Snow Day AND Jocelyn’s birthday

Last night a brutal cold front came through. Our trusty meteorologist told us that we would have 3-5″ of snow overnight, but after waking up to nothing on the streets this morning, I was shocked to learn that school had been cancelled. What?! No school! If only I had heard that before I was up and ready for the day, then I would have stayed in my cozy bed a lot longer.

Jocelyn was disappointed too. I slaved over the oven last night making batch after batch of chocolate chip muffins that she wanted to take to school in honor of her 7th birthday. Now they’re in the freezer, for whenever they go back to school. Reason being, later this morning the blizzard conditions started. Visibility is down to nearly nil and the wind is blowing horizontally at about 30mph. Although that didn’t stop the kids from going out to play in it!

It does, however, definitely put me in the mood to get ready for Christmas! I’m pulling out my Christmas storage boxes as soon as I’m done posting this. I’m ready to see my stockings on the mantle and my snowmen decorating the house. Yikes, I may even dust before putting them out . . .

Taylor – blond?

Taylor has been bugging us for quite some time to dye his hair. Sometimes he says he wants it black, like Billie Joe from Green Day, sometimes other colors. In fact, last week he went so far as to buy green hairspray and colored his own, Wesley’s, AND Jocelyn’s hair green.

Yesterday Ken took him to Wal*Mart where he purchased Color Silk Ultra Blonde for $2.97. Today I applied this color to his head. Okay, he’s only 9 — what the heck is he going to be doing when he’s a teenager!!!!! Ken took before and after pictures. I’m glad to say that the color is rather subtle and Taylor claims he can’t see any difference. When he stands next to Wesley though, who has the same hair color (or had!), you CAN see a difference. It’s not the white blond that he originally thought he was going to get though. My guess is he’ll be trying this again. . .

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope all of you were able to relax and enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday this weekend! We went to Oklahoma City to visit my in-laws, Jerry and Shirley. It’s a tradition that the children really look forward to. My oldest, Taylor, commented that “it’s not Thanksgiving if we don’t go to Nanny and Gramps’!” We went to Incredible Pizza Thanksgiving Eve along with Keith, Amy and their children. Thanksgiving Day we watched the parade, the guys watched the football games while Shirley, Amy and I went to work in the kitchen. After a yummy turkey lunch, we went to Denniston Park, a park we’ve been frequenting every Thanksgiving for several years now. The weather was fabulous – mid 70’s – and the children loved playing outside.

Friday, the major shopping day of the year for some, consisted of a visit with the Lott’s, Little Caesar’s pizza for lunch, then on home. After all, I have two huge projects due for school that are not yet completed. One is due Monday, the other a week from Monday. Yikes!

 

Teacher of Promise

After an inspiring workshop in the morning, a free lunch, and then dinner and awards banquet at the Marriott last night, I’m officially on my way to being a Teacher of Promise. Here’s a picture of Patrick and I, the two representing Southwestern College. It’s a bad picture, taken on my hubby’s cell phone camera but hey, at least it documents the moment!!

Teaching with your Strengths

Close to the beginning of the school year I had an interview with my school principal on interviews. One of the questions pertained to an online test that our district does about our personality traits and what would be make a successful teacher or not. He gave me the book Teaching With Your Strengths by Rosanne Liesveld and Jo Ann Miller with Jennifer Robison. Last week I met with my principal again after having completed reading the book and doing the online quiz at Strengthsfinder that goes along with it. My top five are great strengths to have as a teacher: Learner, Includer, Input, Achiever, and Responsibility. It was so exciting listening to the principal going through my traits and basically describing my personality traits!! To find out my other 29 strengths I can spend $550 or $1,750 for a more personal partnership with a strengths coach. I think knowing my top 5 is fine with me. If you get a chance, check it out!

Happy Election Day!

I did my duty today and hit the polls along with just about everyone else in Wichita today (or so it seemed based on the long, long lines! .  I decided to cast a paper ballot so as not to have to wait so long.  Reason being, I went this morning with all three kids in tow!  They like going to the polls, primarily because the church we vote at gives away cookies and candy and the old lady at the door gives them all an “I Voted” sticker too.  I ran into my sophomore English teacher from Rose Hill working the polls!  Small world.  She retired after teaching there for 24 years!  Wesley made everyone laugh when we were leaving because he wanted to know why he couldn’t have any coffee.  Note, he was already high on the sugary cookie.  Then I dropped off all 3 of them at my mom’s house — about 7:30am!!

Block begins . . .

It’s here!  My block officially starts on Monday.  What is a block, you might ask?  Well, it’s when I officially take over the classroom, without my cooperating teacher present, for a period of time, usually about two weeks.  I have already been teaching just about everything anyway, so this is just a formality, with my teacher popping in and out for things that she’s working on.  My block will run through November 21st, the last teaching day before the Thanksgiving holiday.  Usually there’s a phase-out time, but since I’m taking over a long-term sub position in December, I’ll be spending time observing and teaching a bit in that classroom with the other teacher present.

Countdown . . . my last day of student teaching is officially December 8th!  Soon I can get paid again!!

Halloween

Wow, were the kids wild today. Even at school you could sense the excitement of the pending celebrations. At school we didn’t have any type of party, as we have Jehovah Witness students that don’t celebrate much of anything. We’ll do a fall thing later instead

Both Ken and I decided to go with the kids this year. We were brave, and left our candy in a basket on the front porch. (Actually, quite a few of the houses do that so they’re not bothered by the constant ringing of the doorbell, or if they have other things to do but want to participate.) Taylor dressed up as a skeleton this year. Jocelyn was a witch and Wesley was Batman. We traipsed around the neighborhood, ringing doorbells and collecting lots and lots of candy. We were wiser than last year and brought the wagon, not only to empty the kids’ buckets into, but to put Wesley in it when he was too tired to walk anymore. After about 1 1/2 hours we went back to the house. I stayed with Wesley and Ken took Jocelyn and Taylor out for another round of the other side of the neighborhood.