Final Grades

Are in! And guess what? (OK, I know it isn't a hard guess, since I already told you, but...) I PASSED! I'm not surprised, but here's the proof.

I mean, seriously, how cool is that? That means I really WILL be graduating on Saturday. Oops! I forgot! I was going to go pick up my tickets for graduation. Let me check...Yep, I can still go out and pick them up. Guess I should go do that now, huh?

Oh, and I took my CBEST test today. That's the California Basic Educational Skills Test. They allotted 4 hours for the test; I was done in a little over 2. I took 3 sections: Reading, Math, and Writing. I got "unofficial" scores back for two sections: reading and math. In order to pass, I needed a scaled score of 41 or better. I got a 75 in reading, and a 70 in math. The writing will be graded later. All I need to get is a 37 in writing to pass the whole darn thing. Boy am I glad to be done with that!

On a different note, Matt and I got up this morning to do workout number 4 in our newest workout program: Insanity. I've decided to make my Insanity blog public, so if ya'll want to read it and keep me accountable, feel free. It isn't terribly exciting, but the link is on the left-hand side of my blog, under "Health". I'll make sure to update the link to "Winter Insanity Challenge" or something like that. Have I mentioned how sore I am right now? Those workouts are intense!

Anyways, speaking of that, I should update that blog right now while I'm at it, huh?

Later.
~Pam

On Moving

or not moving....

So, here's the deal. Many of you know that we might move in January. Or March. Or April. But we are DEFINITELY moving sometime in the year 2010! Right now, there is so much up in the air. Matt has requested to get out of the navy early. He is supposed to get out in April/March time-frame. His request is slowly making its way up to the captain. In the meantime, he has applied to school and been accepted to a school in California. He also has some really good job prospects there, so it would be perfect. But, so much is unknown. Also, what do we do with our house? Put it on the (falling) market? Or put it up for rent? What property manager do we go with? So many unknowns.

But here are the knowns:
We had a great visit with Mom and Aunt Stormy. We're sad to see them go.
I finished student teaching on Friday.
I completed my Master's Degree and have Commencement on Saturday.
Matt will (eventually) get out of the Navy, and we'll be DONE with all that.
We will be moving west.
I'll be getting a job (maybe teaching, maybe anything I can get)


Ugh. I wish life was more simple. But today, I'm going to be cleaning up the house, doing laundry, and packing up the utility room. Let me tell you, by the time we eventually leave, everything WILL be packed up by then. If I have anything to do with it.

Now that I'm done with student teaching, and I passed, by the way (YEAH!), I don't have a lot to do during the day. I have to prepare for a test on Wednesday, pick up my tickets for Commencement sometime next week, and spend time with Kate and her kids. Besides that, I'll be fixing up the house and packing it all up. I'm making lists and setting goals for getting stuff done. Soon (hopefully tomorrow) Matt and I will get back into working out. I think my injury has healed enough (I hope). And then, LOOK OUT! Those workouts are INSANE! :)

Anyways, that's about it. Since I have a lot of time on my hands, I appreciate phone calls (hint, hint). I can put on my bluetooth and pack away while talking, I promise :)

Happy Holidays, all. It is hard to get into the spirit when I don't even have a tree up, but I still like this time of year. Especially when everyone ELSE has their lights up.

~Pam

Oink, Oink

So, what's better than getting sick with the flu right before Thanksgiving? How about NOT getting sick right before Thanksgiving. Yeah, that would have been nice. I mean, I knew that I was going to get sick, since Parker, Preston, and Paisley were all sick, and I hung out with them when they were still contagious. But, Kate never got sick. So I guess I was hoping I would get that lucky. Nope. I started feeling it on Thursday. My back started to hurt, I began coughing. Cough drops took care of the cough, sort of. But the aches persisted. Then, I went to the New Moon party at Kate's on Thursday night. I was feeling pretty rough, but it was still a good time. No, I didn't go to the midnight show. I DID have school the next morning. Except, when I woke up and checked my temperature, it was over 100F. Which is really high for me, considering my normal temp is 98.1F. So I called Mrs. Lyle, and we decided it would be best not to go to school. Don't want to expose those kids. I spent the morning sleeping, then when Matt was driving home around noon (he was day-after duty, so he got to go a little early), he convinced me to call the doc for an appt. I was able to get in, and was diagnosed with "flu like symptoms." My doc doesn't actually perform a flu test, since a false negative can have bad consequences. He told me to not expose the kids; wait until I was fever free without medication for at least 24 hours. And he gave me a Rx for Tylenol 3, you know, the one with Codeine in it? Yeah, that stuff works nicely. My aches are gone, I was able to sleep really well. Also, it has a cough suppressant in it, so that, combined with Mucinex has helped out a lot. Still not feeling so hot. Really weak and fatigued. But I'm trying to rest and drink plenty of fluids. And I'm doing my best not to get Matt sick. They might not let him go on leave if he is sick. And I don't want that to happen.

Getting ready for my Thanksgiving adventure. I hope I feel well enough by Wednesday, but I think I will. It will have been about a week by then, so I should be good. Kate and I are going to drive to Ohio to see Peggy and her family. Mom's already going to be up there. Then, we're going to drive back on Sunday with Mom. I'm looking forward to it. Hopefully I'm feeling a lot better, since I'll be the one doing most of the driving. Kate isn't so good at long distances. It will definitely be an adventure.

Well, hopefully today I can get a couple phone calls made. Reconnect with good friends. :) Wish me luck!

Love,
Pam

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--

------------------------------
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