One Whole Week Down

I guess it's okay to begin the countdown--174 days left. I'm just kidding, I'm not to that point at all. I am really loving my kiddos this year. Some of them are still in the "honeymoon" phase though. Others are beginning to show their true colors. I have some really sweet/polite kids, I have smart kids that love to ask questions or share information, and I have rascals but they keep me on my toes. One of my classes is a collaborative class, which means I have special education students in there and I have a special education teacher in there with me too. This is not a "new" concept to me though. My entire student-teaching experience was on a collaborative team. I even worked with a special education student from GCSU in the class so we did our own collaboration in a collab. class. We had 4 teachers in the class when I did my student teaching (2 "real" teachers and two student-teachers). That whole experience was incredible and it really prepared me for this year. My collab. teacher and I work well together. We have some really great things planned for this year and the students are enjoying math right now. That's just one my goals this year! So far it's been a good year. I've still been going CRAZY with a million things to do, but hopefully that's settling down. This week we had a million things to collect from the kids, remember to tell the kids a ton of information, read the entire agenda, attend a faculty meeting about one of our summer reading books, and had a 6th grade social. Even though we have had lots to do, I haven't been stressed out and our team is great. We miss Mrs. Guillebeau but their team is going well too. (I haven't been yelled at again though!)

Today I was taking my kids out to the buses and I saw one of my students from last year. I asked her how 7th grade was going. She said they've had lots of work, but that she has already had to use many of the things I taught her last year. I smiled and I said I'm so glad! Another teacher lets his kids write a letter to a past teacher and I had a few write to me. That just made my week because all I want to make a difference in at least one life. 

We celebrated my birthday with the family last Sunday for lunch. I picked to have country fried steak, homemade mashed potatoes, yummy gravy, biscuits, baked squash and zucchini, and a yummy cookie cake. It truly filled my belly and made me smile. Thanks Momma for the yummy food. Thanks Daphne for the cookie cake. The leftovers were just as good. If you know me I don't eat leftovers... but I ate the cookie leftover and it was delicious. Then I got to open some presents. I got some funny cards from Aiden and Ethan. They always make us laugh with their cards. The Robinson's got me a game and a nice shirt, the Rosbury's got me a label maker and some Reeses, and the 'rents got me a Kohl's giftcard. I also got some money from my aunts and some money and a giftcard to Old Navy from Jeremy's family. Jeremy of course took me and our mother's to eat the night of my birthday and then to get ice cream, but he also got me some teaching shoes. I have not received one of his presents because he is still working on it. (He is a practical gift giver). For our 1-year anniversary (paper anniversary) I wrote about our separate lives from birth until meeting then about our dating years and up through our first year of marriage. It was 15 typed pages and I asked him to add his view of things within it. He said he's been working on it and has added a few pages so far. That's a great gift. I thought he forgot about it, but he didn't! He said now I will have to add more about myself so it matches his length. Oh and I bought Aperture (a photo program) for the computer. It's GREAT! Daddy missed the celebration because Stone Mountain had rented one of Party Jumps' machines. Stacy had to work so he was unable to attend too. :(

Jeremy was really sad that my dad missed my birthday dinner on my birthday and on the day we celebrated. He still made sure I knew he missed being there. I told him we'd have to celebrate soon! We often go out to eat with him when Momma is in Banks County with my grandfather. We love company when we go eat and Daddy likes company too! I wonder when we will go out to eat though. If you know us, we pretty much eat out all the time because it's much easier, however, we just went to the grocery store last weekend and have lots of food to eat. We cleaned out all of our cabinets and fridge and filled up two huge black trash bags. Some of the food was stuff I brought from my apartment from college. There were expiration dates that were in 2006. WOOPS! Now everything edible is really edible. You don't have to be afraid we will ever cook you anything old, but it was pretty sad to find boxed stuff that wasn't any good. Why didn't we eat it when it was good? Like I said earlier, it's easy to go to eat and not have to clean up. When I am exhausted from work I don't feel like cooking and although Jeremy LOVES to cook (and is our most frequent cook) we often just go out to eat. Maybe eating at home will be better for us though (health-wise and $ wise though). We'll think positively. We only ate out one night this week and that was to meet Emily (roomie from college) and her boyfriend because we hadn't ever met him. 

Now it's off to grading pretests and resting this weekend. Oh yeah I finished reading Breaking Dawn. Man, Stephanie Meyer is such a good author and I am ready for the movie to come out in December.