Ramblings...

I survived my Monday meeting. It was a doozie, but once again, I've lived to tell the tale. After the meeting I felt like I feel when I've cried a lot. You know that feeling? Total emotional exhaustion? That's how I felt. I hadn't been crying (not even on the inside) but I still felt that way. Weird, huh?

On the student front: I had one out yesterday and today because of fever and sent another one home today because he puked in my classroom. (Can't seem to get away from the puking...) So: I know of two students who won't be in my room tomorrow. God is smiling on me. After these last few weeks, it's pretty darn nice to have a few students out so I can catch my breath and catch up on paperwork. Don't get me wrong, I love my students, but it is truly AMAZING how much a room can change when one student is out...much less two or three. It's very close to a vacation day in my book.

On the home front: Dave and I are settling in to watch a Netflix movie in a few minutes. (Currently, he's taking Eddie for a spin playing Tricky on xbox...can't seem to tear him away from it at the moment - hence the blog entry)

Some fun tidbits for you:
- Dave got new glasses! As soon as I can sneak a picture of him, I'll post it. They're very different than his last pair. I like them a lot...makes him look older...and twice as cute.

- Lucy is on her little doggie period. She started last weekend. You would think that she was howling in pain the way Dave has been treating her. "Oh, Lucy, are you ok? Do you have cramps? Are you feeling bad? You poor baby...I'm so sorry..." blah, blah, blah. I hardly get THIS kind of treatment when on MY menses. (always wanted to use that word...never really have until now. lucky you.)

- For the past few days, every morning I've woken up to a light dusting of snow on the car and back deck. Every morning I pray that we will have a snow day. And every morning I check the news and see that my school district is NOT on the snow delay list. Hmph. There's talk of snow in the middle of the night on Thursday. Here's hoping that our snow day comes on Friday!

Ok, Eddie is finished and the movie is starting. I'm off. Hope all is well with you!

A Whole Lotta Love.

Just want you all to know that I'm ok. Thank you for your words of encouragement over the past few days. The weekend is here and I'm slowly letting last week melt away. Monday starts a new week. I feel like I've learned a lot over the past few days. Integrity is a big part of it. I can only do my best and let everything else fall where it may. Life will go on...and it's too short to be totally stressed out about work all of the time. I will continue to choose to be happy and find the happy moments that remind me of why I love teaching.

On Friday we made a special winter snack in my classroom. We dipped pretzels in chocolate and rolled them in Fruity Pebbles and sprinkles. We also had hot chocolate with marshmallows. The BIG ones. Yum. I wish I could post pictures of my students on my blog. They are so stinkin' cute. I could probably get in big trouble for that, so you'll have to picture it. All of their cute little faces covered in chocolate. Chocolate on their hands. Chocolate on their faces. Chocolate on their necks. You name it. It was quite the sensory experience. That's the stuff I love. When they're not being weasels, or refusing to work, or puking. I love seeing how much fun they have with a fun snack. It was a good day.

So, thanks. Thanks for your love. I have a big meeting on Monday that I'd appreciate your prayers for. After Monday, I'll feel a it more free.

Ta Ta for Now.

Choosing to be Happy

I hate to keep popping in and being negative, but there's no avoiding it. I would love to write a post about how happy hearts and stickers everything is right now, but it's just not. Work is no fun. To the point of me wondering why I even got into teaching in the first place. The amount of work, the amount of need that these kids have. I am one person. ONE. I cannot do all of it and it's killing me. I want to, but there are just too many kids and too many needs. Throw in a few crazy parents and we've got ourselves a teacher on the edge. I'm about to fall off and go to my happy place. I want to give my best to these kids, but because of the overload, I'm having to lower my expectations. I hate that. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only person dealing with this, but it's still hard.

I loved learning new elementary terms in my teaching classes. One of them was, "Give them two glows and a grow". "Glows" being the positives and "Grows" being something they could work on to make it better. So, in the spirit of happy elementary teachers everywhere, I'll try to give some "Glows" and not focus on the "Grows".

Glows:
1. I like the school schedule (lots of holidays/summer vacation)

I believe that's all I can muster up right now. I'll try more later.

Snow, Snow, Come Out in the Snow

We woke up this morning to a wintry wonderland. Our first snow of the winter! We thought we'd be all ready to go to Sunday School, but by the time Dave finished shoveling the driveway, we knew we'd be really late. So, we're both sitting here resting and plan to go to the church service that starts at 11:00.

I love seeing Lucy play in the snow. She gets to happy and giddy! Dave shoveled the sidewalk and threw the snow on her. She kept biting at it trying to catch it in the air.


We love our Lucy girl.

The Last Mohican

Posted by David
- a guest blogger.

Well the last of the Filipino Missionary Friends has done it. Congratulations, Ali, for a job well done. Over the holidays Ali proposed to his girlfriend, Jane and she said yes. The last domino has fallen as all other friends have since been hitched. We are all excited to hear the news and can't wait to see it all go down. A few pictures to remind us of our good friend Ali. The sexy beast is officially off the market.


A group shot in 03' sans Daniel. 95 degrees in Tagatay that day and the Euro looks ready for winter.


Note to Jane: not a bad cook, not bad at all. Just look at that smile on DS.


Good with Animals.

Here I am!

I've been trying to get my picture over the the right there for a while now. Just a little pic to show my face. Well, after some help from Mimsies, I now have that photo. Long story short - for some reason my Mac wouldn't let me reduce my photo to 50K. All very interesting, I know.

Ta da! Here I am:

Not an Endorsement

Well, we did it. We just purchased the vacuum of all vacuums. After much research and deliberation, we are now the proud owners of a Dyson vacuum. When I drove in the driveway on Wednesday, I saw this on our front porch:



It's just like Christmas all over again! I can't believe how excited I am about a vacuum. Seriously, though, this thing is designed really well. Even the manual is cool!






The cord is super long, it manuevers well around the house and all of the attachments have their own little place on the vacuum. It even has a super-long hose that I can stretch for miles. We've had it for three and a half days now and I've vacuumed two of those days. This thing makes me want to clean. Apparently, someone else wants to clean too.



I'm ok with that.

Work, Work, Work

I feel like Cinderelli (remember the cute mouse in the cartoon that called her Cinderelli? I love that.)

i've been back to school a whopping 6 days since Christmas break and I'm already feeling like I need another break. These kids are taking it out of me. Special Education teachers have a laundry list of job titles. It seems like each day I'm discovering a new job title to add to my resume, should I leave this career and move on to another.

1. Teacher
(ok, that's a given.)

2. Mother
(although I am not one, I feel like I have 8 children each day when I walk in the building...especially when they keep saying my name over and over and over and over and over. Oh, did I mention diapers? Yes, we change diapers. Thanks to my wonderful assistants in the room, I've had to change only a few this year...but still. I definitely put my time in when I taught preschool in Texas. shooo-weee!)

3. Nurse
(Some of my students have seizures and therefore we are trained to give them the appropriate medication, should the school nurse not be around. In addition to this, we're always feeling foreheads and giving little snacks for tummy aches.)

4. Hairdresser
(From time to time we have to fix the occasional droopy ponytail or barette that has fallen out. However, today, I can actually add cutting hair to my list. One of my students got gum stuck in her hair and I had to cut it out.)

5. Mother - again
(The number of times I've wiped snotty noses and caught puke in my hand cannot be counted...I'm certain this is getting me ready for motherhood one day)

6. Juggler
(With nine students and all of them at different levels, I've learned how to keep them all occupied in some way while working one-on-one with them. It's been quite the lesson in multi-tasking.)

7. Correctional Officer
(I spend a good portion of my day scheming ways to keep certain students on task. These students try our patience every hour of the day and enjoy doing it. These students make it really hard to love my job some days.)

8. Architect
(This is a new one that was just added to the list today) Do you know what I love? People that do THEIR jobs. Today, we were asked by a person in charge of the school buildings to "sketch some plans" for a handicapped bathroom that is needing to be built in our school. You know, just give him the dimensions that a handicap bathroom needs and they'll do the rest. Excuse me? I know nothing about this. Nevermind that it's not even in my job title. (I'm all about going above and beyond, but come on!) We were mildly amused and annoyed at this request.


I love teaching. Don't get me wrong. I just think I'm having a hard time getting adjusted to school again myself. I cannot wait for summer break!

I'm off to research the ADA guidelines for dimensions of a handicap bathroom.

Christmas at the Mansion

So my in-laws live in a mansion. Let me explain. They are working for CMML which is their mission organization that they have been affiliated with for years. They have lived in Manila, Philippines for 20 years as missionaries and just moved back to the states this past summer. They are now living in the “mansion” hosting missionary families that come through and taking care of the property. It’s the perfect place for family get-togethers!

Here is the backyard. The house was originally on over 200 acres of land. Now the mission organization only owns 17 acres.


As the story goes, the original owner of the home had it built in 1930 for his fiancé. (I know!) Apparently, he also owned a lot of horses and like to parade them in his backyard between these trees. Isn’t it cool? This was one of my favorite sides of the house. The sad part is, this guy had an inner ear problem and was told not to ride his horses. He did anyway and ended up having a riding accident and died before they got married. So, neither of them lived in the mansion. Sad, isn’t it?

Ok, back to Christmas. So we got to spend a full week with Dave’s parents and his older sister and brother-in-law. It was a great time! We ate lots of good food, played lots of games, spent a day in New York City and even snuck in a trip to IKEA. It was fantastic!

Christmas morning started with a phone call from Josh and Val. It was fun to get to talk to them. And it sounded like they had a fun and busy Christmas in Manila.



After we opened presents, we went on a hayride around the property. It was fun to get bundled up and spend some time outside. Lucy loved it at the mansion. Lots of spaces to roam free!

We had the most amazing Christmas dinner and we got to eat it in the formal dining room of the mansion. We transported all of the food and dishes down to this table to eat. It was so fun! We felt like royalty!


This is my sister-in-law, Heather and her husband, Bryan:




Here is a picture of Dave and his Grammy. Isn’t she cute?


I tried brussel sprouts for the first time. They were pretty good. I couldn’t eat a plate full, but this one made it down just fine.


We spent the day on Thursday in New York. We took a 2 hour train ride and landed ourselves in the middle of New York. It was my first time to visit. I loved it! It was a whirlwind day of trying to see as much as possible and as fast as our little legs would carry us. We started at Ground Zero (amazing, by the way, and very moving. I was surprised at how much it affected me being there), went through China Town, ate pizza at Cha Cha’s in Little Italy, took a subway to Central Park, visited the huge tree at Rockefeller Plaza, sauntered down the sidewalks of 5th Avenue (more like a mob scene – it was SO busy!) and finished the day in Times Square. We were beat at the end of the day, but we had a great time!

Central Park:


Rockefeller Plaza:


Times Square:



Lucy had her first swim in the ocean and loved every minute of it.


And I discovered my extreme love of jigsaw puzzles!


We completed a 1000 piece puzzle within a few days. (Actually it was 999 pieces - one was missing) Those few days of puzzle fun were full of good conversation, frustration and joy. I love puzzles! Can you find the missing piece?



All in all, it was a great trip. It was so nice to be away for so long and be completely separated from work and the day-to-day routines. To our New Jersey family – thank you so much for your hospitality! We can’t wait to come back to the mansion to visit!

Happy New Year!

After spending a week in New Jersey with Dave's family, we're back in Cincinnati. Our friends Ryan and Shannon came into town yesterday and helped us ring in the New Year last night with Jared and Rachel. Much fun was had and much food was eaten.

Many stories and pictures to share, but for now I'll just say Happy New Year! I hope you've all made your resolutions and are ready for '07. Mine include eating better and exercising more...along with the rest of America, I'm sure. Have a great day!

"The diet starts tomorrow" - Janice, Friends