase is enjoying it and hopes to get to the point where he can make it onto the 7th grade swim team for next year. He tried out a couple of weeks ago and didn't make it (by 5 seconds).

Kenny is preparing for his school's Spring Talent Show. He is going to do pogo stick tricks with the Cha Cha Slide playing in the background. He's having lots of fun with it. His practices end at 5:00, which is the exact time Chase's swim class starts. They happen to be 4.9 miles away (through 5:00 traffic it takes me about 12 minutes) so that is a bit of a challenge.

A couple of weekends ago we went to a Chalk Walk/Fesival downtown. It was a lot of fun. The weather was sunny & warm and I enjoyed the fact that it forced me to slow down and take a break from cleaning and doing schoolwork for a couple of hours.

Last weekend we went to our friends' house for dinner. The kids colored easter eggs while the grown-ups had drinks and socialized. It was a lot of fun and really good for me to get out to actually talk to adults about something other than teaching.

Chase has started volunteering at our local Nature Center. Last weekend he got choked out by a python and stayed calm the entire time. His face was somewhere between bright red & purple by the time he decided he needed to ask for help from another volunteer. Yesterday, after he got some additional snake handling tips from his supervisor, he worked their booth for the Community Days event at our mall. Although he enjoyed talking to people all day about the pythons I think his favorite part was the four middle school girls that continuously came back to flirt with him all afternoon.



I decided to start reading the Twilight series again. I read them all over Christmas break. Then several of my teacher friends at the school where I am student teaching started reading them and I got interested in it all over again. If you haven't read them yet, you should. (ahem, Mandy)

We are starting to try to plan our summer vacation. We are thinking of taking a mini-trip to NYC. If you have any ideas or tips for me about visiting the Big Apple, please send them my way.

I think wrote enough to get Sammy's picture to go way down on my page. That was my main goal, you know. Hope you all are well. We are busy, but doing great. Thanks for asking ;)

Bad Timing

First off, sorry about the picture. It's my most recent of Sammy. I thought Brian would be amused (and he was). That's not what my posting is about though. Well, it's about Sam, but not about Sam going potty. It's about my bad timing with Sam. I decided to put him on a diet. As you can see, he's getting a little hefty. In his prime he weighed 105 - 110. If we went to the vet and he was above 110 I would get a stern look and severe words of "advice" from the vet about how to help him lose a few pounds. Now he weighs 133. He's getting older and sleeps about 23 1/2 hours a day. So I thought some diet food might be good for him. I waited until all of the good food was gone and started him on the diet food on Sunday. For the first couple of days he thought it was great because it tasted different. By Wednesday he was following me around begging for more food. On Thursday PJ went into heat. Now Sam can't hardly stand being in the same room as her. And she follows him around nonstop. So not only is he hungry, but he's crazed with emotions he can't understand. It's going to be a long weekend!