Snowy morning... last moments of freedom!

So I'm back in the Springs. Its hard to come back to an empty apartment after being home with the family. Luckily I have a pooperdog and a fat kitty that make it not quite so empty. Fatness was VERY happy to see me yesterday and didn't leave my lap all evening. It was nice to wake up during the night and have him purring right next to me :) I love my kitty!

This morning I woke up to snow! yay for snow :) Its only an inch or so, but its nice and white and wintery. Sherlock and I went out very early and played in the snow for a while. Sherlock LOVES snow :) He is so funny! Since then I have been hanging out in my pjs and working on school stuff. Luckily I don't have to go to the store because my mommy sent me home with LOTS of leftovers :) However I do have to shower and get dressed sometime soon because I'm headed over to Marci's to babysit Nathan for the afternoon while Marci and Jeff get some date-time and go see the Nutcracker. I'm excited to hang out and play with the kiddo for the afternoon.

Oh I also got this picture in my email and figured you all would like to see the wonderful friends I have here. This is (left to right) Pam, Jessica, Marci, and me at Marci's house. Yay us! :)

A lazy but productive day...

Is that an oxymoron? :) Well that's the kind of day it was anyway! I got up to have breakfast with my mom and aunt (Dad left eeearrrlly to go visit my nephews... lucky bum!) and then I got started on more laundry (I did a bunch yesterday, and some more today. Yay for clean clothes!) Aunt Barb went back to Denver and stopped to feed the Fat Kitty on her way.

While laundry-doing I filled out my emergency licensure form (so I can take over the classroom come January without someone else being there) I also filled out some other CC paperwork, and organized my messy teacher-bag.

Then I went out to play with my pooperdog and clean out Cujo. He was VERY dirty and VERY happy to get vacuumed :) He also got a snow-bath last night... so he's relatively clean inside and out! Sherlock also played in the snow and lost his tennis ball somewhere... oh well, we have 43 more :)

Then my mommy and I had quiche for lunch. MMMMMMMmmmmmm!!!! Lunch was followed by some lazy couch time while re-sewing buttons on my coat (it has taken me forever to find purple thread!) Then I took a short nap followed by some more productive paperwork stuff. Then my mommy made caramelized pork for dinner. Mmmmmmmmmmm again! And I did the dishes (I got the better end of that deal I tell ya!) Now I'm toasting my toes by the fire and occasionally going out to throw a stick for a dog who is having a ball in the snow (lots melted today but more is falling now!)

All of this productiveness was accomplished without getting out of my pjs :) Thus it was a very lazy and productive day!

MMmmmmm... sleep

So I drove up to the parent's house yesterday (Sherlock wasn't thrilled with the trip as there was a laundry basket taking up half his backseat). I helped Mom make two kinds of cookies (and made sure the dough was ok too!) and then we had home-made pizza for dinner. Yum! After dinner I was feeling very very sleepy, so I decided around 7:30 that I would go crawl in bed. I set the Ipod sleep timer for an hour and was asleep before it went off. I woke up a few times to roll over and go back to sleep and then got up about 8:30 this morning. Apparently I was very tired!! :)

Now there is a turkey cooking, my Aunt Barb is here to munch with us, and Sherlock is snoozing by the door (after a long walk and playing with a stick this morning) Its nice to be home with my family.

Love to all! :)

Dear Mr. Craig...

Your new movie kicks some serious Bond Bootie :) I went and saw it with my friend Marci last night (with a diet coke, some hot tamales, two peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, and some rainbow nerds) and it was fantastic! I think even the biggest blow-things-up action fan (Psst... Kyle) would say that this movie was about as action packed as you could get.

My only suggestion for next time, on behalf of the females in the audience, please give us a little more than one scene with your shirt off!!! :) If you need any help rehearsing don't hesitate to give me a call!

There will be days like this...

Today sucked. I know I can't control what other people do. I know things won't always go the way I want them to. I know the kids will have off days. But when you have a sucky day, none of that really makes you feel better.

At least tomorrow is Friday.

The Best Balloon Factory!

hee hee.... now you are wondering what in the world??? :) So every Tuesday I leave school a bit early to get back to CC for seminar. Supposedly these are mini-classes that are on very helpful topics (classroom management, ELL students, RTI stuff) --

Let me just interrupt myself and say that teachers have more freakin' acronyms than anyone else on this planet! RTI, CBM, ELL, ILP, SCR, CRAZY! Its ridiculous!!

Anyway -- so sometimes seminar is helpful and sometimes its a colossal waste of my time... and today was more towards the time wasting, but it was still fun because of the activity we did. I think the point of it was to compare individual work with division of labor/production line. However, me and my super-fun partner (that would be "my super-fun partner and I" if I was being grammatically correct, but I'm not) kicked all the assembly line peoples booties! We made a total of 16 super-duper-fantastic hot air balloons (out of paper of course) in 15 minutes. We even had happy face balloons, holiday theme balloons (Christmas and Halloween) and seasonal balloons (flowers, fall leaves). We rocked :) I think we may have messed up the presenter's point... but oh well :)

On the not-so-random side of life... both meetings on Monday went very well, and today I got my review of my first formal evaluation (from last week) back and I did very well. Yay me! Two days down, three to go!

I think I'm ready!

Well the pupper and I enjoyed a wonderful meander through the woods. He chased some squirrels, I got my fresh air and sunshine. Then he practiced his stick-rescuing skills (aka went swimming in the reservoir) while I read a few of the books our reading groups are reading this week (Sarah, Plain and Tall and The Chocoloate Touch). Then it was off to the grocery store where (my mommy will be so proud) I saved almost $7 with my cupons!

When we got home it was a toss up between an early dinner or a late nap, so I voted for the early dinner and made myself lamb, salad, and butternut squash. MMmmmmmmm!! Especially the squash. Kyle use to say I would turn orange because of all the squash I can eat! :)

For the last couple hours I have been working on lesson plans for this week and I think I'm ready (for Monday and Tuesday at least!) Time to do a quick Sunday evening cleanup of the house and then to bed early!

Student Teachers... Start Your Engines....

Ok... so while I love getting hugs, warm fuzzies, drawings, etc from my kiddos... the one thing I HATE getting from them is GERMS. Lots of our kiddos were absent last week, some of which went home from school sick... so with all the stress I guess I wasn't that surprised that it hit me hard. Thursday I taught back to back lessons at the end of the day and by the time the kids were going home I had an awful headache. Well then we had a meeting and a make-up parent-teacher conference, and by 5:00 I told Sharla I had to leave. Driving home was a test of will not to throw up... and I made it home and back out to the park (poor Sherlock really had to go!) before I lost it. Sorry park-garbage collector :( So I didn't go to school on Friday... just was miserable, slept, and did some laundry.

Luckily I felt mostly all better by Saturday morning and I was up early and very productive (finished my big project which is due Tuesday) so I was able to cross that off my list. This morning I got up and met Sharla at a coffee shop downtown where we went over the plans for this week because:
Monday - I have an interview with the district (not my first choice, but you never know...) and then a pre-observation conference with the principal.
Tuesday - I am taking over writing for the rest of the week (and my project is due, but its done!)
and have a meeting with my CC advisor about how my first formal lesson went (last Tuesday)
Wednesday - I am taking over math for the first time and being formally observed in writing by my CC person
Thursday - I will be teaching the entire afternoon for the first time: math, writing, and science
Friday - I will be formally observed by the principal of my school in writing

I feel like I have a good handle on the preparation... the endurance is what I am worried about. Luckily the week after that is only Monday and Tuesday and then I will be headed to the rents house for a big Mommy-Thanksgiving-Dinner :)

So right now I'm off to enjoy an afternoon hike with my puppy dog (he has been very patient with me feeling poopy, so I promised him a good long romp this afternoon) and this evening I will be finalizing my lesson plans. So if you have time in your busy lives this week.... send some good thoughts my way! Lets hope I make it through Friday!! :)

Yay for pizza and friends and Disney :)

So my friend Marci made me come over to her house and eat pizza, watch Sleeping Beauty, and get hugs from Nathan (the toddler). Her husband Jeff is even making it his mission to make me laugh as much as possible.

Just goes to show you that the bads make the goods feel gooder.
Or something like that :)

Back to the crap tomorrow, but for this moment... life is good :)

The Blahs

I don't know why people say they have the blues. Blue is such a nice rich beautiful color. I'd say I have the greys, but I also have a lovely, soft, smokey grey kitty cat, so grey is not yucky either. So I have the blahs. Too much work (not the actual teaching part, the extra song-and-dance I have to do) too much stress, too much crappiness. And sadly my immediate friend-support system is all going through the same thing, so its not like they have tons of time to help me with my crap because they all have their own crap to deal with. The weather today didn't help either with its not-quite-cold-enough-to-snow cloudy foggy wet blahness. Overall I'm just in a funk. So if you have extra de-funkifier handy... send it my way.

Oh well. Tomorrow is another day. Maybe there will be a little more sun and a little less blah.

The Week In Review

Hi All! Sorry for the lack of blogging. This student-teaching stuff keeps me busy! So I thought I would [avoid doing my homework for a while and] give you an update on Polly-life. Overall it was a good week, for me and for America (yay Obama!). I had a good time last Sunday with Aunt Barb. We walked around Old Colorado City window shopping and then had lunch. School this week has been good too. So far I have taken over Math Calendar (a daily hodge-podge of math review done with the whole class for the 20 minutes between specials and recess) Cursive (kind of a pointless skill to learn these days in my opinion but whatever!), and Science. So far everything is going really well! The science unit is on rocks and minerals... which if you followed the teacher-book is kind of boring, so I have been mixing it up with other activities to keep them interested. Thursday we explored the property of texture by making rubbings (paper over the rock and then rubbed with a crayon) of the different rocks. The kiddos were super excited about that :)

The not-so-great part of things is still the high level of stress I'm dealing with... and it doesn't really revolve around the teaching stuff. My school has hoops they want me to jump through (paperwork, meetings, observations, etc) and CC has their hoops they want me to jump through (projects, meetings, observations, etc.) and of course they both think their hoops are the most important. Now I know there are always going to be hoops to deal with... but right now I feel like I have to be the world-record hoop-jumper-througher just to keep up. Blah.

Luckily this weekend I have a 3 day weekend! Yay! I think its because Veteran's Day is Tuesday so our district just decided to change it to Monday. Anyway, I am using it to sleep, enjoy the sunshine (stupid time change) and get some work done. Yesterday I had a very lazy morning followed by a nice hike with the pupper. Today I am (hopefully) going to be getting a lot of work done and then take a break to go hang out with the CC crew at Marci's house for a while. And tomorrow I plan to get snow tires on Cujo.

The highlight of my week this week was one of my kiddos saying "Ms. Frostman, I am glad you don't have to go to class anymore and you can be here with us all day!"

I Boo the Time Change

OK, so I boo the time change. Who decided that you get more light in the morning and less in the evening? Who cares about light that early? Its too early to be up anyway, so if you are up, who cares if it is still dark? What about in the late afternoon when I am actually awake and want to go hiking with my puppy dog and its already getting dark?!?! They try and pass it off as a good thing with this extra hour of sleep stuff... but I still think its crap. So there.

Parents and Parents and Parents... Oh My!

So the kiddos had no school on Thursday and Friday because we had parent-teacher conferences. So after 19 sets of parents and/or extended family and 4 translators (some of the families don't speak English).... we were pooped. Thursday we were at school from 7am to 7pm. It was a loooooong day. Friday we snuck out around noon and I came home and took a nap :) It was a good experience to see Sharla work with the individual families. She was really great at changing her style/verbiage of explanation for the people she was talking to. I do think that she occasionally avoids confrontation... there were a few things I thought could have been addressed with a few parents -- but on the other hand she kept everything very positive and upbeat which made the conferences run very smoothly. There are still three that need to be rescheduled for after school sometime. Anyway, overall it was a much better experience than I had anticipated... and I'm not dreading the next round as much!

Today I woke up at 7:30, got up and played with the pupper for a bit, fed him and the kitty, took a shower, and then thought.... I'm sleepy. So I went back to bed :) After a few more hours of snoozing and snuggling with the big fat grey kitty, I got up and took the pooper out to the park. He played ball while I graded some papers. Then I went to get my haircut! My friend Marci recommended a salon, so that's where I went... and it was a nice place. The lady was super-nice and I like my new haircut lots :) And she fixed it all cute for me too! After the haircut it was off to REI for some perusing of good REI stuff. I bought myself a new water bottle (purple!) and found lots of other good things that I want for Christmas!

When I got home Sherlock took me to the dog park where he played a lot with a very cute yellow lab puppy. Now we're home and having a relaxing evening! Tomorrow my Aunt Barb is coming down from Denver to visit! yay!

Oh.. and one last thing. Today is my friend Stephanie's birthday! She is one of my oldest and bestest friends... and we have spent many a birthday watching movies, eating pizza, and having sleepovers. So while its a little hard to keep up that tradition since I'm here and she is in KY... I still am thinking about her today. Happy Birthday Steph-ner-ninny!!