The Final Countdown

‘We only have three school days left. We have Memorial Day, then three days and then we’We only have three school days left. We have Memorial Day, then three days and then we’re free for summer. Well, I do have Friday as a teacher work day, but the kids won’t be there, so I kind of count that as a day off, too. 😉 We had Abigail’s awards ceremony, Joseph had his last GT meeting, Abigail had a water day, and then we capped everything off with a trip to the zoo yesterday.

Abigail and her teacher, Mrs Moreno. This woman was an amazing presence in Abigail’s life this year. She saw through the hard bits and stuck with her until the end. She’s awesome!
Abigail wanted a picture with me.
I noticed this in the hallway right outside Abigail’s classroom. 🙂
With her trophy. She was so excited to get one!
Bonus points if you can spot both the squirrel and the mockingbird that’s chasing it. 😀
There were quite a few days this week where she woke feeling like this.
Ready for the day!
A teacher friend got this for me. She had a blast!
His last GT day. I can hardly believe he’s going to junior high in the next year.
Voila! She loves this butterfly.
She actually did really well not running around while in the butterfly house.
Checking out a pretty orange one.
This was probably her favorite butterfly. It’s called an owl butterfly.
It was neat to see each chrysalis and even a butterfly that is still trying to dry out its wings.
So pretty!
She was in Heaven.
Joseph and Paul went for a walk while Abigail and I were looking at the butterflies.
This one’s coloration was just too pretty to pass up, so I had to take a picture. I thought that its coloration looked like a a Mexican serape.
The preteen doing what preteens do best: multi-tasking while waiting on a younger sibling. He looks so grown up here.
She loves this rhino so much!
Checking out the African horn bill. She was excited to get to see Zazu from Lion King)
On the Nile Crocodile! It was her first choice.
She was happy she got the Nile Crocodile.

Less Than Two Weeks!

It’s crazy to think we have less than two weeks left of school. This next week will house an awards ceremony for Abigail, and a water day for her as well. The next week will be class parties for the both of them, and then Joseph’s promotion on the last day of school. I work one day after they’re done and then I’m off, too. I’ll have at least one training to attend during the summer (maybe more, but I’ll see what the schedule is like) before starting back next year. Right now, I’m in limbo between two grades. The principal really wants to move me down to fourth, but it can be challenging finding people to teach fifth, so I may stay put. I’ll hopefully know more in a couple of weeks once all transfers have gone through. I’ve also been studying for my last big test, which I take on June 8th. I have yet to hear back on if I passed the test I took two weeks ago (hopefully I’ll hear back in the next week or so), but I really hope I pass it and this next one so that I can be DONE with testing. Joseph had his last grade-level performance. The music teacher had some songs playing and the kids played a sort of descant to the main melody for each song. I thought it was brilliant. It was a way they could play with limited knowledge (the teacher said they were focusing on three major notes) and have it sound really good. He also had his GT Showcase where he showed off the structure he built (He built the Tower of the Americas) and his dream room. These went perfectly with the GT theme of structures. Oh, and our new stove came in. Our old one was still functioning, but a couple of the burners have been randomly running hot without responding to us turning down the heat (unless we turn them completely off), so when Paul was looking around and noticed a good one that was on sale, we jumped on it and got set up with a new one. It’s been nice not having a possessed cooktop, haha.

Getting ready to play.
Playing along with the group.
His interpretation of the Tower of the Americas and his dream bedroom that he designed. How does he look so grown in this picture?!
My new stove is super-fancy. I like all the different burner sizes that are offered (and that back center one is a special burner than is designed just for keeping pans warm).
It had a black stainless steel (with a fingerprint-resistant feature) as an option. It’s pretty!
The inside. It’s huge. We went for one with 6.3 cubic feet instead of the smaller standard size. Consequently, the drawer at the bottom is slightly smaller, but that’s not a big deal. It’s a convection oven (but it does have a regular oven setting) and it also has a few fun settings. In addition to convection baking and air frying, it also has a dehydrate setting as well as a bread proofing setting. It’ll be fun to experiment with once I’m on break.
I found the yummiest berries at the store yesterday. Look how plump they are! They are really ripe and sweet, which I haven’t found in quite some time.
A friend of mine clued me in on the existence of what could arguably end up being my new favorite flavor from Blue Bell. It’s quite tasty! Just when I thought Blue Bell couldn’t get any more “Texas” than it already was,it rose to the occasion, haha.

Mad Dash To The End

I thought things were busy before…but the last few weeks of school are proving to be craaaaaaaazy busy. There are projects, fun activities to plan, testing to finish, data entry, grades, class parties, awards ceremonies…I better stop before I start to hyperventilate, haha. I’m trying to think of what we did last week, but I’m having trouble properly formulating my thoughts. I think I’ll just caption my pictures and get a summary that way. 😉

Paul made a cover to sit on top of our stove. This is before it was stained…
…and this is after. He made it from poplar and the grain is absolutely beautiftul.
I really like the handles as well. Texas stars for the win!
I think this picture is from…Wednesday. I had drawn the piranha plant with the word “test” to give my students a fun graphic for “chomping” the “test” (they finished up STAAR on Tuesday), but I didn’t want to erase it (I was proud of it!), so I turned it into a school days left count down. It doesn’t count weekends, but still…it’s hard to believe that my time with my kiddos has gone so fast!
Abigail is a child who sometimes feels like she isn’t heard or seen. Maybe it’s because she’s the youngest, or maybe it’s because I’m working full-time, or maybe it’s because she sometimes has a hard time expressing what she wants, but when she feels overwhelmed, she tends to have meltdowns (especially at school when there is so much going on and it’s already a bit of a stimulus-overload to begin with). Last week, she had three days in a row with no meltdowns, so I took that kid out for frozen yogurt. We can do hard things and be seen. I’m going to keep trying to reward the positive and maybe we’ll have less of the negative.
Another countdown day: “‘M’ is for mustache”. She didn’t want me to draw a mustache on her. She wanted a mustache on a stick (a Luigi from Super Mario Bros. mustache, to be exact). Luckily I had coffee stirrer sticks and foam left over from some class projects.
So, I was attempting to take a picture of one of my newer shirts…
…and this bundle of awesome came bouncing up (not a figure of speech…she bounces. a lot.) asking to be in the picture. Who could say no to that?! Not me, that’s for sure.
Mother’s Day 2023: The little “What I Love About Mom” book is one with fill-in-the-banks and Joseph wrote down his and Abigail’s answers. My heart! There was also flowers, chocolate, chocolate-covered strawberries, a coloring book (it really is a stress-reliever, y’all), and…
…this necklace. It has their names and their birthstone colors.
I had one of my favorite breakfasts this morning: Greek yogurt with berries and granola. I love it when berry season rolls around!
I was looking for a picture to use for an art project I’m doing with my students and I came across this gem of me and my best friend, Tracie, that is probably 25 years old. You better believe this is the one I chose to use.
This is the art project my class is going to do. We’re going to display the shields at promotion.