Back to life...back to reality

During my commute to school this morning, I kept singing one line from a late 80s/early 90s song, "Back to life...back to reality...." That's it! Those are the only lines I remember, but I thought it was fitting since today was the first day of school for me and the thousands of others up here in KC. Technically, I have been back to work for two weeks now due to new teacher meetings and then all staff meetings. I have to say that I am LOVING my new school here! No offense to KHS because I do miss that school and most of all my friends at that school. However, here's a list of the things at WCHS I do enjoy:

1. Even though we start at earlier at 7:25, I am out of school at 2:11!! I would still have 50 minutes to go at KHS.

2. *Most* of my classes are much smaller than they were last year. My largest class is 26, and my English III classes are tiny at 13 and 18.

3. Power of I--this is such a cool concept!! As a "Power of I" (Incomplete) teacher, my students do not earn Ds or Fs. If their grade is below a 70%, they have an I in the class. This I never changes to an F--it stays Incomplete until they make up the work. What does this mean for me? I don't collect pidly daily assignments--I group them together. Students are REQUIRED to do EVERY assignment for the class. There is NO such thing as NOT doing an assignment. WOW! What a concept!! These kids are well-trained! They stay after school for mandatory tutoring if their grade becomes an I, and the parents support it.

4. This school has BEAR time--Become Excited About Reading. Every M/T/F during the first 15 minutes of 5th block, the entire school stops and reads. PE, music, science, etc. They all do it! You know I am loving that!!

Now for the not-so-cool stuff:

1. I hate my parking spot. I love the idea that everyone is assigned a spot, but I have to parallel park for mine!! YIKES! I'm just hoping that I'm the first one in my line to arrive every day so I can just pull on through.

2. My room (Yes, I did get my own room!!) is BLAZING HOT!! The air is on and it's 80+ in my room. I've been told it only gets worse when the heat is turned on. Today I bought a personal fan to sit at my desk or file cabinet. We'll see if that helps.

3. I'm teaching six classes--two each of English I, III, and IV. The classes went incredibly fast today because the first day was only a half day, but I know it will take a while to adjust to this new bell schedule. I thought KHS's bells were weird--WCHS's are even weirder. M/T/F we have 7 classes, W is 1, 3, 5, 7 and R is 2, 4, Focus (like Chief Time), 6 with an early release for teacher collaboration. SO, what does this mean for me? My conference time is 4th block. Notice there is no 4th block on Wednesdays. Wednesdays will be an incredibly LONG day for me with no break at all except the 21-minute lunch!

I'll leave you will pictures of my room--both Before and After shots.

Mamma Mia!

For my final "free" day before the school meetings begin on Monday, I treated myself to a movie--"Mamma Mia!". I have not seen the musical live on stage, so I have nothing in which to compare this movie. However, if the stage version is anything like the movie version, I HAVE to see it!! The movie was so good--great characters (powerful voices), AWESOME ABBA songs, meaningful conversations, and a lesson learned by Sophie, the daughter. When I was watching the movie by myself, I just kept thinking that I needed to see this with my Mom. This would have been the perfect mother/daughter movie, and I wish I could have spent this day with her.

One of the lessons Sophie tries to learn in the movie comes from finding out who her father really is. She desperately wants to learn his identity and thinks that by finding out who her dad is, she will then learn who she really is. Towards the end of the movie, this message began to hit me--my dad lived long enough to walk me down the aisle, see me graduate from college, but he won't be around for all of the other big stuff in my life. He won't be around to witness the birth of a future grandchild, and in turn, his future grandchildren won't know him. I don't know why, but I was really missing him while I was watching Sophie up on the big screen interact with her would-be dads. I guess the pain will go away, but hopefully my memories of the good times with my dad won't.

On a COMPLETELY different note, I found out yesterday (and it was confirmed today) that I will have my own classroom for this school year! I had resigned myself to the fact that I would be sharing a room and traveling to different rooms to teach. I had even set up a mini-classroom in the garage to house all of my stuff that I will need this year but wouldn't be taking with me. NOW I have to pack all of that stuff back up, find boxes, and haul all of it to school with me next week. If I had known this, I would have done all of that this week! Yikes! It doesn't look like my room will be perfect for the first day of school--there is no way I can do all of that between now and when school actually begins. Wish me luck!!

Four days left of my summer

That's right...only four days to go before I head back to school for meeting, more meetings, and just possibly more meetings. I have two weeks of meetings before school even begins on August 18th. Where has my time gone? Why are there so many meetings???

In honor of going back to school, I went shopping for my usual "back to school" outfit (or two), plus I did a little something to my hair. I've wanted to color it for a while now but didn't really know what I wanted. So yesterday I took the plunge. I still didn't know what I wanted until the hairdresser and I just started talking. She showed me different colors and talked me through the process. Once she started, I was ready to roll! After two hours, I walked out looking like a rock star!! I don't think these pictures do my hair any justice--it was late, we'd been painting all night, and I was tired!

On a sadder note, I received word this morning that my good friend Kodi and her husband Trai had to put down their dog, Max, last night. I cried when I heard the news, and I cried again when I read her blog dedicated to her buddy Max. I know how much that dog meant to her family (they gave him a home when no one else would), and I cannot imagine the pain they are in today. Apparently, his stomach turned inside out and upside down and sideways due to "bloat." They put him down and buried him in the backyard underneath his favorite tree. To Max! I love you Kodi!

Disney memories

While Todd and his dad work on our basement, I wanted to get a new blog out today. You might want to sit back and relax because this may turn out to be a LONG blog. I just finished scrapbooking our Disney World trip from LAST summer (bummer we didn't go anywhere this summer...) this weekend, so I wanted to show off some of my favorite pages from the album. This is my first album of completely no Creative Memories materials, with the exception of some paper, adhesive, and a few (very few) stickers. I am trying out a whole new world of scrapbooking, complete with chipboard, stamping, brads, eyelets, etc. This album even became an ABC album, even if a few letters were represented more than once!

Creating this album really made me miss my Disney World, and when Todd and I talk about going back, our faces just light up like we are two little kids. So...we've decided we are going back next summer for our 10-year anniversary, staying on-site in a nicer hotel in which we've stayed in the past. Todd is going to work his butt off to make enough commission so we don't have to pay for any of it out of our own money. Can it be done? If Todd has anything to say about it, he will work, work, work.

Sorry about the picture quality--I'm not quite sure how to take GOOD pictures of my pages yet.

This is the intro page to the album:

The second page is one titled "You Know You're Obsessed With Disney..." and includes several items like "when you have a Mickey Mouse tattoo and want more."These pages are part of a two-page spread for our dinner out to Chef Mickey's. I included the receipt because I wanted to remember that we paid $60.00 for two dinner buffets!

I am particularly proud of my Epcot page because it is my first true attempt at sewing on a scrapbook page. Thanks to Kodi (Thanks Kodi!!), I know how to draw my stitching first, and then sew on top of it!

I "scraplifted" this idea for the Everest rollercoaster page from one of my magazines. I don't remember who/what magazine it came from, but I loved the idea!

Over the course of our vacation, we found 27 "hidden" Mickeys out of several hundred! I know we will be on the lookout from now on when we visit, but for now, these will have to do.

I tried my sewing technique on this page, but I'm thinking after completing this one over a course of a FEW days, I won't be trying it again any time soon. It was a cute idea, but it took FOREVER to finish!! I wanted to it to look like it had been done sloppily on a machine instead of painstakingly by hand. Did I accomplish my goal?

I love these two pages simply because they are all about the castle! I don't care how many pictures of Cinderella's castle I already have, I will continue to take pictures of it every time we go! (That's also one of my "You know you're obsessed..." items too.)

When Lisa and I went to Disney World last summer for the Reading conference (Thanks Springfield School District!), we watched Mickey's show at Magic Kingdom. Todd did not want to stop and watch it, so luckily for me, I'd already taken several pictures!

For some reason, I just love these two pages of Nemo -n- Company. The colors just popped out at me, both in the pictures and characters. (It doesn't hurt that Finding Nemo is one my favorite Disney movies either!)

I love this page because when we rode "Pirates of the Carribbean" I took a nice picture of Johnny Depp's character, Jack Sparrow. Another nice touch is the Pirate Mickey!

Another sewing job on Mary Poppin's page--this time I used the stitching as my journaling lines. I was/am proud of myself on this one because the idea came from my own head!

I wanted to include the Tower of Terror page just because of the picture. If you can click on the picture to make it bigger, look at the woman in the second row! Classic!

Probably like most people, we had random pictures of different spots at Epcot. I made a collage with five pictures and surrounded them with flags of different countries. Although it's one of the busiest pages in the album because there's no white space, I liked the contrast to other pages.

Our last page in the album is a "Top 11 Things We Learned on Vacation" list. Hopefully you can click on the page to read the list.

I hope you enjoyed seeing some of our Disney scrapbook pages. I guess now it's time to move on to the family album. I'm so far behind in it that I haven't scrapbooked anything since Dad's funeral. Yikes! Maybe if we can get my scrapbook room downstairs finished, I'll get some more work done.

Cirque de Soleil: Saltimbanco style

Last night Todd and I had the pleasure of going to see another Cirque de Soleil show (our first being La Nouba at Downtown Disney). We met up with his two cousins, April and Aaron, and their significant others, Chuck and Sarah, for a night on the town. We had a great time! The show was really good--full of bright colors, beautiful music, and gymnasts/performers you would not believe. While Todd and I agreed it was not as good as La Nouba, we thought for a traveling Cirque, it was the best it could be. I understand they probably can't do all the phenomenal ariel acts because they can't/don't travel with that equipment. Still, it was worth the money to see this type of show. I'm now definately a Cirque fan for life!

Last night after we got home, Food Network was showing a Challenge show(we love to watch those!), and guess what the challenge was? The chefs had to create cakes showcasing Cirque de Soleil La Nouba! Seeing this show made us miss La Nouba and DisneyWorld that much more, so today I ordered the La Nouba DVD and soundtrack. What a geek!!

Racing...Baseball...Family...what I love about summer

Ahhh, summer...how do I love thee? Let me count the ways:

1)I don't have to get up early in the morning! I have been able to sleep in most mornings since school let out, and while I am loving it now, I know it will come back to bite me later when school begins again. (Sleeping in = Staying up late = Sleeping in = Staying up later--Are you seeing a pattern??)

2)I can scrapbook as much as I want. Of course, it would be easier if my scrapbook room was ready to use, but since it's not, I have taken over the living room. I actually got quite a bit finished this past week--I've been working on our Disney album from LAST summer, and I think I am halfway done. I will post pictures on here perhaps later this week.

3) Drag racing at Topeka usually signifies the beginning of summer. This year I tagged along with Todd and his dad for the first time and LOVED it! I know I have blogged about this already, so I'll make it short and sweet. Just look at my favorite driver Dave Connelly!! Isn't he yummy? I know it's hard to tell from the picture, but I know he was just as happy to see me as I was to see him.

One of my favorite things to do, as you already know, is take pictures. I love playing with the settings on my camera, and I have wanted to take this shot now for a long time. While I don't remember the exact settings, I know I slowed the shutter speed way down to 1/30th of a second or so. When the cars took off, I followed them with the camera. Voila! A blurry crowd, and a (semi) clear race! 4)Todd and I took his parents to see the Cardinals play when they came to town at Kauffman Stadium. Albert Pujols is Todd's favorite player, so we tried to get there early enough in hopes of getting his autograph. No such luck--no one is giving out autographs, but we were standing close enough during batting practice for me to get this shot. During this game, I didn't get any close-ups of my boy Yadier Molina.

5)It's been tradition for several years now for my family to get together over the 4th of July. We usually go see Firefall in Springfield and just spend some good quality time together. Over the past two years our plans have changed due to Mother Nature. Because of the early rain and subsequent fields o' mud, Firefall was pushed back to Sunday this year. Did that stop us from having fun? No! We went bowling instead!! I love to bowl, and Todd and I don't do it as much as we'd like, but when the family gets together, it's a blast! I wanted this picture below because that's my nephew Adam who just turned 21 this past March. We were supposed to meet up in Memphis shortly after his birthday, but he couldn't make it. I never got to buy him his first "adult" drink! At least I made up for it a bit--we both had drinks at the bowling alley! I can't believe how grown-up he is at last! Notice how white I am??

I am sure there are more than five reasons I love summer, but for now, I'll leave with my favorite picture of the fireworks at Firefall 2008.

New header...new world

Notice my nice new blog header?? I created that all by myself!! I would be so impressed with myself right now, except that little header took me about two hours to do. Kodi introduced me to a whole new world of digital scrapbooking, how to find free templates and kits online, and how to even make my own blog header. Thanks Kodi!!

I do want to try to make my own digital scrapbook page sometime--I might try it later today or tomorrow--but part of me doesn't want to give up on the paper scrapbooks. I love the thought of having my own scrapbook room downstairs, and I don't want to give that up. I could see how scrapping digitally might be faster once I really know what I'm doing, but I just have too much scrapbook stuff to go all digital. What would be nice is to become a "hybrid" scrapbooker--one that uses the combination of digital and paper. We'll see if I can even get through my first digital page before I entertain that thought!

Kodi and her family came up yesterday to spend the night at our house before they flew out to Orlando this morning. We all had such a good time just talking, watching Emmarie and Soze (our dog) play all afternoon. Bonnie, Kodi's friend, and hopefully a new friend of mine, came over too to see everyone while they were up here in KC. Now I just have to wait until next Sunday to hear all about their trip to Disney World and imagine myself in their shoes!