Trip to the Zoo

Random pic when BooBear wanted to play with the camera.


The last day of summer for me, that is, the day before my contract began, BooBear went to the zoo with his cousins. He liked the elephants, the small primates, the birds and the small animal house. He didn't care much for the life size dinosaurs - they roared, but didn't move as much as that exhibit in Seattle from when I was a kid. He was also scared of things that squirted water, like the dilophosaurus and the elephant statue in the picture above. "Hey that's the kind of dinosaur that spits in Jurassic Park," I said seconds before it got me straight in the face.

BooBear watching the elephant show.

Then we went to check out mom and baby elephant. We made up a song in our house called 'Baby Elephant' that we sing whenever we go up the stairs, so he thought the baby elephant was cooler this year than last year.


The little guy staring intently at the monkey next to BooBear is his youngest cousin.

Look mommy, a bird!

School Start

With two days of regular school under my belt, I have met all of my students. My largest class is the 8th graders at 36 students. Somehow, my US Govt class (usually at least 40 students) had a conflict with something. So for now, my class is just under 20. It's so weird. We get through material faster. We will probably have time to do the mock congress activity, something I haven't had time for since my first year teaching the class. One of the Gov't students would have liked MY Amer Gov't teacher, she's really into conspiracies and is willing to share them often. I have my largest group of IB students, but not as many as the admin would like, but they seem to be a bright group.

Summer Checklist

As my summer break comes to an end, I have been in a frenzy to get things done on my checklist, from construction to baking. The laundry room is mudded, sanded and ready for texture...for a week now. Werty bought a hopper/texture gun, borrowed an air compressor, and is researching technique. Now he is talking about needing another tool for the ceiling and more mix before starting. Argh!

Meanwhile this week, we mudded the first layer to fill in the texture in the living room. Yes, I realize that we are trying to put texture up in one room while smoothing out the texture in another room. Yesterday I sanded down the room all by myself. Today, my hand keeps going numb. But it looks good. One more layer and sanding should do it for that room, and then we are ready to paint. I am really hoping to have both rooms painted before school actually starts in a week. The next step I have planned out will be getting the art framed and on the walls - but that might be next summer's project, because we will probably need furniture in that room first.

I used my favorite baking cookbook to make two new recipes this year - the pumpkin spice roll is something I have wanted to try for a while. I liked the cream cheese filling, much less sugar than your normal frosting. The clafouti (I have no idea how to pronounce it) was good with the apricots. Both were a hit when we shared them with Werty's family.

This week we moved BooBear into a big bed. He was so excited, he didn't want to fall asleep that night! We have a rail up, since he tended to roll all over the room instead of staying on his toddler mattress before.

I also typed out the topics and activities for each day of my IB class for the last three years out of my lesson plan books. I am hoping this will aid in my planning and make the course more succinct and creative this year. I have also been perusing the 3 new IB textbooks put out by C@mbridge Press in preparation since they arrived last month hot off the press.

Some things still left on my list:
- We still need to take BooBear to the zoo. We are hoping to go with Rena and her family.
- I didn't get all the unpacking done I wanted to, still have most of the same boxes since the beginning of summer because my file cabinet is still locked with no key since the move.
- The tv and media appliances are still not plugged in, since Werty hasn't had time to put in a new outlet yet. Thank goodness for hulu.
- Still haven't bought a sewing machine or put up curtains, since we haven't painted yet.

Here are some pics from our summer:



BooBear watering the trees.

Flopping around on his new big bed. He can get himself in and out of the bed.


BooBear loves to help us mud and sand. He was really excited when we started working on the living room because he had full access to being involved.

BooBear picked out these tiny bananas at the store. The tomato is for size reference.

Sunset view from our house.

Sue's family came over for FHE and s'mores. Her kids had fun picking raspberries, catching grasshoppers and watching humming birds.

Congrats to Rena!

Rena will be starting her Master's program this Fall. She originally abandoned the idea when she was wait listed, but with two weeks until the semester starts, they want her in their program. I know she will be awesome!

Meanwhile, after 2 days I have undone what summer school did to my classroom, and even managed to throw out a bunch of junk. Most importantly, I found the file that has all the names and numbers for this year's NHS council, so I can send out invites for our BBQ retreat next Thursday.

Afraid of melting?

BooBear tends to wake up and immediately point outside because he wants to play at the park across the street. Sometimes he brings us our shoes while we are still in bed or in pajamas. We are having a wetter summer than normal this year. So, I find it entertaining when it's nice and overcast how PACKED the park will be until it starts to precipitate. A little sprinkle and the park clears out. That's what happened today. Lots of kids running around, and then 'poof' we're alone in the drizzling rain. I also discovered a new gauge of how much I love my son. Love is being willing to go down a wet slide after the rain, thereby drying the slide for my child to enjoy. At one point a family joined us in the park, but I think the father took a look at my son with his wet bum from sliding in the rain and a slightly runny nose, and thought I was some kind of neglectful parent, because it wasn't long before he hurriedly ushered his wife and kids out of the big toy area away from us. Or maybe it was the big wet spot on MY bum from drying the slides, not really sure. I vacillate being concerned about BooBear getting enough socialization with other kids and being relieved when we have the big toy to ourselves because BooBear can play on whatever he wants without being run over by big kids or having rude children snatch things away from him when he can't speak enough to defend himself.

Ddonn if you do make it to Utah, try to schedule enough time for the girls to enjoy the park - including the water park and water slides.

Y@htzee!

Werty and I first started playing Y@htzee together when we were newlyweds - it was the only board game we could find that you could play with 2 players. Tonight we introduced the game to BooBear.

He rattled dice around in a cup and dumped them out - felt almost as good as throwing something. He loved it. But he got annoyed when we wanted to re-roll a few of the dice on our own. He started dumping them out with his other hand poised to grab them before we could read the numbers on them. "Ooh, ooh," or "Wait, wait" he said as he snatched them up. But we were still trying to take some of them away and re-roll them. So he took the cup, dice and box lid away to the other side of the room to play without us! We weren't playing by his rules. Eventually, he got bored and let us have them back. I won. :P

Level 2!

It took me, hmmm, 7 years of working in public school to finally get my level 2 license, but I got it. No more having to renew every 3 years, now I have 5 years to build up enough credits for renewal. Who knows if I will be working full time in 5 years...or if I will be working on a masters degree and have plenty of credits. But the important thing right now is that I have time to decide. Another important fact is that I am still qualified to keep my job, in case none of these jobs Werty is applying to work out. We can still have a roof over our heads, and that's a good thing.

I was a little late getting the process started on upgrading my license. Disclaimer: the following you are about to read is a whole bunch of excuses. See, there are fees involved. Fees for the background check, fees for the upgrade, they pretty much ding you at each step. And when you are buying a house, and trying to not spend ANYTHING or put ANYTHING on a credit card because you want the nice bank to give you a happy mortgage loan, paying a bunch of fees gets put on the back burner. Then you move, but the printer isn't connected yet, and then the printer seems to be damaged from the move and makes a horrible sound instead of doing what it's supposed to, and Werty and his OCD self doesn't want you to use your computer and printer at work to pay the fees because that connection is tracked by the district office, and therefore not really secure. (See, you can't just pay the fees, you have to print out a receipt and take it to the fingerprinting place - which is our district - and there are lots of warnings that you can only print it when you pay, and you will have to pay again if you mess up or wait too long to get fingerprinted. Blah, blah, blah, excuses to get frustrated and procrastinate.) Then it's the end of the year, there's the testing, the seniors, the NHS stuff, my co-workers are leaving so we have to clean out classrooms and closets, and crud, I still haven't done it.

Here's how it went down: Attempt #1 The district office only does fingerprinting during certain days and hours, but when I arrived, they weren't open during those hours the last week of school. Attempt #2 I got fingerprinted, and the deadline was still a month away, so the two weeks it takes for the background check is close, but okay. Attempt #3 The deadline was now two weeks away, and I was getting nervous. I got an email telling me there was a problem with my background check - some of the fingerprinting data was missing or corrupted, so I need to be fingerprinted again. Within the hour, I was back at the district getting fingerprinted a second time. 3 days before the deadline, I get notification that I have cleared my background check, but the state still says there is a problem and I can't proceed. I called up the state office and asked. Oh, there is a form that has to be filled out by your district. Would this be the form and recommendation that I specifically asked my supervising administrator about over a month ago when I was having my final observation and interview and was told no, there was no such form? I drive down to the district to find out...yes, there is such a form, and yes, I need it signed by both the district and my principal... (Too bad, we just got a new principal that I haven't met yet...) and the secretary who knows where the forms are had just left on an errand. And then suddenly, the heavens parted and my prayers were answered. The district person in charge of professional development is a wonderful, kind-hearted man. He said, 'Let me see if I have a copy of the file on my computer' and then he printed the form for me. Since he knew that my upgrade has be posted by end of business day the next day, he said he would sign my form for me so that I didn't have to try to track down my old principal. (Once the secretary came back and put my information from the form into the state server, I was good to go. I waited a few hours, and hallelujah, the system let me in. I completed the paperwork, paid another fee and I was done! I felt like I was in a Christine Lavin song - and the guy with the bow tie had just paid for my groceries. Five years from now, I hope I will not procrastinate again.