And so it begins...

It's the holiday season.  We are ready.

Yesterday I spent the day running errands.  One thing I had to take care of was buying a one gallon jug of molasses.  We really do go through it pretty fast around here.

I subbed Monday and Wednesday this week.  Today I basically got paid to do my bookkeeping and other business on my computer.  Monday was more interesting.  I had three language arts classes full of kids from refugee camps from Africa and eastern Europe.  They can speak English, and read at about the 3rd grade level, but they need to be able to pass the state tests, so they have their own specialized class.  They were awesome kids.  They laughed at my stupid jokes, and loved every fable of Aesop's that I could pull out of my head.  Thank goodness my dad was such a good bedtime story teller!  Then I spent the afternoon teaching science to small classes of struggling students.  That was very fun, too.  It's always a good time when a high school kid first learns the word homogeneous.

Aubrey got the idea last Friday that we needed a new Christmas tree skirt this year.  We have been using the very amazing one that my mom made for us right after we were married.  I love it, but it is made for a normal-sized tree.  When you put up a tree that is 18-feet high, and the bucket on the stand is 12" in diameter, you just need a bigger skirt.  We bought some fabric, and Aubrey designed a very cute patchwork skirt.  She stitched all the pieces together, and then I assembled the skirt and added the amazing border.   Pictures coming soon.

Tonight I finished the shopping, altered a dress for someone to wear to a wedding on Friday, started the Frog Eye Salad, got breakfast ready to go for the morning, did a little laundry, and organized the cleaning and chores list for the kids tomorrow.  I've been staying up way too late this week, and tonight is no exception.  My goal is to lay down on my pillow before midnight.

It's been a busy week, and my feet are tired, but tomorrow will be worth it.  Lots of cousins are coming to have a big party and I can't wait.

Slowing down

I think my emotions are in check and I've come to grips with Abram being gone and Zacky in 1st grade now, and I am not trying to find a sub job every single day.  I can handle being home alone in my empty house all day.  I actually find it quite refreshing to have some quiet time to get things done.  And trust me, there is a lot to get done after spending so much time in the schools for the past few months.

Last week was pretty great.  I had 2 full days and 2 half days of subbing.  Government, physical science, spanish, American history.  The best day was when I got paid for a whole day of doing my bookkeeping.  The teacher I subbed for has a student teacher who is in charge of everything.  The deal is that there must be a licensed teacher in the room with the student teacher, though.  So I brought my laptop, bills, statements, etc. and spent the entire day catching up on some of the finer things in life that I have been neglecting.

Today I was in my kids' high school.  I love spying on them, and eating lunch with their teachers.  You can learn so much about your kids that way.

Tomorrow I am teaching a government class all day.  I'm crossing my fingers that I don't have to watch the same movie over and over and over again.  I hate sub days like that. 

Girls Weekend in St. George

This is the weekend I look forward to all year long.  Lots of laughing, lots of good food, and such fun girls to share it all with.

I flew to SLC a day early, and after a day full of visits (my parents, grandparents, Abram, brothers and sisters, nieces and nephew),  I headed down to St. George for the party.  We basically spent the whole time sewing.  Usually the ladies craft and I bake.  But this time they were sewing, which is totally my kind of a craft, so I joined in.  I only made one batch of cookies and one pie the whole time we were there!

The girls gang for 2012.

 This year's project was Christmas aprons.  Before I left town, I found the most amazing fabric at Joann's with little nativity matryoshka dolls on it, and so we took a trip to Joann's there to find the same fabric for everyone else.

 We found the same fabric....and lots of other very cute Christmas prints.  We all got busy sewing!

 You can see how excited I was to be turning and pressing the ties for another apron...  Not my best expression, but doesn't Betsy look so cute keeping me company?

I brought home this cute apron, and fabric to make a few more.

I didn't sleep much that weekend.  It is so hard to go to bed when  you are afraid you are going to miss something exciting.  It's even hard to go take a shower when there is so much fun going on.

I returned home to find a clean house, and lots of people who missed me.  It's nice to know they can survive without me for a while, but also nice to know that they miss me.

Can't wait for next year.

Halloween

Last Tuesday I got the kids all ready for Halloween, and then I took off before I could see them all in their full glory.  I just got back from an awesome girls weekend with Mark's aunts and cousins in St. George.  I got to spend Halloween visiting my grandparents, having lunch with Abram at BYU and then going to a family party that night.  I spent the entire evening snuggled up with my cute baby niece.  I didn't share her with anyone.

Back on the homefront, Joel was Fred.  All I had to make was his red cravat.  The rest of his costume we found at the Goodwill.

I made Jacob a green v-neck for Shaggy, and we found some brown pants at Goodwill.  I created this Scooby Doo costume out of another pattern I had .  It turned out pretty dang cute.

 
Savanna dressed up like ME again, and Zack was a baby penguin.

Halloween begins!

We had a party at the church tonight.

Noah was a Blue Man.  Aubrey got him painted all up, and she loaned him a blue swim cap.

Zack was a baby penguin.


And Savanna decided to be me.  She said all she needed was a ruffly skirt and a cardigan....I guess I should mix it up a little.

 We also got to babysit Riley tonight, which was awesome.  Everyone was fighting over who got to him him next.

Then she decided that I should dress up like her.  So we wore the same basic outfit, but just in the other's style.  She picked out my outfit...

Boring

Today I am at Boring Middle School.  Really.  Those of you locals know that it is a real school.  Those of you reading this from places far away might think I'm kidding.  It's real, and it's a great school.

Today is anything but boring.  It's The Declaration of Independence.  I think the kids think I am absolutely insane for being so enthusiastic about it...but I love it.  I have about 10 books about it...about the signers, the wives of the signers, the events leading up to the declaration, etc.

So of course I kicked of today as any true child of the 70s should--with Schoolhouse Rock.

But first period at school was actually the middle of my day.  I was at the dental office at 5AM this morning.  I saw on Facebook Friday that some other business owners on our street posted that their power had been off for about 6 hours.  I thought, "Wow!  It's lucky we aren't open on Fridays."  And I left it at that.

This morning a little voice in my head woke me up and said, "HELLO, JILL!  DON'T YOU KNOW THE SERVER'S UPS ONLY LASTS FOR 3 HOURS?" I realized that all of the office computers would be down.  I jumped out of bed and got in the car.  I just had to make sure that the server had shut itself down as it was supposed to when the power remaining was getting low.

Turns out the server had entered a self-destruct mode.  There was a BIOS screen up saying it could not boot, and the computer didn't even recognize that it had a hard drive to boot from.  The screen was saying it was August of 2004 and the server had no hard drives!  Heart attack!

I quickly kneeled down and prayed to know what to do.  This was way beyond me.  I instantly remembered a time a similar thing had happened a few years ago after replacing a battery on the motherboard.  I remembered how to enter setup and tell the computer it had a RAID 5 configuration.  When you do this, you see a warning and the words DATA LOSS WILL OCCUR and you have to say YES 5 times to verify that you want to do that.  So scary!

It reminded me of a hymn we sing that says, "Ere you left your room this morning, did you think to pray?"  Well, I had jumped out of bed and driven to the office, and I did not think to pray. I thought I was just going to turn things on, and I was in a hurry.  On my own I was in big trouble and didn't know what to do, but when I slowed down and asked for help, it was given.  Another line of the hymn says, "Prayer will change the night to day. So when life gets dark and dreary, don't forget to pray."

Night turned to day.  The server came up, no data was lost, and I got everyone else turned back on and running.  I had 10 minutes to drive home, put on clothes, brush my hair and get in the car for school.  I'm not as cute as I planned to be today, but the office is open for business, and that is all that matters.

more teacher stuff

When I sub in a middle school, usually the teachers have in the plans for me to have the kids work on something they were given yesterday (like an assignment or a worksheet packet).  It NEVER fails that when I try to get class started, I hear these three excuses from kids for why they do not have the assignment on their desks.
1). I left it at home.
2). It's in my locker.
3). I already turned it in.

The last one is my favorite, and I love to confront the liar.  I push back.  "Oh, yeah?  It just was assigned yesterday, and the teacher is absent today, but you already turned it in?  Do you want to change your story now, or after I give you a referral for lying to a teacher?"

When any of these three excuses comes up, I tell the kids that they can get the assignment out of their binders/backpacks, or I can get into their binders/backpacks and get it out for them.

The assignment magically appears.

This week I have been lucky to be in high schools.  It is my favorite.  I love teaching math, and I love teaching Spanish.  Every single Spanish class I have had makes the same joke about my name.  They look at it on the board, and the because they are in Spanish class they immediately jump to DORA.  They think it is funny to call me Mrs. Dora the Explorer.  It has never NOT happened in a Spanish class.  At least it's not a "Jack and Jill" joke.  Last week I did social studies, foods and and English language learners class in my favorite high school.  It is fun to be able to interact with the high-schoolers, and to not have to spend as much energy as middle school kids demand from me while trying to manage their behavior.

Yesterday was the most fun of all.  2 classes of AP Calculus and 4 classes of Algebra 1.  I was in nerd heaven.  The kids thought I was crazy, but they laughed at my stupid jokes.  It was a great day.

Today I had my own kid in my class!  He was proud to show off his nerdy mom, I'm sure.

This week I did 4 full days, which has been absolutely crazy as far as things that need to get done at home.  Tomorrow will be a busy, busy day.  Lots of yardwork and housework for everyone tomorrow.  I sure they will be delighted that they have the day off of school.

I have decided that the subbing thing has been my way of dealing with the emotions the changes in our family.  Abram is off to college, and Zack is in 1st grade and gone all day.  I don't have to face a big, empty house all day by myself if I am subbing.  And then when I am home on a day, there is so much to do to take care of the house, yard, laundry, shopping, that I don't have time to think about how much I miss Abram, or how grown up my baby Zack is.