This last week was crazy busy. Work, school, a random day off for the kids (election day: our district decided that it was a safety issue having school when a lot of schools in the district are polling places…it was a teacher work day for me, but luckily Paul knew far enough in advance and was able to get the day off), a quick there-and-back trip to Dallas for Paul, and a birthday party for Abigail to attend (at Peter Piper Pizza…Joseph tagged along since Paul was out of town). Joseph kept an eye on Abigail at the party so I could enjoy some adult interaction and even got Abigail a ton of tickets so that she could get a prize. I’m so grateful for his sweet spirit! I just finished lesson planning and grading a slew of papers and have progress reports practically done (the only thing that will need to change is if anything needs grading between now and when progress reports are due…on Wednesday, I think). Add all this on top of regular around-the-house stuff and, yeah. Let’s just say that I’m looking forward to plowing through this week so that the kids and I can have the entire next week off for Thanksgiving!
This is the only picture I took this week. It was Saturday night, I was exhausted, and I looked over at this sweet boy who had done so much to help me in the last few days (and all the time, really…he is such a great helper) and felt a wave of gratitude wash over me. I’m grateful for Paul, Joseph, and Abigail. I’m grateful for our home. For my job and Paul’s. For my family everywhere. For my friends here and everywhere. Life is blessing, y’all.
This past week was a pretty great week. A cold front moved in just in time for Halloween. My students were a little squirrely on Monday, but then we had a lot of fun things planned on Tuesday. Wednesday-Friday, I feel like they were worn out from Halloween (plus we had our annual fun-run fundraiser AND a glow party for perfect attendance on Thursday and Friday, so there was a lot to wear them out) and they were a lot easier to teach. Paul helped me take down the Halloween decorations (actually, he took them all down while I was at a training yesterday and I simply boxed them up), we left out the fall stuff, and now we’re in Thanksgiving-mode! It’s hard to believe that we’re less than two months out from Christmas! This year has just flown.
The trick-or-treating crew. Paul took them out while I stayed back to hand out candy. You can see my set-up in the corner with a table and a chair. Kids out here won’t come to the door at all. They only go to houses where someone is sitting outside. I guess that’s one way of not accidentally trick-or-treating to houses that are either not home or don’t celebrate.I’m glad they found “the house”. Every year, the owners of this house put out these Peanuts cut-outs and the kids both love it. I think I have a picture from almost every year that we’ve been in Texas.Check out my cute shirt for the fun run (it was Dia de Los Muertos-themed) that’s got a SPELLING ERROR. I still can’t believe I didn’t catch it until today when I was looking through pictures that I was going to upload to my blog. Do you see the mistake? Since I bought it on Amazon, I was able to do a returnless refund where they just give me a gift card towards my next purchase. I guess they don’t want the shirt back either, haha.I forgot to switch from AC back to heat the day before the fun-run and came into a classroom that was 54 degrees. Good thing I had my warm coat and a good heater that heated things up before the kiddos got into our room!This is my awesome coworker that showed me the cute shirt. Neither of us caught the mistake and nobody who saw us said anything, either. I wonder, since we’re all teachers, if we all read it and just mentally corrected the word (it says fellin’ instead of feelin’). I told her about it and she was able to get a refund, too. I bought a different one for next year that doesn’t have any spelling mistakes (I triple-checked, haha).This is George. He started out as a Halloween decoration, but my students love him, so now he’s our mascot. Having said that, George needs to keep with the times. I decided the best way to do that is to decorate him for all of the major holidays. This begins with a cheap foam hat I found at Hobby Lobby (I think it’s supposed to be a snowman hat, since they already had all their Christmas stuff out) for like, $2 and then I added a band and buckle that I made out of construction paper. Voila! Now he’s a pilgrim!
Abigail and her Gruffalo. She had to disguise a turkey so that it wouldn’t become Thanksgiving dinner and she came up with the idea of making it the Gruffalo.
This past week was a bit of a whirl-wind. It passed so quickly that I didn’t really take any pictures until the weekend. In his spare time, Paul has been catching rats and field mice in a live trap (our neighbor doesn’t really take care of his backyard, so it’s literally a breeding ground for them…insert rolling eyes face here). I think he’s up to 6-7 now. He’s started releasing them farther from the house in the hopes they won’t make their way back. Joseph said we need to start painting dots on them so that we can see if the same ones are coming back and getting caught again. This weekend was all about Halloween prep. The kids and I went to Buc-ee’s to get new Halloween shirts on Saturday. Today, we painted pumpkins. I think the thing I’m most excited about for Halloween (other than it being my absolute favorite holiday) is that it’s supposed to actually be decently cold. Like, in the 50s. This dashed Abigail’s hopes of wearing her new pirate costume (it is NOT a cold-weather costume), but she said she be just as happy being Sonic and wearing her much warmer Sonic costume. I’m just glad she’s going to be well enough for Halloween. She popped a fever on Thursday night and was saying her ears hurt. Paul took the day off on Friday and took her in to the doctor. She has a double ear infection and a nasty cough. She ended up with antibiotics for the ear infection and some liquid albuterol for the nebulizer that we luckily already have (we’ve used it with saline to help her with congestion). She’s a different kid already.
The required “pose with the Buc-ee statue” picture. I need to remember to order poor Joseph another set of sunglasses, poor kid.Abigail just about lost her mind when she found someone walking around as Buc-ee.The moon was full last night and the wispy clouds made it the perfect back-drop for this time of year.I think I posted about this collage last week, but man, these three pictures get me every time I walk out the door. Time is a thief!This is my kid whose love for Buc-ee’s ties with her love of posing for pictures.She was going for a silly face…what’s funny is that this is very similar to the funny face that Joseph pulls. She really looks up to her older brother. 😉I. love. this. kid.Painting her pumpkin (this was the only action shot I got).I helped her get the shape of the eyes right and the ears…and the mouth. She filled in the voids. Golden Sonic!Joseph did the Tri-force from Legend of Zelda. He said he was a little frustrated because it didn’t turn out like he had in his head. It opened things up for a nice discussion about how things sometimes happen that way, but we need to decide if it’s worth the energy to hang on to the frustration or to let it go. I also assured him that it was recognizable as the Tri-force and that made him feel better.I did a simple scene from Nightmare Before Christmas……including Zero and his grave dog house.Paul did Bob the Tomato from Veggie Tales. The pumpkin is the perfect shape for it!!
