TV, Amelia, Wii Fit--Just a Variety of Subjects

I had barely started my teaching day yesterday when the daycare called to tell me that Amelia had a fever...a grand fever of 100.3. Apparently some kind of fever bug is making its way through her classroom, and the symptoms are a fever and nothing else. After scrambling to make some lesson plans for the rest of the day, I picked her up. She acted fine and played when we got home. We even had lunch with Darryl.

And because she has to be fever-free for 24 hours, I stayed home with her today. I do love Amelia's daycare and realize their rules about this stuff are the same as every other daycare's rules, but she really is fine.

(Edited to add: This post has taken me three days to write, if that is any indication of the craziness of my life this week. I went to school yesterday--Wednesday--only to leave after 6th period because Amelia had another fever. And now we're home again today.)

So I have a little blogging time. I'm going to post about random things that have been going on.

TV. I haven't blogged about TV in forever. I don't watch nearly the amount I used to (is that a good thing?), and really when I say I "watch" TV, it means I have it on while I do other things like laundry or lunches, or I have a back-up of DVR'd shows that I have to make an effort to watch in one sitting. (I stayed up until 1 in the morning watching 1 episode of Friday Night Lights and 3 episodes of Glee. Priorities, people!)

First, if you are not watching the new show Modern Family, shame on you. That show is hilarious!! The ensemble cast is incredible, and the writing is smart and funny. It has restored my faith in sitcoms.

Second, my latest obsession is Glee. When I first started watching, I didn't fall in love with this critics' darling right away. I couldn't figure out what it wanted to be...a farce? a parody? a soap opera? a comedy? And then I decided just to sit back and enjoy the ride. (And maybe the show got better as it went on?) I also downloaded the soundtrack, and now I've decided that Matthew Morrison, "Mr. Schuh," is my new celebrity boyfriend.

Third, Grey's Anatomy is AWFUL this season. I keep tuning in because I am hopeful it will get better, but really, it's bad. I'm annoyed.

Fourth, Lost is returning. This show exhausts me on so many levels. I'm loyal to it, but I am kind of glad it is ending after this season. It makes my head hurt.

Amelia. Every day she is doing new things and picking up new words and expressions. Indulge me while I share a few...

--She likes to drive her Disney princess figurines in the back of her farmer's pickup truck, like so:
--She claps and cheers after "Somebody to Love" on the Glee soundtrack. (That's pretty much what we listen to ALL the time in the car these days. I have a tendency to obsess over one CD at a time.)

--The other day when Darryl picked up my cell phone to make a call on it, she said, "No, Daddy. That's Momma's phone."

--She loves to read her books and say her numbers.

--She is doing lots of "pretend," and that is fun to watch. It's interesting to see what's going on inside that noggin of hers.

Wii Fit Active. My latest fitness attempt has been the Wii Fit Active. I've been pretty faithful with my 30-Day Challenge. I like it because every day is something different, and there have been days that I have been sore because of the workout. It's a good solution because I don't have time to fit in a visit to the gym, but DVDs bore me because they are the same thing every day. It's a good solution.

Wrap-up. I know this post was random, but that's the way I roll these days...do what I can when I can. :)

First Haircut

On Monday, we took Amelia for her first haircut. We went to a place called Pigtails & Crewcuts that specializes in cutting kids' hair. The place was very cool, with airplanes and cars and firetrucks for the kids to sit in while they had their hair cut. They also gave out little treats and dum-dum suckers.

Amelia did great. We didn't have anything drastic done; she just needed to have it evened out some in the back. Here are a few pics:



She's enjoying her pigtails and her sucker in that last shot. And she looks so grown up to me there; it makes me sad. :(

Restoration

Forgive me for the lack of blogging. I'm not even going to elaborate on how incredibly busy school has been lately or how I'm already behind and it's only January because I'll just get in a funk about it. So on to better things...

The week before last, I had some ALONE time. Darryl really needed to go to Florida to take care of some family matters (nothing "dramatic," just burning land for future planting and the weather conditions have to be just right and so on and so on). I was going to be leaving for my scrapbooking retreat that Friday, and Darryl wasn't 100% positive that he would be back in time for me to leave Friday, so he took Amelia with him. They left on Tuesday, so that meant that I had three straight evenings of alone time. Me. In the house. By myself. Now don't get me wrong; I missed Darryl and Amelia terribly, increasingly more as time went on. But I'm not going to lie--I did enjoy some solitude.

Then, on Friday, I left right after school to go to Glen Ella Springs for my friend Blayne's annual retreat. I'm not going to elaborate on the details because I did last year. The menu, the experience, the whole thing was the same, and it was wonderful. I worked on a project I am doing called Project Life (the objective is to take a photo a day for a year). I also made a mini-album about Amelia's birthday party, and I finished an album I had started about my trip to Creative Escape in Arizona back in August. It was a very productive time as far as scrapbooking goes, and I enjoyed meeting up with the same ladies again.

I think I actually "ahhhhh"-ed out loud when I saw this sign in the middle of nowhere.

This photo was taken at 1 in the morning Sunday, so I look a bit rough. It was pouring outside, so we kept on scrapping until the rain let up.

This is me with my friend Blayne, the morning after we had been up until the wee hours.

The weekend was technically my Christmas present. After going on this retreat last year, I told Darryl the best gift he could give me is this little getaway. It was definitely awesome!

A Snow Day Late and a Dollar Short

Yeah...I'm a bit late in posting photos from our snow day last Friday. :)

Anyway, I was extremely surprised that we got enough snow and ice to shut down school last Friday. In fact, the roads were icy enough that Darryl couldn't even get to work. It was a nice, unplanned day that we had together.

Now, I'm not going to glamorize it; we had a bit of cabin fever later in the day.

Here are a couple of photos of Amelia walking in the snow. We didn't really build snowmen or anything like that because she didn't have any gloves, and she really just seemed to enjoy walking around in it and hearing the crunch of it under her feet.

I also baked cookies (not because we needed them, but because it seemed like the thing to do), and we had fun playing with Amelia. I wish we could have at least one snow day a year!

This made me sad

While he had pretty much all but admitted his steroid use in court testimony several years ago, Mark McGwire's admission makes me sad. I'm glad he's coming clean now and admitting his wrongdoing, but it still makes me sad.

I, like everyone else, was caught up in the home run record chase between him and Sosa back in the day. At the time, my students joked with me because I always used McGwire as an example in my mock thesis statements and mock intro paragraphs that I showed to my class. One class even promised they were going to get a life-sized poster of him for me. I didn't really have a crush on him; I just thought his accomplishment was inspiring and that he seemed like a good guy.

I'm not saying he is no longer a good guy. As I said, I'm glad he owned up to his wrongdoing. But his admission definitely casts a shadow on the magic of that baseball season. :(

The Help

I'll get to the point: This book is the best, most powerful book I've read in a long time.

What is even more impressive is the fact that this is the first book from the author, Kathryn Stockett.

I'm a little late in reading this; I think the book came out early in 2009 and has been on the New York Times Bestseller List for quite a while. You might already know what it is about.

If you don't, here's an overview. Set in the early 1960s in Mississippi, The Help is about two "black domestics" who team up with--and develop a friendship with--a young, white, fresh-from-college aspiring female writer who wants to tell their stories of what it is like to work for white families in a very racially divided community. The book is relayed from multiple viewpoints, and it is at times touching, at times horrifying, at times hilarious...but most of all, it feels authentic. (This is why I never liked the show Dawson's Creek. High schoolers do not talk like that, people. But Friday Night Lights? That show is dead on.)

As for this authenticity...in the afterword by the author, she explains her own affection for the black woman who helped raised her. Stockett is honest in claiming that she can never truly know what it is like to be on the other side of things, but she tries to understand.

I absolutely love Southern literature. In my first year of college, I was fortunate to have one of the best English teachers I ever had--she reminded me a little of Julia Sugarbaker on Designing Women--and she talked so enthusiastically about authors like Eudora Welty, William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, and Bobbie Ann Mason that I picked up every book she recommended and read it fervently from cover to cover. The Help reminded me why I love the stories of the South.

Done Remodeling...For Now

Okay, my new look is complete for now. I had wanted to do a fancy header (the title area) complete with some photos, but it wasn't worth the hair I was about to pull out of my head.

I made these changes:
--I streamlined my look by going back to two columns.
--I organized my links.
--I updated my links and took out links to my friends' blogs that no longer exist. (Tim...why? Why?!?)
--I set Amelia on the path to her 3rd birthday.
--I updated my photo.

I plan to do more of these things:
--Post more frequently.
--Talk more about teaching.
--Show some scrapbooking projects.
--Appease my family and document our lives by talking about what we're doing at home.

I hope you keep reading...and I hope you start sending me more comment love. :)

500th Post--And All I Have to Tell You Is...

This is my 500th post! It seems I should have something really exciting to tell you, but all I have to offer is this:

My blog renovation isn't complete. I'm trying out some different things. I'll let you know when the new "look" is complete. :)

What's going on here?

Monday was my last day of vacation (it actually was supposed to be a work day for teachers, but because of Georgia teacher furloughs, we had the day off...without pay, of course). After all the traveling we'd done, I really just wanted to stay home. Amelia stayed in her PJs all day and played with her toys.

She is really cracking me up lately with some of little antics. For example, look at this pic. She has her fairy color/match cards on the table, with her princess and Sesame Street figurines placed in the same location on top. Any ideas?

A Little Blog Makeover

I'm going to give my blog a little TLC this weekend--update my links, maybe get a new look. It needs some sprucing up. Stay tuned!

Bobby Bowden's Last Game

We finished up our holidays by going to the Gator Bowl New Year's Day. Darryl grew up a diehard FSU fan, so it was only appropriate that he would be there for Bowden's last game. We also decided to take Amelia, not really sure how that endeavor would turn out. She was actually pretty good; I took her into the VIP lounge area during the 2nd quarter so she could run around a bit. (We're not really "lah-ti-dah" people who always get access to the VIP areas; we just happened to have some really good seats for this particular game.) She loved the halftime shows (let me say that the Marching Chiefs might well be the best dadgum college marching band in the nation--their routine to "Thriller" was incredible), and she got antsy only at the end.

And did I mention it was rainy (in the beginning) and cold? In Jacksonville? What's up with that?

Here is what might be my favorite all-time pic of Darryl and Amelia:

Good ol' Bobby B.

It was definitely a wonderful time!

Catching up on Christmas

Because of the photo uploading snafu I experienced earlier in the week, I never really talked about our Christmas Eve/Christmas.

Christmas Eve, my cousin (Vicky) and her husband (Robert) came over for our gift exchange with them and for a little dessert. I made a Delta Mocha Chiffon Cake with Coffee Buttercream filling and fudge icing. It was delicious...and it's a a lot of work, so I figured it was worth a photo.
And oh yeah...I even garnished it with chocolate covered coffee beans. Fancy!

There's not much else to report about Christmas Eve. I decided not to do cookies for Santa (gasp!) because I knew Amelia wouldn't understand it, and she would likely have a meltdown when I wouldn't let HER eat the cookies because they were for Santa. Girlfriend loves cookies. We'll do that next year when maybe she can understand the concept a bit better.

Anyway, Christmas morning was lots of fun! We didn't get up until about 7:45 or so. Amelia wasn't quite sure what to think, but she definitely enjoyed the shopping cart Santa left her!

Later that afternoon, Amelia enjoyed her first baking experience by making "Happy Birthday, Jesus" cupcakes with Nana. Our church's children's department--after focusing on "the real reason for the season" all month long--gave each child a birthday pack with cake and frosting. Amelia and her Nana had a blast!
And here's a little photo of the three of us:
After dinner, Amelia stayed home with Nana and Pawpaw and Darryl and I went to see The Blind Side. Originally, we were going to just go to the 7:00-ish movie, but it (and every other movie we were interested in seeing) was sold out. Oddly enough, a Japanese steakhouse nearby was open, so we ate dinner there (it was yummy!), drove around and looked at Christmas lights, and then finally went to the movie. (And the movie is really good--definitely worth all the hype it has been getting.)

It really was a wonderful Christmas, beginning to end!

My Word for 2010: Fitness

My favorite scrapbooking guru, Ali Edwards, does this thing where every year she focuses on a word for that year. The word should be something that you really want emphasize, achieve, etc. You get the point. Anyway, I've never done that before, but heck...why not give it a try?

My word for 2010 (that would be twenty-ten, for you, Jen C.) is fitness.

Obviously, that means physical fitness. Every year I profess that this is going to be the year for getting in shape. Losing weight. Exercising more. I think, though, that sometimes I set standards that I can never live up to. So here it is: I want my pants to be less tight. I want to make healthier food choices, and I want to get some honest-to-goodness exercise in there somewhere because I want to feel better.

But I want to be more emotionally fit as well. I tend to be a perfectionist in some areas of my life. I need to let that go. I feel like I need to "do it all," and I need to let that go as well. And I need to do things that recharge my batteries--spending time being quiet, reading a good book for fun, spending quality time with Darryl and Amelia, baking, scrapbooking, and so forth.

I want to be more intellectually fit--reading more for pleasure, being more in touch with world events, putting a bit more research and time into my lesson plans, communicating more with other teachers for new and fresh ideas.

I want and need to be more spiritually fit. I need to read my Bible more, pray more, be more invested in church, do more for others.

Oddly enough, as I'm listing all these things, I don't feel overwhelmed. I almost feel as though one thing is going to lead to another; in a sense, it all seems to be about balance.

So hello, 2010! I'm looking forward to a fresh start!

I'm Leaving You Behind, 2009!

I'm not too sad to leave 2009 behind. It wasn't my favorite year. The year got off to a rocky start for my friends and me (Kim, if you're reading this, here's hoping that you don't spend New Year's Day with ServPro!), and I never really felt like 2009 was "my" year.

That being said, it wasn't all terrible. I finally got to realize my dream of going to London; I had two fun scrapbooking excursions; I enjoyed getting to see Amelia's personality develop, and she usually makes me belly-laugh at least once a day; we've enjoyed times with family and friends; and I've gotten to teach a mostly great group of students for two years in a row.

This New Year's Eve, we're away from home. I can't remember being away from home on NYE, well, ever. I'm usually taking down the Christmas tree while watching Dick Clark/Ryan Seacrest on New Year's Rockin' Eve. This year, though, I'm in a hotel with Darryl and Amelia, and I just finished eating some Starbucks Mocha Frappaccino ice cream straight from the pint. Not a bad way to spend an evening. (I would tell you where we are--and if you are my Facebook bud, you know where I am--but I'll save my mother's sanity by not disclosing our location. I'll tell you later, though.)

Anyway, the year 2010 seems like a good year for new beginnings, so on that note, I'll create my next post...the good ol' New Year's Resolutions (not to be confused with my Christmas Resolutions, which I detailed in my previous post).

Farewell, 2009!

Christmas Festivities--Part 4 (Coming Soon)...But I have Christmas Resolutions!

For some reason, I'm having some issues with uploading photos, and my Christmas Eve/Christmas Day post would not be complete without photos, so I'm going to hold off on posting about it until the problem is fixed.

Anyway, we had a wonderful Christmas. I don't know that Amelia is quite old enough to "get it," but we definitely had fun watching her open gifts and play with her toys.

Well, more about that later. After this week, I've decided to make some "Christmas Resolutions" for next year. Here they are:

1. I will not wait until the week of Christmas to take my child to see Santa Claus. (I'm going to do my best to find a non-mall Santa where the wait isn't an hour and a half.)

2. I am going to have a photo Christmas card next year. For two years in a row, we have not gotten our act together in time to do a Christmas card. Next year, my friends, is going to be different.

3. I am going to arrange my classes so that I do not have a bazillion essays coming in to me the last few weeks before break so that I can experience the full joy of the season well before school gets out for the break.

That's the thing about teaching--yes, it is great to have two weeks off, but I feel like I have to fit in all the fun in those two weeks. Last week alone, we visited Santa, went to Alabama, baked sugar cookies, rode the Pink Pig...it's too much at once. I also watched about five holiday movies in there. Next year I'm going to try to do some of that stuff earlier (because I love it all!!) instead of trying to cram it all in over just a few days.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas!

Christmas Festivities--Part 3 (Santa and the Pink Pig)

One vow that I've made after this week is that I'm not going to wait until the week of Christmas to see Santa Claus. On Monday, we finally made the trek to the mall (yikes) and waited in line an hour and a half with an uncooperative 2-year-old so we could get a picture. Here's one pic of Amelia and me, and it pretty accurately captures the mood of the moment:

I don't have a scanner, so I can't show you the official pic, but here's one that Darryl took with his camera.

On Wednesday, Amelia and I set out with our friends Michelle and Sophia to ride the Pink Pig at Macy's. We had to wait about an hour total, but it was a much less harrowing experience than the wait to see Santa.

Amelia and Sophia in line:

Amelia and I on the ride with the "old" Pink Pig in the background:

And here's a pic of the four of us with Priscilla the Pig:

Afterward, we went to Chick-fil-a. It was definitely a fun outing. The jury is still out on whether or not I want The Pink Pig to be a yearly tradition, but now we can at least say that we've done it!

Christmas Festivities--Part 2 (Christmas in Opp)

Last Saturday, we made the long journey to Opp, Alabama, to see some of my dad's family. It was a little over four hours each way, but we just decided to buckle down and do the trip there and back in one day. Amazingly, Amelia was great for the whole trip--what a trooper. Anyway, we had a great time with family, and it was totally worth the drive.

Here's Amelia on the way there. She pretty much amused herself by looking at books, talking, and singing.


Once we got there, we all visited and caught up with one another until lunch was ready. Check out this table o' cakes and pies!

Amelia particularly enjoyed playing with John, who is four years old. Amelia and John are about the same age difference as John's dad, Jody, and I are. We had a lot of fun playing together when we were younger, so it was kind of cool seeing our kids play together so well.

Here's Aunt Winifred, playing Santa for our Dirty Santa exchange.


What a fun time!!

Christmas Festivities--Part 1 (Parties!!)

Friday the 18th--The 2-Year-Olds' Christmas Party
Friday afternoon, Amelia's daycare class had their Christmas party. It was very cute...most of them were dressed in their PJs, and they had a book exchange and ate snacks. I don't even know how many sugar cookies Amelia ate. The girl loves cookies. (So do I. Who doesn't?)

Waiting for her book (note how Amelia doesn't like to sit):



Looking at her new book:

Mmmm, cookies!!!
It was a fun time. After Amelia had finished her plate of goodies (of course she left the fruit and carrot sticks behind; she's not interested in those food groups), she grabbed her book and headed for the door. I guess she figured she had a book, she got to eat cookies, and that was pretty much a party for her. No point in wasting time socializing. :)

Friday Evening--High School Party
That evening, Darryl and I went to my school's party held at the home of one of our math teachers. Let's just say that apparently the husband of this math teachers has a lucrative business because that house was INSANE. At one point, I lost track of Tim (friends have to stick together in awkward party situations), and I actually had to text him to try to find him again...so that should give you and idea of the size of the house. Anyway, it was actually fun, not painful at all, and I won a $25 Barnes & Noble gift card. Not too shabby.


Okay...so in an attempt to be better at blogging, I'm trying to break down this week into smaller chunks. I was going to catch you up "thus far," but that was so overwhelming that I couldn't handle it. Stay tuned, for next I will be covering Christmas in Opp. You won't want to miss it.

Essay, essays, essays

Good grief. I have been grading essays for what feels like forever, which is primarily why I haven't blogged much. Here's the lowdown:

--I had 30 Honors essays on Sc@rlet Letter to grade. They took a sweet forever because they were TERRIBLE. (As a side note, let me add that much of my precious time was spent answering parent emails about the low grades. Sigh.)

--I had 26 AP essays on Sc@rlet Letter to grade. They were much less disappointing than the honors essays, but I was so sick of reading about SL that I wanted to pull an Oedipus and gouge my eyeballs.

--I've had to grade 30 essays so far on SL from my regular students. I should have about 20 more to grade, but that's how many kids decided not to turn one in this close to the end of the semester. Apathy, anyone?

--I now have about 100 Performance Exam essays from all these classes combined for me to grade this weekend. These are going to be quick, though; I'm reading them and slapping on a grade. End of story.

I've been switching up the colors of my grading pens just to keep things interesting. Green, purple, turquoise...it's the small things that keep me going.

Not the best week

This past week was not my favorite. Here is the bullet-point edition:

• Over the break, an alumnus of our school AND a current student at our school were killed in two separate accidents, so the mood (understandably) was very low all week. I didn't know either student, but one class of mine was particularly close to the boy who was the current student, and on Monday, I pretty much let them sit and grieve. (The accident had taken place the night before, so the shock was still new.) I'm not sure if that was the appropriate course of action, but they were in no shape to do anything productive.
• My students wrote essays on The Sc@rlet Letter this week. It never ceases to amaze me how much my students don't know about writing when they are in the 11th grade. The process was exhausting.
  
• Amelia has had two BAD tantrums this week that had us both in tears. Nothing like feeling powerless against a two-year-old.
• I had a parent send me an email with "attitude" when I gave her kid a zero for plagiarism. It really didn't bother me that much because the case is pretty much cut-and-dried, but still...it really gripes me when parents get 'tude with teachers.

Now we did have some excitement this week. Tuesday evening, in a series of events that will completely lose their humor when I try to relate them here (totally one of those "you had to be there moments," we gave my parents quite the show via Skype/webcam when a bird flew in the house. Amelia immediately scrambled in my lap and kept pointing at the ceiling shouting, "Bird! Bird!" Darryl chased it with first an umbrella and then a fishnet (he succeeded with the net), and afterward, she continued to talk about the bird. Every day she has mentioned it: "Bird? Outside?"

And today, we tackled a big feat: two birthday parties in one day. This morning we to a party for Anslee, one of Amelia's daycare friends, at an indoor play place that was very cool. It didn't have the bouncy jumpy inflatables, but instead had things like dress-up clothes, musical instruments, a splash area with bubbles, and the like. Very cool. Two hours after that one ended, we went to one at Chuck E. Cheese. I won't tell you what Darryl said about that place when we got back in the car, but I'll just say that both of us thought that place was INSANE. There were about ten parties going on, and there were kids everywhere. And then a big rat (Chuck himself) was thrown into the mix. But as I pointed out to Darryl, the birthday boy seemed to have a blast, and I guess that is the point, right?

We were exhausted after all the birthday fun, and I've tried to will myself to grade essays. I've gotten a few done, but I'm going to really have to get in the grading zone tomorrow. (Once I get in the zone, I'm pretty productive...it's the getting in the zone that's the hard part.)

To conclude this post, I'm going to show you two photos from today that are important to me because they prove that Amelia does have a little bit of me in her.

Here's Exhibit A: Amelia playing the piano and singing her ABCs.

Here's Exhibit B: Amelia does NOT like to get stuff on her hands, especially dirt or food particles. Neither do I. :) Notice how she is picking up the toy with the very tips of her fingers...that's exactly how I would do it.