I made it through the week!

I feel really positive about this year. This seems to be a good group of students for the most part. I teach 2 self-contained classes (Reading & Language Arts), 2 co-teaching LA, and 2 co-teaching Reading. For the first time, I'm only on one team and all of my students are on my team! (Usually they are spread across teams.) There are only 6 kids in my self-contained reading and 4 in my Language Arts. That makes for a very relaxing and fun environment. Over the summer I picked up a bunch of bean bag chairs and a small carpet. Because I have to teach a special reading program to several different groups (even within my small group of 6), the bean bag chairs should come in handy for independent reading. The big push lately has been to have most kids in coteaching. It was tough at first, but I'm starting to notice that the kids are fitting in so much better since they have been in that environment for several years now. There is so much less of the "learned helplessness". I have one really challenging kid, but thankfully he is in coteaching. That gives me the support of other teachers which makes all the difference! Despite having at least 4 kids on a behavior plan, only one is exhibiting extreme behaviors. I'm on a new team this year. We have one teacher on our team that seems to be somewhat naive. One of my students is in her homeroom. He had on a t-shirt that had a picture of a daschund and said, "Would you like to pet my weiner?" She went up to him and complemented him on his cute shirt. (She shows dogs as a hobby.) She just couldn't understand why he was sent to the office later in the day. And wouldn't you know it, he got past her today with a monkey shirt that said, "Spank my monkey." Needless to say, she really got picked on during team! This is probably the first year in my self-contained classes that all my students work without continual prompting. My first day having classwork, I was just waiting to see which students would refuse to work or employ every avoidance strategy possible. That moment never came! Sure, some work MUCH slower than other, but they all work! Hallelujah! :) Here's some other good news. Our principal claims that another batch of computers will come through by the end of the year for all the rest of the teachers. I guess I won't have to trash the websites just yet! :) They really shouldn't mess with "the webmaster".

I'm finally sorting clothes!

I love that Angie and Janine give me clothes when Craig and Weston (and Weslea) grow out of them. I'm just horrible at getting organized. Well, tonight I started with the boys clothes. I laid out signs by size and sorted, sorted, sorted! Now, I'm halfway done weeding through, choosing items to keep and items to give away. Mark was a little grumpy with me today, lecturing me on buying too many clothes. I kept telling him that this was 3 families worth of clothes. Plus, babies go through clothing every 3-6 months. Getting enough clothes for each stage = tons of clothes! I didn't buy most of them. I'm not thinking he's believing me, so Angie and Janine, you'll have to back me up on this one. It's going to feel good to finally have the clothes organized!

School is back!

I spent quite a while before school started revamping our middle school website (http://www.cls.k12.oh.us/cms) and creating the yellow team website (http://www.cls.k12.oh.us/cms/yellowteam). After all that work, I go to the meeting on Thursday to find out that 25 new computers were purchased for the teachers. Oh, but only for the important teachers. (Apparantly I'm not one of them.) I was very, very tempted to delete our school website from the computer and let them design their own. (Grrr!) But, I'm trying to be positive. It's just not fun being one of the teachers who uses technology the most, and being told that I'm stuck with my dinosaur computer. Especially when some of the teachers who got new computers only use theirs to check their e-mail. O.K...grin and bear it!

So what has been going on?

Can you believe I let 6 days pass by without blogging? To start off, I have a prayer request. A teacher at our school just lost his sister and brother-in-law along with the brother-in-law's parents in a car accident. They were on vacation in Mexico and an SUV crossed the median hitting their rental car head-on. http://www.nwaonline.net/articles/2007/08/16/news/081607fzhoovers.txt This is such a devastating time for him, so please pray for Neil. Well, let's see. What have we been up to? Thursday, I had Will, Kent and Wyatt over to spend the night. I discovered that it's a lot harder to get boys moving in the morning than girls. Wyatt actually woke everyone up by proclaiming rather loudly, "It's morning! It's morning!" Will and Kent dragged themselves out of bed after that, but moved in slo-mo the rest of the time. They just didn't have the same energy that Weslea and Caryn had when they were over. On Friday, we were quite adventuresome and went to a drive-in movie in Barberton with the kids. I took out one of the back seats and had bean bag chairs for the kids to sit on. Instead they crawled all over us the entire movie. Ben eventually fell asleep, but since he was crying up until he conked out, we had to close the windows and run the air. This then led to our battery dying. Despite this, we enjoyed two movies. O.K., that's a lie. Mark enjoyed one movie (Rush Hour 3) and endured the other (Hairspray). Poor guy! A nice family gave us a jump start at the end of the movie, and the van started up no problem. So, overall, we had a successful night, I'd say. On Saturday, we had a family get together at the nursing home with Grandma. Aunt Susan and Uncle Dick were out visiting, and we enjoyed good food and singing around the piano. That's about it. I go back to school on Thursday. :( Where did the summer go?

Challenging threes...

Yep, Nathan still thinks he's hilarious when he wears his underwear on his head.



Ben had his 15 months check-up today. He's in the 90-something percentile for height & 70-something for weight. According to the doctor he is "proportional" so that's good. Our boys have never had problems with growing. :) Dr. Reynold's asked me all the developmental questions. Is he talking? (Not so much.) Do you think he understands what you're saying? (Ya, some.) Well, as she was getting ready to go, Nathan pronounced his good news. ("I go pee-pee and poopy on the potty.") By this time, Ben is busy trying to climb a chair and doesn't seem to be paying any attention to the doctor any more. The doctor congratulates Nathan and says, "High-five!" Ben comes running across the room and gives her a high five. Well, my family will be relieved to know that Dr. Reynolds declared Ben a very smart boy. We're currently planning his entry into the Mensa Society. O.K., that might be a slight exaggeration.



Nathan is a barrel of attitude lately. Three's are definitely more challenging than two's. We went shopping at Buehler's today. Nathan and Ben were riding in the car. Almost immediately, Nathan and Ben started fighting. Not more than 5 minutes into the shopping trip, Ben screams at the top of his lungs. I run to check on him. Here, Nathan bit him! It took every ounce of self control for me to keep from spanking that boy in the middle of the store. I thought we were finally past this biting stuff, and Nathan DEFINITELY knows better by now. Worse of all, by all appearances, he doesn't seem to get that he did anything wrong. When Mark got home, I made Nathan go tell his daddy what he had done, and they had a serious talk. I have to admit, I kind of felt like I may have turned into my mom on that one. :) Before you know it, I'll be saying, "Just wait until your daddy gets home!"



Angie, Janine and I did our Applebee's/Walmart trip tonight. I didn't need a whole lot since I had already gone shopping today, but it was nice to get out and spend some time with my sisters. Danielle, you'll have to move out here someday. Then we'll definitely look like a duck line following each other around the store with our shopping carts.



Here's one last tidbit. I heard through Bret, that Shona and Scot climbed Mount Fuji! I visited her myspace and sure enough, there were pictures! I am impressed. Mount Fuji is 3,776 meters high. Shona is probably the fittest person I know, but that is no small feat! So, congratulations, Shona and Scot!

Wanna waste some time???

Beat my record, you chimps! (Mine's 4,662 -- right now) 8/14 - New score: 4734

Nathan's bunk bed is up!

Nathan is officially out of his toddler bed and has moved on to a bunk bed. I was getting sick of waiting until all the remodeling gets done on our house to make any changes, so I decided I'd deal with what I had and try to make a room for Nathan. For now, I'm going to hold off on painting, but if the electric in the room doesn't get done soon, I just may start painting despite it. I bought some navy blue curtains and hung them all by myself. (The rods had to totally be changed.)

It's crazy how expensive it is to do up a room. The bed was the best deal ($30). But then you have to get mattresses, comforters, curtain rods, pillows, curtains, etc. Before you know it...yikes!

I've decided to go with a vintage train theme. I've been looking for railroad signs on ebay. In the corner where the futon is, I'm thinking about trying to put up some floating shelves. I'm also planning on adding some touches to the curtains so they're not just solid blue. Maybe some striped ribbon on the bottom or something. And, of course, I'm keeping my eyes peeled at garage sales for a big rug for the room. If anyone has some inspiring decorating ideas, just send them my way. :)

I almost forgot...

Here's some more grainy pictures taken with my underwater camera. This is from our day out with the cousins on Saturday. We almost didn't have a day out. Saturday morning we checked Barberton Magic Waters website to confirm the time, and I felt quite lucky to find a Magic Waters coupon in my Entertainment book. On top of this, they had a large sign off the road to direct us to the place. We get there and find out that it is closed "permanently". No explanation. We have 2 vans...9 kids...3 adults. Not happy! Good thing we knew about the water park in Massillon, or we would have had some disappointed kids! I think it's about time they get rid of their website! Oh, and a big THANK YOU to Jon for coming with us. We wouldn't have been able to do it without him!

I have more pictures, but many turned out pretty bad.

Garage sales tomorrow!

I really, really need a full size mattress and don't want to spend big bucks. Pray I find a great deal tomorrow. We're working on setting up Nathan's bunk bed, and it's just not going to work without a mattress....go figure!

Right now I have 3 toddlers sleeping away on an air bed upstairs. Craig and Weston spent the day with Nathan today. None of them had naps, and they were starting to wear down. Everyone, that is, except Nathan. Weston was out in (almost) literally 2.5 seconds, Craig took about 2.5 minutes and Nathan went well over 25 minutes. (This was after 3 bathroom visits and a request for water.) Keeping track of 3 three-year olds and a baby is not as easy as it sounds :) so I didn't snap any pictures. I was so brave...I took them all to Walmart and Home Depot. After that, they swam, shot water guns, watched T.V., ate supper, went to the park, took baths and went to bed. The real fun starts tomorrow when I have to try to get them all dressed and in the van. I may be a little late, Janine!