Happy Halloween!

Ok, so Matt has been begging me to blog a little something, just so his blog post isn't the only one people see when they tune in. So...here goes.

Update on my life: Well, it has been a little crazy, but crazy good. I feel like I'm getting into a groove with teaching. I am finding my "voice" which is something I wasn't sure I would EVER find just a few weeks ago. My cooperating teacher, Mrs. Lyle, says that I'm doing a great job. And you know what? I almost believe her! Seriously, I feel like I AM doing a great job, most days at least. I still have a few things to work on, but mostly things are going well. I'm writing lesson plans like a champ, that's for sure. Next week, I get to take over the Guided Reading lessons. I'm a little nervous about that, but only because I haven't done it before. And I'll pretty much be on my own at the back table. Mrs. Lyle is planning on doing remediation with another group while I do Guided Reading with my group. Other than that, I have taken over pretty much all of the instruction for the class. I feel like I'm able to roll with things a lot easier. I dunno, maybe I CAN be a teacher after all.

Let's see...what else....oh, I was digging through a bunch of my papers, and I found this little story. I probably SHOULD scan it in and let you see it that way, but I'm just going to type it.
This was for my Study Skills class in 7th grade-Terreton Junior High:

March 4, 1994

Last night I got home at around a quarter after four. I jumped out of the car and went to see my puppies. My dog Whiskey had five puppies in all the night before that. 3 puppies had died. When I got tothe box that they were in, I counted four puppies. That didn't make sense, because 3 puppies out of five had died. Why was there more puppies than this morning? Then I realized that Whisky had had two more puppies. I ran inside and told my mom that Whisky had had 2 more. She did not believe me. Neither did my brother. He told me that I was lying. I convinced him to come out and see. We counted 4 puppies. I told him so. Then my friend Scott came by on his bike. I told him to check out my puppies. He thought they were pretty neat. Then his friend, and my neighbor, Thad came by. He tried to use our bicycle pump to pump up his tire, but the tire had a hole in it. He was mad. I told him to look at the puppies, too. He thought that they were neat. Then Thad had to go home. My sister and I had to go and feed our neighbors animals, so we walked him home. We fed the animals (one dog and a cat) and tried to make the dog stay there. It did not work. She crawled under the fence. My sister and I decided to go for a bike ride. We went past our neighbors house, but they weren't there. We stopped at the creek and rested for a little while. Then we headed back home. When we got there, the hamburgers were ready to eat. We had to set the table. My dad g--

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And that was the end of my story for the day, I guess. :) It is so funny, b/c I didn't remember that Wisky (the real way we decided to spell her name in the end) had lost some puppies, but had given birth to more later in the day. I remember not knowing she was pregnant. We all thought she had a distended belly from worms. The morning of March 4th, I found her in the garage before I left for school. I thought she was being eaten by rats! Seriously! That's what I thought. My brother Matt came out, saw her, and said, nope, just puppies. I was sad to see 3 of them dead. I guess when I got home from school was when the rest of this story happened. The other funny thing is that I actually remember Thad coming over to use the bike pump, and his tire having a hole in it, and we walked him back to his house. I'm not really sure which neighbor's animals we were feeding, though. Maybe the family that lived on the corner...I dunno....

So, Halloween was a success for us this year. For the first time we ran out of candy before we ran out of kids! Last year I think we had 4 kids stop by. This year we had 20 or 30 kids. We were digging in the cupboard to find something to give out. Some kid got some OLD, OLD Lifesavers. From back when Chaz still lived with us.... BTW, I hope Pop Rocks don't actually expire. They don't, do they?


Matt's been busy. He's going to school right now, as well. He's taking one class from City University of Seattle. That one class will finish up his Associate's Degree. Cool, huh? In his free time (big joke, right? no free time with 3 section duty, that's for sure) he's been taking pictures. Last weekend he did a big shoot out in Chesapeake for a big family- almost as big as ours! This weekend he took some awesome pictures of kids in home-made Halloween costumes. Those guys were adorable! :) So, needless to say, he's pretty busy. We've also decided that our timetable for moving might need to be moved up. So this weekend, we've been busy getting some packing up started. I figure if I do 2 boxes a day, I'll be all packed up by the time we're ready to move. Right? It will work like that, right? I hope?!? Anyways, if I get a lot of it done ahead of time, I won't be scrambling when the time comes. No matter when that time is. Besides, most of the stuff I've been boxing up is stuff that was in boxes the whole time we've lived here. So its not like we need it, or anything. I've also been purging a lot of that stuff, too. Giving it away to charity, or just throwing it away. I won't need it where I'm going!

Ok, well, like I said, not a whole lot going on here. And yet, we're really busy. I am going to try to convince my husband to watch an episode of The Office with me. I could use a good laugh! :)

~Pam

PS. Happy Halloween!!!

Still working

For me (Matt) I have always struggled with being able to gain muscle. I have finally found what works for me:

1.) Hard work outs ( been going since January)
2.) To gain any weight I need 4500 calories a day (no, that is not a lie (and you try eating 4500 somewhat healthy calories in a day, its hard!))
3.) Consistency! I have to keep at it...

Anyways this is not exactly a fair comparison, because in the picture on the right the lighting is much more flattering (direct overhead) and it was after working out. But the picture on the right is how I am feeling, which is GOOD! =) Up about 20 lbs on the year and only up 1-2% in body fat. I have 3 more months, I am just starting another phase of 4500 calorie days to try to put some more muscle on. Wish me determination ;)

-Matt

Just for kicks and giggles

Kate posted something similar on her blog, so I decided to check it out. I had way too much fun, and definitely didn't get any housework done yet. But this made me smile, anyways! :)

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By Popular Demand

Ok, so maybe Rene' was the only one who asked for it, but still. I'm sure there are others who are just dying to know what's going on in my life right now. Right? Someone? Anyone? Oh, well. *sigh* I guess its probably b/c not a whole lot is going on in my life. Let's see...school, school, more school, Blink 182 concert, did I mention school? School is my life. I walk to school every morning, which is pretty cool. It takes me just 15 minutes, even if I walk slowly. I get to the classroom before the kids do, and I help set up for the day. I've slowly started to take more responsibility for the class. Right now I'm teaching the "Making Meaning" lesson, which is a program for enhancing comprehension in reading. Basically, the teacher reads lots of great children's stories to the kids, and then we discuss together different strategies. We've talked about visualizing and inferring so far. Each week we read a story from the Basal (reading book) and the kids take a comprehension test each Friday on it. It is open book, but you'd be surprised how many kids don't do very well.... Let's see, oh, I've also started to take over teaching things like prefixes and suffixes as well. We'll see how that goes :) I also give the spelling test on Fridays. Sometimes I have to make up sentences for the words, and it cracks me up how I can't think of a good sentence for a word like "gray." My sentence is something like "I have a gray crayon." Pretty dumb, huh? My biggest challenge is classroom management. I have a hard time knowing what to ignore and what to stop. I'm learning, but I just need more experience. The best part of my day is when a kid says to me, "Mrs. Emerson, you're so nice!" or "I really like your sweater," or "I hope I can be in your class some day." It makes it all worth it.

So, teaching is actually the easiest part of being a student teacher. It is the rest of it that is complicated. Like remembering to send in my weekly journal on Saturday night (not Sunday!!!) or writing up my 20-30 page "Impact on Student Learning," (12 pages down!), or getting my portfolio put together. It is also nerve-wracking when my supervisor comes in to see me. I'm not intimidated by her, but it is hard sometimes to have someone watching me. The kids act differently, too, but usually for the better.

Anyways, that's about it. Matt's still on 3-section duty. So I get to see him sometimes at least. We try to make the best of the time when he is home. We actually went clothes shopping yesterday, at the Limited. We had a good time; we needed to spend some coupons we had. Last time we were there, they gave us 4 coupons worth $25 off a $50 purchase. So, we spent $200 and only paid $100. Pretty nifty, huh? Also pretty good considering our last purchase we saved about 50% as well.

OK, well, I should get some housework done, now that it is getting to be evening time around here. Maybe cook me up some dinner. I feel decently productive today, but if I can go to bed with a clean house, it will be a bonus! :)

~Pam