I "heart" Donny. Yeah, that's right.

I'm A-OK with Donny Osmond winning Dancing with the Stars. You know why? Because I've always had a little thing for him.

It all started when I was very young, maybe 4 or 5, and watched The Donny and Marie Show. I loved that show. I also had a Donnie and Marie 8-track tape, with my favorite songs being "A, My Name is Alice and my Boyfriend's Name is Andy" and "I'm a Little Bit Country, and I'm a Little Bit Rock and Roll." (My friend Heather and I sang that last one in a talent show when I was in first grade.) If I'm not mistaken, I also had a Donny and Marie vanity set.


Let us fast-forward to high school, when I recorded "Soldier of Love" and "Sacred Emotion" from Rick Dees Top 40 and then included both of those on several mix tapes.

And maybe I've watched him as Joseph from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat on You Tube once or twice.

I know he can be a bit of a cheeseball. I know he's prolonging his career as long as he can by doing appearances on ET and DWTS. But the dude has undeniable charm and charisma, and he actually danced pretty well.

But here's what I like best about him: I love the fact that he's been married to the same woman since he was in his early 20s. And I love that he has lots of kids who seem crazy about him. I love the fact that when he was hot stuff in his teens and women were throwing themselves at him, he turned them down because he wasn't raised to "be that way." (I'm loosely paraphrasing from an interview he did with Oprah about a year ago.) And I love the fact that after he won last night, he immediately grabbed his wife from the audience and pulled her on stage with him.

The truth is...I like good guys. My favorite "rocker" is Bon Jovi, who, like Donny (have these two ever in life been mentioned in the same sentence before?), has been married to the same woman and admits to driving carpool. I married a good guy.

So...even though this season of DWTS was kind of bleh (aside from Kelly Osborne--how awesome was she?), I'm glad to see that sometimes the good guy finishes first.


(Edited to add...I started out writing this post kind of jokingly, and now that I read it over, I think I sound kind of swoony about Donny Osmond. I'm not. I just think he's a decent guy. But all the stuff about the 8-track and mix tape...yeah, that's all true.)

Amelia's Birthday Party

Yes, this is over two weeks late, but I thought I'd FINALLY post about Amelia's birthday party.

Last year, we had a very simple party with only a few family members, but I decided to be brave (or insane?) and do a full-fledged party this year, complete with about 14 kids aged 5 and under. However, I did make the very, very wise decision (if I do say so myself) to have the party at the indoor playground place that Amelia loves so much, so I didn't have to worry about cleaning up before or after and coming up with activities for the kids to do. That was great!

Here are a few pics:

Amelia loved this slide and pretty much stayed on this during most of the play time.

Okay, I'm including both of these (bad) pics so you can get an idea of how difficult it is to get a group shot of young children. This just makes me laugh...



One of my co-workers made the awesome Elmo cake!
One of my co-workers made the awesome Elmo cake!

The only downside to this party is that it was really hard to get the kids fed in the 40 minutes that we were allotted in the party room, so we ended up taking all the gifts home to open. I felt kind of bad about that, but I let it go. It was one of those "beyond my control" things. Amelia did have a big time opening her gifts, though.
It was definitely a fun time, and most importantly, Amelia enjoyed it. That's kind of the point, right?

One Little Indian

I'm going to make a real effort to post every day this week. I have all kinds of things to cover...Amelia's birthday, school stuff, my birthday, and more. My blog is definitely in need of my attention. My mother also wants more Amelia photos, so you might get one or two gratuitous Amelia photos each day. :)

Today I'm just going to post about, well, today. I'm so happy to be off from school this week. I have all kinds of things I want to get accomplished, but I'm mainly looking forward to spending time with this girl:


She insisted on wearing her little Indian headdress (does this qualify as a headdress?) most of the time we were at the house today. Funny girl!

Today I attempted to do a little Christmas shopping today with Amelia in tow. She wasn't bad, but my goodness, I had to chase her everywhere. When we got home this afternoon, we both just zonked out.

It was a good first day of vacation!

2 Years Old!!

It's hard to believe Amelia is two years old today. In some ways, it is hard to believe she has been with us only two years because she has filled our lives that much, but at the same time, she is growing so fast.

We took on a "real" birthday party this weekend, and I will definitely post some pics from that in the next few days.

Tonight, though, we went to eat at a local Italian restaurant, primarily so Amelia could have some cheesecake, her favorite dessert!



Happy Birthday, Amelia!! We love you very much!!

Sick Ladybug

Amelia is still under the weather, so she missed her daycare party yesterday, and we didn't take her trick-or-treating tonight. I couldn't resist dressing her up in her ladybug costume, though.

How pitiful is this ladybug?

On top of having a cold, she still has a black eye from falling into a bookcase at daycare.

Anyway, she started smiling a little bit, so we took a rare picture of the three of us.

And check out my first ever jack-o-lantern!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

Making lemonade

I'm home this morning with Amelia, who is sick with a sore throat and fever (but her test for strep came back negative, thank goodness). I was planning to be off today anyway, but not for this reason...

Darryl and I have had our house up for sale for almost a year now. This past Sunday, a couple looked at the house, seemed to fall in love with it, and made an offer. They arranged to come by Wednesday to sign a contract on it. I took off today so that Darryl and I could look at houses with a realtor while Amelia was at daycare.

Yesterday, around noon, the daycare called to tell me that Amelia had a fever. I called Darryl to see if he could pick her up, and we agreed that we'd just have to take Amelia with us to look at houses. Then about 30 minutes later, Darryl emailed to say the couple backed out of buying the house. Huge bummer.

We had already told ourselves a million times that the couple could back out, but we were still excited about the possibility of moving to a new house. It was impossible not to be.

Even though we are really bummed out about it, though, I realize this is all for the best. I remember that when we first moved to Atlanta, before I had found a job, we would ride around different neighborhoods, scoping out places we'd want to live once we were a two-income family again. We fell absolutely in love with a particular subdivision, and the lots were selling like hotcakes. I prayed earnestly that I would get a job in time to for us to buy our own lot there, but it didn't happen. After I got a job several months later and we found our current house, we went back to look at that subdivision. More and more houses were popping up there as people were building, and we realized just how crowded that neighborhood was. The houses were practically on top of one another. Some of the houses built first were already showing some signs of wear. We were really grateful that we ended up not buying a house there.

So we're keeping that experience in mind. As we looked at houses in the MLS listings, we didn't find anything that we were absolutely in love with, nothing that we feel like we're really missing out on.

In the meantime, I think I'll just make some lemonade out of my lemons and enjoy my day at home with Amelia. It beats teaching The Sc@rlet Letter any day. :)

(And cross your fingers Amelia is well enough to go to her Halloween party tomorrow at daycare. Because what is cuter than little kids in their Halloween costumes? Um, nothing.)

Happy Birthday, Darryl!!

I just want to wish a happy birthday to Darryl! We love you oodles and oodles!!

(And birthday wishes go out to Tim, too! Have a good one!)

Pumpkin Patch Fun

Yesterday we finally made our trek to the pumpkin patch. Burt's Pumpkin Patch, to be exact. I thought we would go the more low-key route by trying another, lesser-known pumpkin patch that a couple of people had recommended, but when we got to the "low-key" pumpkin patch, we realized it didn't really look like a pumpkin patch at all but rather a produce stand that had some pumpkins. (Seriously, we could have gotten just as good of pictures in front of the pumpkins at Publix.) We decided that we might as well join the masses at Burt's so we could get the must-take pumpkin patch photos.

We arrived at Amelia's naptime, and while she was a little ornery, she was a pretty good sport most of the time, especially when she was in a wheelbarrow. Anyway, here are a few of my faves:

On a mission...

I love this picture of Amelia and Darryl.

I love this pumpkin!

Fun times!!

Too cute! This is her mischievous expression.

I love this pic, too!
(I'm not sure why, but the colors in the photos are not as vibrant once I upload them to the blog.)

Anyway, we had a good time. I love fall!!

Gout and The Sc@rlet Letter--Both cause pain and suffering

I think I'm in a bit of a blogging funk. Is anyone even really reading this anymore? I think that most people have gone the way of Facebook, a fact that makes me a little sad because I miss reading new info on other people's blogs and don't feel very inspired to write much on my own. Instead, I know what people are doing through status updates like, "Just ate a pumpkin muffin. Now going to bed." It just ain't the same as reading a blog.

Anyway, as far as school goes, after the two-week craziness known as Midterm Week (with a wacky schedule) and Homecoming Week (another wacky schedule that also included two half-days), we're finally back to normal at school. All my juniors are reading The Sc@rlet Letter, and Lord, help me...we're only in Day 2 and I want to leave so I can work at McDonald's. I really do see a personal leave day in my near future.

On the home front...Darryl has gout. It's been fun for us both. He's in terrible pain (although yesterday he was feeling better and then even better today), and I've pretty much been his maidservant since Friday. I hate gout.

I'm leaving you with a pic of Amelia that I just downloaded from the camera. (It's from last Monday, my fall holiday that I spent cleaning our house for someone to look at. Of course the person isn't interested, so it was pretty much a wasted effort. I hate selling a house.) Anyway, Amelia enjoyed rummaging in my closet and wearing my shoes. Enjoy!

Weekend with Family

So I mentioned that I was going to be a weekend blogger, and then I skipped last weekend. Oops. But hey, I wrote three separate blog posts tonight!

Life always seems busy, but this time of year seems even busier. School plays, homecoming floats that need teacher supervision, midterms, PSATs. Graduation Writing Tests add to the usual busy-ness of work, and then on the home front, we are entering the time of year filled with birthdays for all three of us, Halloween, pumpkin patch and apple orchard visits, and so forth. I love it, though. :)

Anyway, this weekend was a holiday weekend for me, so the three of us went to Florida to see our family. We just hung out, ate good food, watched football (it was not a good football weekend for Darryl and me), and so forth. Late Saturday afternoon, my dad and I took Amelia to a local park to meet up with Darryl's sister, Ashley, and my two nieces, Madison and Avery. Here are a few cute pics:


The pic below of Amelia and Avery makes me laugh. Love the facial expressions!

Madison gets ready to slide...

Amelia also loved the little merry-go-round. (I thought about cropping this pic, but I like it the way it is.)

We even fed some little goats.


We had lots of fun!!

A Fall Afternoon

These were taken a couple of weeks ago on a crisp fall afternoon. Darryl was grilling steaks, and Amelia and I kept him company on the back patio. I snapped a few pics of Amelia because...well, just because.

A little Fall, y'all

I love fall. It is my favorite time of year by far. Here are a few things I love...


My little snack mix of candy corn and dry roasted peanuts--an awesome combination of salty and sweet.


My fall wreath on the door. (I'm not a big wreath person, but I do put one out for fall and Christmas.)


My little yellow mum hanging by the entry way.


My Pumpkin Pie Yankee Candle.

All I need is a Starbuck Caramel Apple Spice and a Paula Deen pumkin gooey cake...

Maybe a Weekend Blogger

I'm thinking I might just have to do my blogging on the weekends.

School + motherhood=very exhausted person

During the week, I feel so rushed that by the time I have a moment to sit down, I'm so tired I just want to go to bed.

This week was a doozy. First, I was beyond tired from Elmo Live on Sunday. (I was too tired to eat my dinner. If you know how much I love food, then you know I was really tired.) I already had a busy week that included meetings, lots of grading and class prep, and an honor roll party I was in charge of that was for 150 students. Then, on Monday, I received an email reminder that it was my week to do "teacher appreciation snacks" for Amelia's daycare teachers. And while that may not sound like a big deal, let's just call it what it is: a competition between the mothers to see who can produce the best tasting snacks presented in the cutest way possible.

I hate that kind of stuff.

Anyway, I produced an acceptable basket, I think, and now my turn is done for the year. Thank goodness.

So all that was going on, and the rain just seemed to exacerbate everything. It was a week I was glad to put behind me.

Other than that, school is going very well, knock on wood. We've had a nice weekend (well, except for Darryl, who is still very unhappy about FSU's loss), and I'm currently experiencing that Sunday-afternoon depression that comes with the realization that a full school week lies ahead. And it isn't really the teaching part I dread; it's the getting up early, fixing the lunches, and rushing through the routine that wears and tears.

Alas...

Sesame Street Live!!

Last Sunday, Darryl and I took Amelia to a matinee of Sesame Street Live: Elmo's Green Thumb. This was our first attempt taking Amelia to anything like this, and I consider it a success.

First, Darryl, who is extremely wrapped around his girl's finger, got tickets on the 3rd row. We both figured that if the action was too far away from Amelia, she would lose interest quickly.

She seemed to really enjoy it. She was either wide-eyed with interest, pointing and babbling to one thing and then another, or else she was dancing and jumping up and down.

I didn't get any great pics because the child would not stop moving the entire time. Here's a pic a tried to get with her in front of Elmo at the merchandise booth, but I couldn't get her to stop looking at Elmo long enough to look at me:

Darryl even tried to get a pic of both of us with Elmo, but you see who was the object of her affection:

Watching the action...

This next photo makes me laugh. The character Zoe came down to our row and approached Amelia. Amelia went to her (this is totally not something she gets from me, as I still have a phobia of life-sized costumed characters), but she was a little shy. I love the hand behind her back as Zoe left.


I do actually have a few photos with Amelia's face in them. :) This one is my favorite; I think it was taken before the show actually started.

We had lots of fun, and I look forward to doing this kind of stuff with Amelia in the future!

This little obsession hobby of mine

I've mentioned once or twenty times on this blog that I love scrapbooking. Love it.

At the end of last school year, after a horrible week that capped off a pretty yucky year, Darryl surprised me by registering me for the Creative Escape scrapbooking retreat in Phoenix, Arizona. That's right. Arizona. When Darryl decides he wants to give a great surprise, he does it right!

The retreat is held at Sheraton Wild Horse Pass Resort, and it feels like it is in the middle of the desert. Bazzill Basics paper is one of the sponsors of the event, and Heidi Swapp, one of the "bigwigs" in the world of scrapbooking, is also one of the hosts and teachers at the event.

Here's the basic concept: Each attendee signs up to be in one of eight groups. There are eight classes taught by eight different teachers, and in each class, attendees make a different project, using new techniques or products to apply to scrapbooking or any other type of craft project. So over the course of two days, each attendee goes to eight classes and goes home with eight projects. We didn't really scrapbook in the traditional sense, but we were doing what they kept calling "off the page scrapbooking," which is basically a craft project that features photos, but might not be a traditional scrapbook. (If you are not remotely even interested in scrapbooking, you have probably stopped reading by now, right?)

Anyway, the retreat was three weeks ago, the last several days of August. It was wonderful. Here's a little recap of what it was all about...

I actually flew out on Wednesday evening after school. That's a story in itself because I missed my plane (technically, I wasn't there in time to get my bag checked before the flight, and since I was carrying a bag full of Exacto knives and sharp scissors, carrying it on the plane was not an option). Then I had to wait a few hours for the next flight, and then we had to wait for another hour because of lightning on the runway. I finally landed in Phoenix at about midnight Phoenix time, and as I waited for my shuttle in the wait area outside the airport, I was keenly aware that even in the late-night hours, Phoenix is HOT.

By the way, here's a photo of the view outside my room. Pretty cool, huh?


Thursday
Thursday was more of a relaxed day. I got up and had breakfast at the hotel with my friends Blayne and Mary, who had flown out there on Tuesday. Then we did a little shopping. One of the scrapbooking megastores in Phoenix sets up shop at the resort, and this little shop was almost as big as one of the places I frequently shop at here. They also had all kinds of stuff we don't get in Atlanta. I had to practice some great restraint and willpower, but I did walk away with a decent stash. I think Darryl was a little concerned when I called home that evening and said, "It was understood, wasn't it, that I would be doing some shopping while I was here...right?"

That afternoon, our last friend in our group--Cathy--joined us and we went to a trunk show where we met our teachers and looked at some of their projects just to get a sense of their personal "style." While we met all the teachers, here are the ones I liked the best:

Below is a photo of us with Tim Holtz, the lone male teacher in the group. I know the photo of us is blurry (thanks to the stranger who took our photo), but I had to include it because his class was my absolute favorite. He is pretty well-known in the scrapbooking industry because of his line of scrapbook tools and inks and such. His class was the last one we took that weekend, so we ended on a high note.

And here's the project I made in Tim's class. It's a little mini-album that is titled "Moments from the Journey." I love it.


Heidi Swapp was also great. She spoke at one of the evening events, and her class was wonderful also. I am not a big cryer, but that woman had me tearing up several times as she talked about her passion for preserving memories and showed us lots of "little moments" in her kids' lives that she had scrapbooked through the years. One of the main reasons I even started scrapbooking was to preserve little memories of Amelia that I don't want to forget, so Heidi's message really resonated with me. Anyway, here we are with her:


The other teacher whose class I really enjoyed was Heather Bailey. She has a background in fashion and is known for her great bright retro-floral fabrics and sewing patterns, but she is now breaking into the scrapbook industry. I loved her stuff, and her class was lots of fun, too.

After the trunk show was over, we had dinner at a great Mexican restaurant and then went back to the hotel to rest up for the next two days.

Friday and Saturday
These were the days we actually went to the classes. Basically, each class was an 1 hour and 45 minutes long. We'd break long enough to grab a coke or some water and head to the next class. Then we'd break for lunch and go to two more classes before going to dinner. Both evenings, there was some kind of event after dinner--Friday it was another "project" that I stayed for just part of and then left early to go to bed, and the next evening it was a big celebration with lots of door prizes and a keynote speaker. It was a fun evening that capped off a wonderful weekend.

I also really enjoyed the time I spent with my friends. I knew Blayne pretty well before we went, but Mary and Cathy were more like acquaintances who I feel I can truly call "friends" now. Great ladies, great fun, great time!

Am I the Only Teacher Who...

...periodically asks herself if her students are learning anything?

...sometimes wonders if she understands the material enough to teach it effectively?

...questions if her essay grading is really fair and not some arbitrary mark on a paper?

...takes forever grading things and never seems to catch up?

...feels as though her lesson plans are stale?

Please tell me I'm not the only one!

(Can you tell I've had a rough teaching day?)

What's New With Amelia

I thought I'd share some Amelia cuteness with you.

First, here's a pic from a day when someone at her daycare managed to get her hair into a ponytail. I can never get her to stay still long enough to do anything with her hair besides put a bow on one side.



I could have cropped this picture below, but I wanted you to see how Amelia's toys have taken over the house. I was always one of those people who swore my living room would still look like an "adult" living room when I had kids. Hahahaha! Because we are a little cramped for space, we decided to turn our used-maybe-twice-a-year dining room into more of a play area for Amelia so our guest room could once again have a real bed in it instead of a sofa bed.


Here she is doing a little dance to Sesame Street:

And here she is, just running around the living room. Just a typical afternoon in the life of Amelia.

Indoctrination: Are You Kidding Me?

My AP students were assigned this book by M@lcolm Gl@dwell to read over the summer.When they returned to school, they had rave reviews for the book, some students even giving it such praise as, “This is one of the best books I’ve ever read!”While not everyone agreed wholeheartedly with Gl@dwell’s point—that the success of a person is based on much more than that one person’s efforts and motivation—the students still loved it.

At the beginning of our second day of discussion of the book, I showed a short video clip of an interview Gl@dwell had with Anderson Cooper. In the video clip, Gl@dwell hails Obama as an “outlier” and criticizes a comment Jeb Bush made once that he is a “self-made man.”(It should be noted that Gl@dwell doesn’t believe in anyone being “self-made”; his book argues the whole “it takes a village” premise.) After showing that clip, several of my students, convinced Gl@dwell is an Obama supporter, declared they no longer liked the book.

Are you kidding me?

Several days later, my colleagues and I got into a discussion in the teachers’ lounge about how we have fallen into this rut, for lack of a better word, where we can no longer have enlightened discussions in the classroom and discuss issues without misinformed opinions and bias. People are labeled either “liberal” or “conservative,” and if someone falls into the category different from what we are, we have no interest in what that person has to say.It’s frustrating to me as both a teacher in the classroom and a citizen in this country.

I was disappointed in those few AP students because I was hoping they would be, well, more enlightened. A book they had been raving about minutes before had suddenly fallen from grace because of the perceived “liberal” views of the author.

But after spending some time on Facebook last night, I realize I shouldn’t have been surprised by my students’ response to Gl@dwell. The apple really doesn’t fall far from the tree. My students are merely reiterating what their parents are saying at home.

I am frustrated/perplexed/annoyed by the reaction to the Obama’s upcoming address to our nation’s students. I saw statuses and comments along the lines of, “If my child’s school is airing that on Tuesday, my kid is going to be ‘sick’ that day.” I even saw one comment on a friend’s page (the comment was made by a “friend” of my “friend) that compared this to Hitler’s indoctrination of Germany’s youth.

Are you kidding me?

What do these parents think Obama is going to say? “Okay, kids, when you go home today, tell your parents that you want universal healthcare.” Perhaps “When your parents are asleep tonight, whisper in their ear, ‘More government! More government!’” or better yet, “Socialism! Socialism!”

Obama is supposed to talk about the importance of education, hard work, and perseverance. In all honesty, I think that is a message that all students can benefit from. I think of my 3rd period class; two-thirds of them (at least) come from disadvantaged homes. I’m also thinking about my minority students who probably don’t feel inspired by me (although I try!), but could possibly be inspired by a President who shares their race.

Ironically enough, many of these same parents who are threatening to keep their kids home are also arguing that the Obama speech is a waste of instructional time. So…giving up twenty to thirty minutes for a speech is a waste of instructional time, but keeping a perfectly well student at home for the whole day isn’t?

I have never stated my political preference here. For the most part, it is because I don’t think it matters. The bottom line is that regardless of whom I voted for in the last election—regardless of whom anyone voted for—the man who was elected President deserves respect for his position. He deserves to have an audience. To dislike Obama and his views is fine; we are all free to our opinions. But to boycott a speech about the importance of education simply because he isn’t your presidential choice? What is that teaching our children?

Basically, it is teaching them intolerance. Disrespect for opposing viewpoints. Closed-mindedness. I fear the rut I mentioned earlier is only going to get deeper, wider.

I’m one hundred percent for standing up for one’s beliefs. I’m also one hundred percent for being respectful. I’m one hundred percent for having different views from those of the President of the United States. But I also believe in hearing the message first before becoming paranoid about secret agendas and indoctrination of youth.

And frankly, if the youth I teach are indoctrinated to work hard in school and stay the course, that’s okay with me.

(FYI—Now that I have stepped down from my soapbox…My intent is not to offend anyone. It’s just that I really cannot believe the ridiculous things I’ve heard about this. I’m still reeling from the comparison to Hitler…)

In the words of Pink...

..."Please, please don't leave me."

I promise I will blog again. I actually have stuff to blog about. Right now, though, I'm making "Blueberry Yum-Yum" to take to a teacher potluck tomorrow (we have a half day, thank goodness).

So come back this weekend. I'll have a blog post waiting for you.