Time for our bi-annual post!

Well, it is no longer snowing! :) Really, I only do one post per season except for summer. I am only posting now because I should be grading my end-of-the year math tests.

We had a super Memorial Day weekend, with time to see both of our families for BBQs and to plant flowers and our vegetable garden. I insisted on yellow tomatoes, even if I couldn't rationalize my reasons to Gary.

This year, I even did an herb garden that will hopefully last past the summer--I used small pots thinking they could line the windowsills in the kitchen.

I tried full-sun flowers this year for the front row since I keep killing the others. These are pansies and marigolds, but some sort of variation on both. Cross your fingers!

I have 4.75 more days of school (I didn't count the two I took off this week) and then summer vacation officially begins!

Tomorrow is our 2nd anniversary. We are celebrating two years of wedded bliss with a shared day off!! We are taking the dogs to the park and then going out to dinner at a fancy restaurant.

Snow Day!

What a perfect day for a snow day! A three day weekend just before Christmas is exactly what I need. I am ridiculously proud of us this year, though, because we are virtually done with our Christmas shopping, and all of the presents are wrapped already! Gary wrapped 100% of our gifts. He also shoveled for at least 2 1/2 hours yesterday while I made soup. He is a dream husband!

Yesterday, we spent our snowy day inside, wrapping presents, baking cookies, and watching Christmas movies on the laptop while we worked. Gary's favorite is:I finally tried out my cookie press, which I got at our bridal shower! I made snowflake cookies to give to my students, and then three-fourths of a sheet of trees for us. Today I am baking Snickerdoodles for my students and cleaning the house. What a great weekend! Four more days of school, and really only three days of teaching since Friday is snowflake-making (buy paper coffee filters and then get patterns and instructions from http://www.papersnowflakes.com/ for hours of fun) and a party.

The dogs are thrilled about the snow!!

Happy Halloween!

Okay, even though I HATE Halloween because it has become WAY too much of a big deal, I have no choice but to dress up since I work with 8-10 year olds. The eight teachers on our team go all out. Every other year, we are substitute teachers. We tell the kids the night before that we are all going to a professional developement meeting and that they will have subs on Halloween. They are all disappointed and wonder HOW we could miss Halloween. When they come in on Halloween morning, here's who they see. (We are normally pretty trendy dressers, for elementary schoolteachers, that is.)

I was somewhat dorky and was Professor Mcgonagall from the Harry Potter series. This is me and my teaching partner, Tom. He went by the name of "Mr. Disco" and taught the kids the word groovy.
We taught until 1:00, the kids changed, and then we had a whole-school parade. About half of the parents come in. It's chaos.
At the very end of the day, my room parents threw the biggest, most extensive party I've yet seen in a classroom, with six stations worth of activities, including three food stations, two craft stations, and a game station. This is our engineering technology teacher, who was my next-door neighbor and teammate when I taught Spanish.

Gary's wore an orange polo shirt and black pants to work today. He said that he was in the minority today and got a lot of comments on his festive attire. I told him that his work makes me sad.

Gary and I are staying home tonight and passing out candy to the trick-or-treaters. It's the first time that we have ever done this together, since last year we went trick-or-treating with Emily, Pippin, and Frodo. Our cognitively impaired neighbor (he really is) just told Gary that we all have to pass out candy to kids "to keep them in line" so they don't "throw sh-- bombs at our house." We have never heard him swear before. He then suggested that we take our DOGS trick-or-treating. Ay.

I will be asleep by 9:30!

Somewhere to Dine!

Our kitchen and dining room are gorgeous! We finished painting this weekend and I tackled the curtains alone (without my mom). The sewing machine cooperated, once I figured out the "how to load the bobbin" diagram to figure out what was wrong! (Don't worry Mom, it's not broken--thanks again for your ungrounded faith in loaning me your sewing machine!) The rods are on order and should arrive before next weekend. Since we had done two coats in both the dining room and kitchen, including the ceilings, we hung the chandelier in the dining room (it was simply too dark without it). As nice as this room now looks, we still ate our frozen-pizza-dinner on the couch tonight. Next comes the floor--which we can't even describe how excited we are about that. Once we get the floor, it will be time for a dinner party.

My curtains are at least straight! These colors photographed terrible in the dark. We hardly ever take photos during daylight hours.

We even took some time to enjoy the gorgeous weather. We took the dogs on a really good walk on Saturday night after dark; our new favorite time for walks.

MEAP Scandal

Okay, every licensed educator in every district in the state reads hundreds of pages full of ethics rules every year for the MEAP.

This week, Jackson Public Schools allowed their students to be interviewed by the newspaper, and the reporter's story told what the kids wrote about on this year's MEAP. The prompts are TOP SECRET. Teachers aren't supposed to read them, and we are prohibited from talking about them. Our licenses are at stake.

Here's the "Media Breech" from the Jackson paper. (Yes, that's the MI Dept of Ed's term for what happened.)

Here's the Free Press story about the ramifications.

Here's the reporter's response to the scandal.

Wow--if the reporter is telling the truth and not just covering himself, that school screwed up. Big-time. I stopped counting how many details of that story were "against the MEAP law" as I say to my eight and nine year olds. That is NOT the tone in any building I have ever been in for testing. Now the "teachers don't take this test seriously" fire has been fanned.

If you're bored by this post or think "What a huge amount of bureaucracy" or "What a waste of money," welcome to the world of single-measures of accountability for schools. And these tests don't even represent what professional educators want for kids.

My opinion is that this district should face paying the cost for reprints, mailings, etc. (Not that any MI district has that kind of extra money.) This scandal will only hurt the kids. Thousands of children will be re-doing the Writing from Knowledge and Experience prompt, and I hope you all realize that a large number of children CRY while writing for MEAP. Now they will twice. High stakes testing--what a great idea.

(I think this is one of the first times in my life that I actually sound like a disgruntaled NEA member!)

A REAL Kitchen

We have been so busy with the kitchen, I haven't had much time to post the progress. It's nearly done. All that is left is: a second coat of paint on the walls, curtains, cabinet enhancements, moulding, floors. Gary will post if I forgot anything from the list. My mom came over last Sunday to help me sew the curtains. It was a lot more difficult than I anticipated. I have more hems to sew, and I am trying to be brave enough to do it on my own. I keep reminding myself that the worst that will happen is that I will have to remove a seam and start over. We LOVE having a usable, mostly-clean kitchen!!! The countertops are such a luxury--and I am not talking about the granite--I just mean a place where you can set stuff! We haven't had them in forever. Moving our stuff into the cabinets was pretty nice, too.

Some of the cabinet work includes building a pantry to the left of the fridge and building a small cabinet above the microwave.
Do you think we have enough bowls? Gary thought this cabinet was hilarious when he saw it filled!
I love the faucet, the extra big sink, and these cool organizers that Gary found at Lowe's. (Only $15 in case you want your own--the bins and the hinges come in a set.)On the 22nd we went to Canada for Gary's cousin Megan's wedding. It was a beautiful drive thanks to their fall colors--way ahead of us, not so much in this photo, though. We got to stop by and see his cousin Jordan's house that he and his wife are building--as someone who only remodeled a kitchen, the scale of their project awed me. All they had was a shell of a house. It will be gorgeous! Yes, they are drinking beer in the church parking lot (after the ceremony).

With all of our house work, we gave the dogs bones (an extra-special treat) one day while we were busy. Frodo finally figured out how to destroy a bone. This is one of my favorite photos of Pippin, ever.

School is going great--you would not believe the class I have this year. These kids are amazingly sweet and mellow. Math work time was so tranquil today that I almost fell asleep! I am not used to a group this calm.

Countertops!

Saturday morning we went to the dentist. I have had a tooth that the dentist has been watching for almost two years. Today, I got my very first filling EVER. I was quite proud of my perfect dental record, and now it's spoiled. She didn't think it was deep, so she tried to drill it without a shot. I was feeling all tough, and was down-playing my minute little cavity to one that was so small it didn't even hurt. Big mistake. I had to get a shot. Gary had to extend his visit, too, and now he feels better that he's not the only one with cavities.


I am a patient lady. We started this kitchen project in DECEMBER. Here are some snapshots from our weekend of work:








Cutting the backsplash tiles was a Monday night project for Gary (after working 9 hours). I was too tired after school (9 hours). Those numbers don't add up.

The front tiles aren't glued, just layed out.

In addition to being Gary's assistant over the weekend, I also finished writing a 50 page science unit's student packet. I have moved up as his apprentice, because this weekend, I was allowed to: draw the cut-lines on the boards, use the trowel, AND I followed along in the 123 Tile book. He WAS very meticulous with the level!

Big Girl!

Abigail is now one year old! It is amazing how quickly she has grown up. Brian and Sarah hosted a great first birthday party at the city park where Sarah, Jeff, Raquel, and I all used to be parks and rec day camp counselors. The city has really made a lot of improvements to the park in the past few years. The weather was just gorgeous on Saturday, so it was a fantastic day for a 1st birthay picnic.

Gary and I got her the Little People's Noah's Ark. My dad seems to like it , too.

She was having a blast playing with the paper and bows, until she got a new doll!

Michelle and James came with Andrew, and we all had such a good time with him. He's six months old already. Michelle and James just celebrated their FIFTH wedding anniversary!Andrew really likes Gary (like all babies).


Jeff and Raquel drove in for the party and then drove home. This month they celebrated their first anniversary. He starts his very first year teaching on Tuesday!!!!! He says he isn't nervous or anxious at all, but me and my teammates are every year and we have been teaching for years!

Here's my Aunt Cindy with her grandson, Andrew and my mom with her granddaughter, Abby.

I even got my grandma Doris to be in a photograph.

The food was delicious! Here's my grandpa George and me.