Thursday

I have been home for almost a week now and it has been a whirlwind. I would expect nothing less but it is exhausting. We had 56 people over from all over the state to say hello to me and goodbye to Sarah on Sunday after getting ready for all of them on Saturday. Monday was catch up day, just hanging around and Sarah and I saw Nacho Libre. Not all that funny, I would say it is a renter if nothing else.
Tuesday was the cat crisis feel free to check Sarah's blog about that and yesterday was continued caring for the cat who has now pooed thank goodness! Today we are venturing out for one of our total family shopping trips where inevitable someone will end up whining, someone will end up cranky and everyone will be glad when it is over. We are going out for glasses, bras, kitty wipes (to avoid giving her a bath), books, and new cell-phones. It will be an interesting day. My grandmother has already called - angry about something that happened three years ago...again.... Tomorrow we are playing golf - all four of us! This only happens once in a very great while so should be fun.
This weekend is the balloon festival which is great fun if the weather is right. The last two days have been very storm and unpredictable. Enough rambling for now, it is time to get in the car. Hope all is well with everyone.

Hugs and Hormones

Well, it's over. My first official year as a teacher, my first officially earned summer off and my first year in Yuma, AZ. I guess I will have to change the thing on the blog that says I am a first year teacher. In some ways it has gone fast and in some ways it couldn't have gone slower. I a, usually the one crying at goodbyes but not today. Middle school kids are at a weird age, their hormones have taken control of thier bodies and they are just along for the ride. All the girls were crying today and some of the boys too. It was as if they would never see each other again. I kept telling them they would be back in six weeks but they just cried harder and begged me to go to eighth grade with them. I tried to explain that I would not be following them around for the rest of their lives and that there were very nice people waiting for them in their future.

At this point I also felt like a celebrity signing all the shirts and yearbooks and posing for all the pictures. It is very good for the ego.

It was nice to have all the hugs and thank yous and promises to coem visit. It did make me a little sad, I feel like they are my babies leaving the nest but I am also ready to get new students and not make all the mistakes I made this year. A fresh start.

I am all packed and ready to fly home tomorrow. I am very excited to get away from work and hang out with friends and family for a while. I also have to add that I am very, very sore from the dunk tank so the plane ride should be fantastic!

Wet and Wild!

Today was our end of the year extravaganza and let me tell you this was something! There were all these inflatable huge things like jousting and an obstacle course and a two person water slide and basketball and watergun tag and much more. There was cotton candy, popcorn, snocones, coke trucks handing out pop and water and cotton candy. I was amazed! I got to man the hose which was good fun but also meant I was wetter than anyone and then I took a turn in the dunk tank and that was an experience let me tell you. I got "dunked" 10 or 11 times and then I was done. It was really fun and the kids all had a blast. I showed Chicken Little this afternoon and I think most of the kids fell asleep:-) One more day and then I am coming home, get ready Michigan! I guess I better go pack!

Intelligent???????

I have been so excited this weekend, our AIMS scores (Arizona Instrument to Measure Standards) cam in on Friday and my kids scored well above my expectations. I am so proud of them and the work they have done this year. Today I took icecream and donuts and we celebrated. Then, since we are still in school, I had them write autobiography alphabets. Basically you write a word or phrase for every letter of the alphabet that has something to do with you. We all had great fun doing this and coming up with words for the harder letters - X, Y, and Z. Many of my students wrote intelligent for I. Now, this is great because they are intelligent and I want them to have high self esteem but we had to make a rule that you could only write it if you could spell it correctly. This rule cut out many students I am afraid. It seemed as if no one could spell it. I found this highly amusing or maybe it was just the abnormal intake of sugar. Who knows but three more days and counting...

I spent last weekend in San Diego and I have decided that when I save up some money I would like to live there for a while. It is the most beautiful place I have seen yet. There are mountains and the ocean and spectacular architecture. On Saturday when we got there we went to the runners expo where all these companies try andd get you to buy stuff that supposedly make you run faster and better.

Then we went to lunch and walked all around San Diego. It was so much fun and the ocean was beautiful. Then we met up with some other people, had dinner and went to bed early to be up at 5:30 for the race. I found a post office and got my stamps thank goodness, they have a really postal system in California.

Sunday we dropped Kim off for the race and then her boyfriend Gary and I chased her around all day and tried to find parking. They shut down all the major roads for the race so getting around is tricky. Gary and I had a good time watching all the runners and then we went to meet Kim at the finish line and he told the Marine checking my purse I had a bomb. Now, Gary is a plot in the Marine Corps and he is an officer so he thought he was being hilarious. I did not find it at all amusing especially when they said they were going to search me. He finally told them I was with him and we got through security.

Kim ran the race in 4 hours and 13 minutes which was a personal record for her and a fantastic time overall! There were 20,000 people in the race and she was 3083. After the race we went to submarine station where Gary had rented a room and Kim showered and we napped then we went to lunch and came home.

Now it is Thursday and the days are going sl....ow....ly I can't wait until next Thursday. The kids are crazy and it is hard to keep them busy especially when I don't want to teach them anything :-) Today we are writing letters to all the teachers about how good the year has been. I should get back the troops are getting restless.

Fun in the Sun!

I spent last weekend in San Diego and I have decided that when I save up some money I would like to live there for a while. It is the most beautiful place I have seen yet. There are mountains and the ocean and spectacular architecture. On Saturday when we got there we went to the runners expo where all these companies try andd get you to buy stuff that supposedly make you run faster and better.

Then we went to lunch and walked all around San Diego. It was so much fun and the ocean was beautiful. Then we met up with some other people, had dinner and went to bed early to be up at 5:30 for the race. I found a post office and got my stamps thank goodness, they have a really postal system in California.

Sunday we dropped Kim off for the race and then her boyfriend Gary and I chased her around all day and tried to find parking. They shut down all the major roads for the race so getting around is tricky. Gary and I had a good time watching all the runners and then we went to meet Kim at the finish line and he told the Marine checking my purse I had a bomb. Now, Gary is a plot in the Marine Corps and he is an officer so he thought he was being hilarious. I did not find it at all amusing especially when they said they were going to search me. He finally told them I was with him and we got through security.

Kim ran the race in 4 hours and 13 minutes which was a personal record for her and a fantastic time overall! There were 20,000 people in the race and she was 3083. After the race we went to submarine station where Gary had rented a room and Kim showered and we napped then we went to lunch and came home.

Now it is Thursday and the days are going sl....ow....ly I can't wait until next Thursday. The kids are crazy and it is hard to keep them busy especially when I don't want to teach them anything :-) Today we are writing letters to all the teachers about how good the year has been. I should get back the troops are getting restless.

USPS (Useless, sucky postal service)

I have had yet another run in with the postal service. It seems like this particular government aganecy has been out to get me since the day I started writing letters. Now, as I live in Yuma, where donkey's carry the mail I find out they don't have postcard stamps. I made these great postcards on my computer for my Mary Kay sale and I needed stamps because I only have 23 cent ones and now it costs 24 cents (another dig!). So I went to the grocery store by my house, they only had regular stamps. Back in the car to another grocery store. This guys doen't even believe me that there are such things as postcard stamps! SoI came home and will attempt to find some in San Diego tommorrow - granting they have heard of postcards there! I am starting to understand why the post office workers have gone crazy in the past. And at this point, if you are still reading, you will say - why not jsut go tot he post office. Well I would except the Yuma post office closes at 4:00 which is the same time school gets out, making it impossible to go during the day. I am going to go midlessly watch television and think up terrible things I can do to thwart the post offices' obvious plan to drive us all POSTAL.

The boxes are coming, the boxes are coming!

Sarah's boxes have started arriving, I have six with promises of more on the way. I have started to clean out her room, it is amazing how stuff piles up so quickly. Tonight I went to the Yuma Scorpions opening night (this is equivelant to the Lansing Lugnuts). Minor league baseball is great and cheap. Although I learned life lesson number 2048: Never eat an entire bag of cotton candy after 7 p.m. because you too will be up doing laundry when you should be sleeping on a school night. And I don't even like cotton candy that much!

Tommorrow I am going to Sandiego for the weekend. This is the weekend of the marathon that I was training for. I was riding the bike and hurt my wrist, while riding 20 miles. I see it all coming back to you know. The race is Sunday morning so we will be going up and having fun Friday night and Saturday. I can't wait to get to some cooler weather for a couple of days. I got to the ballpark tonight and it was 107 degrees at 6:30 in the evening.

It is pretty much all down hill from here. We have 10 days of school left with lots of assemblies and B.S. stuff to break up the days. The kids are pretty much done working as am I so it is like a little game of how much can we pretend to be working and how long can do it for. Time to change the laundry, then maybe I can sleep. I will write more when I return from San Diego.