Mama/Daughter Outing

Last Friday I took K to get her haircut.  Now, some might think I'm crazy, but I take her to Southlake to get her haircut.  There is a place there called Sweet and Sassy and it is beyond awesome!  I took her there for her first haircut - they do a big hoopla for the first haircut and I loved the way the treated K.  Their haircuts are still only $14 for 3 year olds and they add spray glitter, a little heart glitter thing for her face, curl her hair a bit, and give her a sucker after.  To me, K feeling that girly and special is worth the little extra drive.  Plus it gives me a reason to shop in Southlake.  :)

One of my favorite places in Southlake is the Vera Bradley store.  (Angels singing!!!)  Now, I wasn't introduced to Vera until college.  It just wasn't as big in Texas as it was in Louisiana back then.  Girl meet bag.  Girl fall in love with bag.  Girl has been hooked ever since.  :)  

So K and I headed in pre-haircut to kill some time.  I honestly had no intention of buying her anything until I saw the sweetest little purse design called Caitlyn.  Now, how do you pass that up when your daughter is named Kaitlyn and loves all things girly?  I lost all willpower, hence K getting her first Vera bag.  She loves it and has been taking it everywhere we go.  

Something tells me I have quite the shopping partner in my future!  :)  

Locker Tags

I haven't been up to my classroom in several days.  This is mostly because, believe it or not, it's not really that fun to take a 3 year old up in a MESSY room with no air for long periods of time.  Shocking I know.  My dad also recently had surgery, so I spent some time at the hospital and at my parents' house.  Luckily he is on the mend!  

So while I have been out of actual room, I've tried to take time at home when K is busy playing, napping, etc. to work on what I could.  I've almost finished making all the labels for my new binder spines, I've starting putting together my lesson plan binder for the year, and I made these locker tags.  I'm pretty sure I'm going to renumber the lockers due to the layout of my room, so I needed something to cover up the existing locker numbers.

Cutouts from Mardel + numbers cut with my Cricut + lamination* = new locker tags!

*Yes, I have my own little laminator at home.  I'm a total teacher nerd. ; )

Ahhhh....Freak Out!

Please tell me you just sang that title...if not then we can't be friends...okay...now go back and sing it and then we can go back to being friends.  :)

Ever had one of those days where you just want to scream into your pillow?

Anybody?

Bueller???

Well, today was one of those days for me.  I had my annual freak out moment.  It happened.

My poor, poor husband.

It all started when I was trying to sit still in a workshop this morning.  It's the first one that I've been to this summer and usually I'm pumped about going because adult conversation is beyond amazing when you spend most of your hours listening to the latest three year old drama about Rapunzel and Flynn.  Plus, I knew some of my old teammates would be there and I love them dearly.

Now, for the record, I think the presenter was a wonderfully nice lady and she wrote a pretty darn amazing math book that I plan on using a lot this year.  But I'm not programmed at all to sit still - one of the main reasons I don't expect it from my students either.  If a student has to stand up in the middle of their work I'm totally cool with that, because there is no way I could go without moving for long periods of time without driving myself crazy.

So - you've got the me not being able to sit still.  You've got the freezing temps in our professional development center.  And then to top it all off I answered a math question in a way that confused a whole lot of other people.

Sorry.  I can't help it that my brain just works a bit differently.  Get over it and move on people.  But one lady just couldn't let it go.  She made this scrunched up face and said my way made no sense.  Then we watched a video where a 3rd grader did the exact same thing I did.  Boo to the yah lady.  (I'm not sure what that says about my math brain if I'm thinking like a 3rd grader, but oh well.)

So I was not in the best of moods.  Luckily I was able to go to lunch with a dear friend who I haven't seen in a few weeks so that made my day better.

The calm before the storm if you will.  At least the calm had carbs...lots and lots of carbs.

I'm not sure when exactly the next part happened.  Maybe it was the heat.  Maybe it was the bad drivers around me.  Maybe it was the fact that I couldn't get Spotify to play over my car stereo like I normally do.  Maybe it was a fancy combo of all the little things.  But I worked myself into a pretty bad mood.

I'm driving K home from seeing my parents - my dad recently had surgery and we were checking in on him.  She started complaining about being hungry, so I called Cody to see if he was already home.  My plan was to pick up something on the way home for dinner - you know, working on that mom of the year award again.

I'm not exactly sure what Cody said, but something set me off.  It was something along the lines of where do you want to go or where do you want me to meet you.

Pretty normal husbandy type question don't you think?

But for some odd reason it set me off.  I wanted him to say, "Don't worry about it babe.  Let's go to (insert name of any Mexican place here)."

So I lost it.  Literally - yelled at the poor guy...in front of my 3 year old.

I know, I'm awful.

It ended up being this all out cry after I got the first few sentences out about how I don't have enough time to get my classroom ready.  I don't know where I'm going to put everything.  Blah, blah, blah.

I hung up the phone and cringed.  What did I just do?  I took out all my stress about my classroom on Cody and he didn't deserve it at all.

K had been quiet this whole time and heard everything, which I hate.  I gently told her I was sorry for yelling and asked for her forgiveness.  She just looked at me with her sweet little face and said, "I love you Mama."

Bless that sweet girl.

I hate that it happened.  I would like to say I calmed myself down and was fine when I got home, but I was still pretty snippy with my poor hubby.

But now that the big freak out has happened I'm hoping it's all better from here.  I still have so much work to do, but it could be so much worse.  I know I need to stop counting the things that stress me out and count my blessings.  I have far more of those than I even deserve.

Here's hoping I can do just that......because I do have another workshop tomorrow.....

Target Toy Clearance

Today was the day I've been waiting for - the day all the money saving mama blogs said that Target would put several toys on clearance for 70% off.

I first heard about this day last year when a friend I grew up with posted a picture of her finds and talked about how much money she saved.  I remember asking her about it via facebook and then quickly grabbing my keys and driving to 3 (yes, 3) Targets that night.  I came home with some cool finds for Christmas and some birthday presents.

Now, for those of you who don't know, Target does this twice a year.  Once in January and once in July.  They do this so that they can clear some space for the new toys coming in that season.  The markdowns usually happen slowly, but eventually all the toys they want to get rid of get down to 70% off.

So I was ready today.  Since it's Thursday K had school.  She goes Tuesdays and Thursdays in the summertime.  I normally take her about 9:30 in the summer, but because today was THE day I took her a bit earlier.  I hit up my first Target a few minutes past 8:00, and was finished with my fourth Target a little after 10:00.  Not bad if I do say so myself.

I was able to find a lot better things than I did last year.  When I added up all the original prices, it ended up being $213.  I paid $68.  I'm pretty darn proud of that!

I was able to get 3 upcoming birthday presents and 2 Christmas presents for some kiddos in my family in addition to some things for K.

I love a great bargain shopping trip!  I seriously get way more excited than I probably should.  :)

Retail: $213     Paid: $68

The Madness Continues

Painting - check

Organizing - NOT. EVEN. CLOSE.

In attempts to start the organizing process, I thought it would be best to start getting the big pieces of furniture in roughly the areas I wanted them to go in.  Have I mentioned that there is zero air during all this?  That's right - we painted with no air on.  So I went up late one night and started moving things around...again with the absence of air.

I managed to get the desks how I like them for now.  I'm going to stick to my Kagan "teams" and partners next year, so I kept that in mind.  I've never had desks before - I've always had tables.  I think I might like the extra storage desks have to offer.  We'll see.

So here's what the craziness looks like now!

There are zillions of little readers everywhere!  I'm hoping I can share the wealth and maybe keep some and "donate" to the bookroom.  Surely the rest of the teachers don't store that many in their rooms!

Change is a Comin'

This next teaching year will be very different for me.  Sherrod was my first teaching job and I taught there for seven years.  I loved every single year.  But this year after God basically yelled, "Hey!  HELLO?  I'm opening a door here for you!" I transferred schools to one closer to home and one where I can take K to kindergarten.  (It saddens me that her going to kinder isn't too far off!)

Sherrod was my work family for those seven years and I will miss it so very much, but it was time for me to make the move for my family.  I was already stressing about having to drop K off at another school and get to Sherrod on time....and I am NOT one of those teachers that can get to school five minutes before the bell rings.  I would be flustered for the rest of the day!  So, when this opportunity came along I decided now was the best time.  Who knows if two years from now if a school five minutes from my house would have any openings - let alone a first grade opening.

So Sherrod Elementary is now my work past and Little Elementary is my work future.  There will be some big differences this year I'm sure.  Sherrod was a Title 1 school and Little is not.  But as with every job there will be the good and bad.  Sherrod was awesome, but it did have it's tough and heartbreaking moments.  I'm sure Little will have it's ups and downs as well, but I'm excited to see just what is in store for me!  As always, I cannot wait to meet my new group of kiddos!  :)

But for now the BIG change for me is my classroom.  My room is very different than my room at Sherrod and I'm trying to slowly get my things in order this summer.  The first order of business was to paint.  The walls of my room were painted yellow and had accents of movie cameras and movie reels painted in a few spots.  Didn't exactly go with my jungle theme.  So, my amazing husband and I transformed the yellow and movie theme to a soft green like the one that was in my last room.  My husband did most of the work and I am so thankful for him!  I honestly think there should be some kind of support group for teacher spouses - they put up with so much!  :)

So, I'll keep posting pictures of the progress.  I can't wait to see the before and final after pictures!  :)

So some of my friends, my parents, Cody, and I moved most of my stuff to my new room.  The district moved some of the heavier things.  The teacher who left that room is still teaching first grade and took most of her curriculum because it was organized how she likes it.  So that means there is also lots of curriculum in that stash of stuff too.  Piled all in the center it looks a bit overwhelming! 

Lockers before - with stubborn daisy stickers all over!

We are now a daisy free zone.  :)

My crew about to start the painting process ;)

Movie camera before pic

Movie camera during pic

Movie camera after pic

Outlining

First coat - still so much yellow coming through

After 2 coats - that's a much better green!

Jackpot!

Everyone loves a good bargain, but when you put children's books on sale and teachers find out, you'd better get out of the way. :) I've been to enough Scholastic warehouse sales to know just how hard core it can be. So I was a little bit more than excited when K's school director told me of this little bookstore in Arlington going out of business. She told me one day as I was picking K up from school. She mentioned all the children's books were 50 cents, so honestly in my mind I was thinking they must not be that great, but she told me she had wiped them out of Eric Carle books. Well, if they had Eric Carle they were bound to have some other decent ones right? So I buckled K up and headed right to that bookstore.

Ummmm....MOTHERLOAD!!!

It was like I had stepped into a book shopping dream. There were tons of great books and sure enough all of them were 50 cents - even hardback. I quickly grabbed a basket and started my work of going though as many books as I could. I had a little over an hour until they closed.

My first shopping trip there is the first picture below. I ended up spending $33. I bought so many books for K, my classroom, and even my niece who loves Strawberry Shortcake.

So I posted the first pic on facebook and some of my friends went to grab some crazy bargains as well. My friend Chelsea went on Friday and the owner told her that they were bringing in more books from storage the next morning.

So of course I had to head back up there the next morning. Duh.

They were supposed to open at 10:00. but it being a family owned shop I went a little early and my instincts were right. I arrived about 9:30 and they were already opened. This time the shopping was a bit dirtier though. They had literally brought in bins from storage and they were quite dusty. But of course that didn't stop me from going through each and every bin.

My second trip I ended up spending $38. I still can't believe I got all the books pictured below for just over $70. It blows my mind.

Bloggy Blog Blog

Let's just face it....

I'm a horrible blogger.  

I have the best of intentions, yet somehow I never follow through with them...at least in the blog world. I'm not even sure who reads this other than a few friends here and there.  But that's okay with me because I honestly think this is more for me.

Some recent family events sparked my heart a bit and I decided I wanted to start a journal of family happenings.  Not so much one for my emotions and what not, but more of just a simple record of things that happen in our family.  So I bought this adorable little journal at the beginning of July and I keep it on my nightstand for easy access.   

For the record - I'm pretty horrible at keeping that too.  

But I have to ask myself - why do I want to journal or blog?  Sometimes it just seems so self absorbed. 

Then I go back to one of the blog entries when I was pregnant and suddenly my mind and heart are brought back to that time.  Things I thought I would never forget have casually slipped my mind, and I'm so very thankful that there are recorded somewhere.  

So I NEED to make it more of a habit to blog.  Maybe it's stupid stuff...maybe it's serious.  

Maybe I just need a blog "accountability partner" like Christians have for furthering their walk with God.  Maybe I need to just make it part of my nightly routine.  Who knows?  Either way I want to do it more often.  

I also want to blog about some of my teaching, except there is no way my blog will ever be like those over the top crazy awesome teacher blogs out there!  Where in the world do they get the time to do all that they do?  

Those chicks deserve capes to wear.  

For real.

Now, that won't be me, but I would like to record some classroom things here and there.  But I think I'll just tack it on to this blog...one more blog just doesn't make sense to have when I can barely keep up with this one and the one about Kaitlyn.  (UPDATE: I thought I could "just tack it on" to this one with the pages feature, but I was wrong.  So I did end up starting a whole new teaching blog.  Sigh) ;)

Let's see how long this lasts.....