Monthly Archives: December 2005

We have had a wonderful Christmas week! And its not over yet, since my parents are coming up here this weekend to have our Christmas. Here are some highlights. The first Christmas party that we attended was mom’s family Christmas on the 10th. Then on the 17th was dad’s family Christmas. Someone decided we needed to all take “family” pictures. Here is ours.

Here is a picture of the girl cousins. When I was young, there were four of us, compared to 8 boys. Now we have grown in number. This side of the family is so big now. There were about 43 people there! Cliff was so confused.

This is my cousin’s son, Paul Ryan. We are big buddies. He was our ring bearer and I just think the world of him. He is adorable and polite and funny and smart. We had fun. Cliff and he had fun too, killing elk and squirrels and such on his computer game, and playing with his LeapPad.

On Christmas Eve, we opened presents at the grandparents house. Here is Santa Cliff, happy to have recieved a Best Buy gift card, which he spent on the 26th.

I hope your holiday was wonderful!

Could you pass 8th grade math? Click this link to find out.

http://www.blogthings.com/couldyoupasseighthgrademathquiz/

Yay! I got a 100! Which is good to know since I have taught 8th grade math.

I think Cliff is finally getting better. It has been a very yucky week for him. It is wierd just being here for the Christmas holiday and not going to someone’s (namely, my parent’s) house. I cleaned house today, figuring that if I am going to be at my own house for the holiday, it needs to be nice. With Cliff feeling bad, I haven’t cleaned or cooked much this week, just kinda let things be and let him rest. But today I cleaned up and finally cleaned Cliff’s “paper-writing station” off the kitchen table. The week before Thanksgiving, when he was starting on his massive amount of school work, papers and exegesises (exegesi??), he took our kitchen table out of comission. His desk is always a wreck, so between that and the distraction of a computer with lots of fun stuff on it, it was not a good idea for him to try to do school work at his desk…hmmm… anyways, the table was ideal to lay out all the books and papers and his laptop so he could work and not have to clean it up. Well until today, stacks of copies of books about Revelation and some wierd guy whose name starts with an N, were still there. I decided to bring out the Christmas-y red table cloth and some nice silver placemats, courtesy of our world traveler- Trish. It looks so much nicer now On another note, related to Christmas. Our cat chewed through the wire to the Christmas lights on our tree. He’s a bright one. (no pun intended) He is why we unplug our tree when we leave or go to bed. Of course it wasn’t plugged in when he did this, so he is fine, and now that our resident electrician spliced the wire back together, we have a lovely tree again. I have gotten alot of new ornaments this year, mostly from students or the school. Speaking of which, I am amazed at the number of kids who brought us gifts!! It was great! I now am well supplied with smelly bath products and random candy and food. The last three days of school were such a waste, educationally. I felt like a Christmas worksheet machine. Oh well, at least they werent’ bored at home and getting into trouble. I really do have wonderful students. I got all teary eyed at the Christmas choir and orchestra concert, thinking about how sweet they all are and how glad I have the job that I have.

Merry Christmas to all!

We teachers are as ready as the kids to be off for two and a half weeks.

Well I finally somewhat cleaned my office/desk space today. Everytime I had bought Christmas presents, I was just basically dropping them in the floor next to my desk, which is the place where things usually just kinda get “put”. I drug out the wrapping paper and wrapped them all up today! Wrapping is fun, but I wish SOMEONE would get his stuff off the kitchen table so I could have wrapped there instead of in the floor where, I kept having to brush the dog hair off what I was wrapping and make sure it didn’t get stuck to the tape. The joys of indoor pets. I never thought I would have indoor pets. And now I have two. Its fun that you don’t have to go outside to play with them. I just wish they didn’t shed. I thought before we got the cat that I would give it a bath. I mean people do that. Tim does that for instance. But I cannot ever picture myself giving Buddy a bath. I am glad when I can walk past him and he doesn’t flinch. Forget sticking him in a tub full of water and then him ever tolerating me again.

Well I think I am going to have to outlaw Steve from guessing on my Mystery Pictures. He gets it right first and then anyone else who comments (wait…has there been anyone else?? hmmm..I think he is one of two) will see it and think “Oh, yeah, that is what it is…”.

Anyway, for all you cat lovers out there, go here: http://www.kittenbreak.com/ if you need something to do

For all you teachers out there on a budget, I found a cool thing to give your students as a Christmas present…a bookmark! I made one on the computer. Thanks Aunt Kathy for the great idea! On one side I put a MC Escher print, and it is long and skinny, so its perfect. And I found good inspirational quotes and put on the other side and a note from myself. Now I know that most kids will use them for a bit and then they will get lost, but there are those few kids out there, like me when I was a sixth grader, who will think its cool and hang on to it. So for those kids, here you go

I just love Target. For a while, I actually got a little tired of it, because when I went there I didn’t find much that was exciting. But today they had lots of great stuff. I was shopping for Christmas presents and I found such fun stuff! Cool sweaters, nice purses, pretty Christmas red goblet glasses, fun jewelry, nice jewelry boxes, adorable galoshes…tons of stuff. Not that I bought much, but there was some great stuff to look at! You should go window shop there right now. It will make you smile.

Only five more days til Christmas break. I am kinda sad, Cliff and I will only be off together for a week and a half!! He is done now, but I don’t get done til next Wednesday. And he starts his I-term on the 2nd while I don’t go back til the 9th. I won’t know what to do with the house to myself for a whole week. That hasn’t happened til the summer! I will be gloriously bored, and its gonna be great!

By the way, the answer to Lydia’s mystery photo is…. a tea kettle! Did you guess right?

Here is my mystery photo:

Post your guesses as a comment and ONLY after guessing, check Lydia’s blog for the answer.

Today started off okay. I was excited about the fun red bowling shoes I was wearing. Its my parents aniversary, (Happy 30th!). First period was kinda blah because I was not excited about what I was teaching and felt like I did a yucky job. Then second period came. I don’t think I blogged about this, but our school as an education foundation and they give grants to teachers to buy things that are out-of-the-ordinary. Well I wrote one, and today the “Prize Patrol” came and awarded it to me in my second period class. (Which is my best class, so that was extra nice). It was very fun. Loud ringing bells, lots of people I don’t know, a large check written out to me, and a big balloon. It was very fun! The kids were really excited too. Some got big smiles when the lady told them what the grant was going to get them. *which is a cool remote system where they key in answers to quizzes and reviews and games and such* My fifth period applauded, complete with one kid doing the “whoop whoop whooop” thing with his arm, which is in a cast. (I might add here that this was the same kid who asked (about the word rhombus), “Why can’t we call it a ra-hum-bus?” That might only be funny if you hear it or if you teach math. It was extremely funny at the time though. So that has been my day.

Last week I saw Pride and Prejudice. It is the best movie I have seen in a long time. I HIGHLY recommend it. It is totally clean, which is rare these days, and it is just great. And not just great bc its a girly movie, but it has some good scenes and cinamatography, or whatever you call it when they do cool shots.

Also, last Saturday was one of the best days I have had in a while. We hung out with Lydia and Jon and it was a gorgeous and fun day! We ate at Joe T Garcia’s which had okay food but such a pretty garden to eat in. Putt-putt was fun and so was playing on the arcade games. Then we girls went shopping and shopping with a girlfriend to chat with is always fun.

So thats the rundown on my past week or so. This weekend starts the Christmas celebration with going to my parents to have a Christmas party with my mom’s side of the family. That will be fun and loud and there will be cute babies, and Christmas music and good food and great people and I am very excited. The next weekend is my dad’s side of the family’s Christmas and that will be extremely excellent as well!

Only 11 more days of school left! Bring on the Holiday!!