Worker bee!

Well, two days down...a "few" more to go, but I am definitely enjoying my time at work! I've had great luck and I think that all of my kids are just darling, each and every one of them. Even after two days I can tell that my time at school going to be wonderful and continue on without any problems. It's nice to keep myself busy, and I think I will enjoy it as my due date gets closer. It's nice to be around all my teacher friends, and it's also kind of neat to have SO many new people in our department!

Here are a few photos showing one of my "tattoo and maternity friendly" work outfits of the week:





and the cute details of the top without the sweater!


So yes, overall today (and yesterday) was really fantastic. On the first day, I do an activity with all of my classes- one of those awkward, getting to know you games that students probably hate, but I really like! :) I have them turn to the person next to them and ask them 10 questions I've already chosen, write down each others' answers, then introduce each other to the class. It's always really interesting to see their answers to the questions I've picked out- especially their favorite band and their biggest wish for themselves. Today was down to business and I literally talked all hour, every hour. We went over the syllabus and all of my rules, upcoming projects, etc. I teach the same exact thing five times in a row so it can get a little monotonous but overall the kids make it fun. Tomorrow we actually start "learning" something and we begin our Native American Lit. unit.

Hank has been so incredibly sweet about me going back to work for a bit while pregnant. For the past two nights he's had dinner ready for me when I walked in the door. He basically told me to take a seat, put my feet up and then fed me such great food. What a man, huh? ;) Last night we had Thai and tonight I came home to a delicious, delicious home cooked spaghetti and "meat"ball/fresh veggie dinner. Yum. If you're curious, our favorite meatless meatballs are the Trader Joe's brand, and that's what he used here. They are incredibly good.





After dinner we headed downtown so Hank could play a show with one of his bands, Hot Skin. I really, really, really LOVE this band. Addison is the singer/guitarist, Pat plays drums, Jordan plays second guitar and Hank plays bass. It's really fun music and always a good time. Plus, I got to see a million people I haven't seen in awhile which is always fun.



If you're curious about what Hot Skin sounds like, here's a video I took awhile ago at one of their small shows here in town. The quality isn't anything special, but you can kind of get an idea of the type of music they play. It's a side project for these guys (all but one of them are also in Hour of the Wolf with Hank), but they're about to record an EP, so I'll post info when they release it.



So, this week is almost half over and I'm looking forward to a nice, relaxing weekend spent with Hank and my friends. On Saturday I'm going to see Eat, Pray, Love with my friends Adie and Becky, and then hooopefully getting root beer floats at the Raven again. So good. (Amber, wish you were here!)

That's it for now, bed is seriously calling my name! I hope you all are having a beautiful week!

xo

Back to work I go...

Oh, Monday. A Monday like today is especially rough when it's the start of not just a new week and the first day back from vacation, but the first day of a new quarter. Granted it's the last quarter of the year, but it's a bummer to have to snap out of vacation mode and get back into work mode so abruptly. I write all the time that I like my job, love it even, and I really do, but sometimes I wonder if I just enjoy it so much because I know there's a time stamp on it. I couldn't ever imagine doing this for the rest of my life. A few more years maybe, but I could never be one of those admirable people (like my inspiring Mama), who teach their whole lives. Knowing that I am going to be a stay-at-home mom when Hank and I eventually have kids kind of makes it much easier. Don't get me wrong, my job is incredibly rewarding and I smile every single day knowing I'm making a positive impact in my students' lives, but it's not quite a "career" for me. I hope that makes sense. :)

So, today was a good day at work. My sophomores and I started Fahrenheit 451 today (it's probably the 25th time I've read it!) and I'm excited. I love this book a lot and I hope they do too. This week should go by fairly quickly, and then next Friday we have off! So excited. Amber is coming home to Prescott for a visit and we will be heading down to Phoenix so she can get her very first tattoo. I can't wait.

Also, I've been reading tons of books lately, but one in particular I wanted to mention: "The Last Song," by Nicolas Sparks.



This book was recommended to me by one of my students, and I have had it for a couple of weeks, but didn't pick it up until recently. I won't give anything away, but I thought it was absolutely beautifully written, full of emotion and overall just a fabulous read. I spent the last 40 minutes of the book crying pretty hard, and it was amazing that it had affected me so deeply. I recommend that all of you read it, and please let me know what you think! The movie opens this weekend, and I am so looking forward to it. I researched the film a bit earlier today and found out that Nicolas Sparks actually wrote the screenplay before he wrote the novel, and Miley Cyrus actually named her own character Ronnie. I know a lot of people are skeptical of Miley- I personally am a huge fan- but after reading the book, I feel she was perfectly cast. In fact, I think the entire movie was. Miley and her love interest in the film are actually dating in real life too, and I find that really sweet and it will make for great on-screen chemistry I'm sure! Here's the trailer:



Have any of you read the book? Are you SO excited to see it? I am literally counting down. Fortunately my friend Robyn is going to see it with me, so I don't have to drag Hank to a movie he definitely doesn't want to watch. Yay for girlfriends!

I am heading to sleep, but I hope all of you have a wonderful night. I'll see you tomorrow night for Tattoo Tuesday!

xoxo

Good morning AIMS testing!

Here's a quick snapshot of my morning, which consists of reading my Kindle while the kids are working their way through three hours of standardized testing. It's days like this that make me so grateful to be the one administrating the tests and not taking them! Being an adult rules (most of the time).

Did you work today? What do you do for a living? Before I became a teacher I worked for Aveda for many years, both in a salon/spa and in a store, and then I also blissfully worked at a bookstore. In my next life, I'm going to be a librarian.

Whatever you're doing today, I hope you have a good one. See you later for Tattoo Tuesday! :)

2 quick, highly embarrassing things -

So, over the past two days I somehow have been in really embarrassing situations in the classroom and I thought I would share before the weekend gets here and all is lost.

Yesterday I was with my Seniors, talking about how much I love dictionaries and how neat they are! I went on and on about how you can just open it randomly, point to any word, and then own the word all day, use it a million times, and make it yours! So as a demonstration, I flip through the huge book, and as I am going to point at a random word I say, "This will be my word all day long, I will use it as much as possible until it is a part of my regular vocabulary!" and I point to... "shit-stirrer!!!" I said, "Hmm, let me pick another word, this one just won't do." And then I tried to be smooth and move my finger away but one of my little angels was right there and made sure to share my pick with my 39 other kiddies. They just about died laughing, and it was just funny to me because out of all the words I could have chose, I pointed to that one. Of course! Jeez.

So then today, in the same class, we all head over to the computer lab so my kids can research their Senor papers. I walk in, and get my computer ready to show the class more about a Works Cited program we have, kids are crowding around my computer, I turn it on...and someone had put the desktop background to a nude, pornographic photo of a man stretched out on the ground like a cat, with his butt stuck way up in the air. His mouth was even open like he was saying "MEOW!" and he was so hairy and SO gross and so horrible and then the stupid computer froze! I was in such shock I didn't even think to turn off the monitor, and instead trying to cover up the bad parts with my hands. The kids were absolutely dying with laughter again and I was laughing so hard, but it really was bad because this photo was the stuff of nightmares. The dude even had a mullet. *shudder* I had to report this of course, because of the nature of the incident, and writing it up was very awkward!

So yeah, embarrassing moments in the classroom for sure. Things like this happen a lot (well, not nude men on the computer, but funny strange incidences), so I will try to remember to share them when they happen, either to me or my teacher comrades! And on that note...here's to tomorrow being nice and normal! TGI(almost)F! :)

Goodnight friends!

Slowly but surely setting up our living room!

part of our living room- slowly but surely setting it up, originally uploaded by daniellehampton.

Today was so awesome! I am grinning ear to ear right now because I just got to video chat with Adie and I am so happy. She just got a Macbook and we did good ole IChat. It made me so, so happy to talk with her. Hopefully we will both be heading to Santa Barbara soon to spend a long weekend with Amber, and I can't wait.

Work today was really, really great for some reason. All of my kids seemed to really be interested in my lesson and my heart felt really full all day. I know that sounds silly but sometimes I have days like this where I just feel like I am doing exactly the right thing with my life and all is as it should be in my little world. It's a great emotion. So, yes school was satisfying and overall a wonderful day. After work I headed to a dinner party celebrating Brooke's birthday and ate way too much, hence me laying in bed now instead of working out at the gym. Yuck. I feel gross and I will hopefully find the motivation to get up and go running when I conclude this entry. We'll see though.

Tomorrow is a half day, I have lunch plans with Jennifer and then dinner over at Jean's house. Busy busy. Oh, this picture I included is a photo I took last night but couldn't upload on that crappy, stolen signal. Now we are officially hooked up here which is awesome. I took that photo as we were getting our living room put together. It shows about half of the room, to my left in the mirror is our couch and a big window. We still have a lot more to hang and organize, and I also need to get another couch for the other wall, but it's coming together slowly but surely, and I'm loving it.

So, now I guess I'll head to the gym...begrudgingly, but I know I'll feel great when I'm done. Another plus is that I almost said, Happy Monday, but then realized that it is in fact Tuesday. Awesome.

Weekend oh weekend...

It is almost here. This week has been an awesome, awesome week at work, in terms of teaching. I LOVE LOVE LOVE what I do! It's so fun. It can get tedious at times because I have to repeat the same thing four times in the day to my 10th graders, but it stays interesting because each class is pretty different. It helps that I like what I teach and I love the age I teach. Plus, my seniors this year are the best group and I know it's going to be a great year. Right now my sophomores are working on Native American literature- we're reading various myths and they'll be writing their own origin ("how something came to be") myth next week. My seniors are currently working on a propaganda in the media unit which is really interesting, especially in light of the past couple of years in politics. So, overall good times.

Outside of work life is just peachy. I've been a busy lady recently because I've been preparing for this year teaching and also working out a ton and spending time with Hank the past couple of days. I am ecstatic that he is home of course. I know Madeline is so glad her Dad is home because whenever he's gone for awhile she gets just a little depressed. Now she has someone to walk her during the day and play with her while I'm at work! Speaking of walking her, when I was at Em's in NY in July, Salsa had the best little harness, by a company called Puppia. Do any of you have any experience with their harnesses? I am thinking I am going to switch over and get her one of these, it looked very comfy for a pup and its cute too.

So tomorrow is Friday! I am so excited. Hank and I have a really fun weekend planned, a couple of movies to check off our "must watch" list, and I have couple of books I am intent on finishing.

Here are my work outfits from the last three days :).

Wednesday - this outfit was NOT a good choice. The AC at school went out, and my classroom was sweltering. I had on way too many layers and I wanted to die. Luckily both my tank and dress were sleeveless but it was still bad.


Thursday- I ended up wearing light colored tights under this, it was a tad too short. And if you're curious, I gauge my length based on the school dress code just to be safe!


Today- I just realized I never include my shoes in my outfit photos because I'm usually barefoot until the last second. I'll try to remember to include them. And I spy a little Madeline!

Happy Monday!

Well, my Monday wasn't so happy due to me staying up way, way too late watching True Blood and suddenly having the urge to read very old Myspace messages between Hank and me, from 2004. They always make me smile because after meeting for the first time we corresponded for a long time via the internet while he was on tour, and because we lived two hours away. So I have hundreds of amazing letters we have written to each other, from the very first "getting to know you" type of messages to right after we got engaged in 2007 and both kind of lost interest in that website. They are amazing to read and I am in the process of putting them all in order- sent and received- and printing them into a little book for us to keep. It's very neat to be able to see the entire timeline of our relationship, both in those messages and in my very detailed personal journal. I love it. I hope one day our children can enjoy reading them too!

So anyway, I stayed up waaay too late and woke up very late. My alarm went off at 6:30am and I proceeded to somehow turn both my blackberry alarm and regular alarm clock off and sleep until my body woke itself up at 7:15 which was not good at all, seeing as I should be at work no later than 7:45 in order to get everything set for the day, which begins at 8:09am. I feel lucky I naturally woke up too, that could have been a nightmare. It's a lot different being late to work when there are 35 teenagers waiting outside your door! I don't wear a lot of makeup (foundation and mascara only) but I still take a long time to get ready and having 20 minutes was not pleasant. I ended up getting to work at 8am, cutting it way too close and ended up feeling stressed and behind all morning. Robyn luckily had brought a Lunabar for me for breakfast, when I texted her in frenzy about how late I was. I am SUCH a breakfast person and I simply cannot function with having a nice, solid 1st meal early in the morning.

The day shaped up and the sweet Robyn also brought me lunch- an amazing couscous and zucchini dish (which I will be making for Hank this week- so good!) and because I had lunch duty outside today she sat with me. I always eat with Jenn but this year we don't have lunch together, which makes me sad and I hate not having "our" time to catch up and squeeze in a horribly wonderful reality program while we eat!

The rest of the day flew by, and I spent the evening straightening up the house for Hank's arrival tomorrow morning and then working out for awhile- cardio, shoulders and legs tonight. I am so, so excited for Hank to get here. I somehow missed him more than ever on this tour and I cannot wait until we can be back to our regular life for a month or two before he leaves again for a huge full-US tour out to Gainesville Fest and back, around, etc. Apparently on this tour they've been killing it, which is awesome. I really enjoy listening to HOTW and things are really coming together for them which they deserve. Tonight they're in San Diego, playing with Lewd Acts which means fun fun fun.

So tomorrow Hank will be home by the time I get home from work, and I expect that we will go on a quick little dinner date before I have to return to school for "Meet the Teacher Night" where all the parents come to the classrooms to do just that. It's just for an hour and a half, and then I will be heading over to Hank's show at the skate show. Stoked.

Here is a photo of my outfit today, I took it this afternoon because I was so crazy this morning! :) I don't know why it looks so short, I swear it's not like that in person! haha


and one of the many postcards Hank has sent my way, this one is part of a little series! ;) He is too funny. I love him.