Nothing Much, Just Life

I wish I had more interesting things to say.  I would love to come on here and write profound things every day, but I'm not that exciting a person. :)
I hope 2012 has been good to you so far.  Time sure does seem to go by faster and faster; we're already halfway through January!  I've gotten back into my school groove and am hard at work completing the eighteen million assessments we have to complete with our children.  So far this week I gave five 2 different minute math "probes." I love that word-probe- think it is just a really ironic word for educators to have to use. :)  I completed my spelling assessment with all the kids, completed the DIBELS testing and the next math chapter pretest with my second graders. I also started the lovely TRC reading assessment this week.  I did all that while continuing to teach some actual real lessons too. :)  Now all I have left is to finish the TRC with ten kids and administer two grade level writing prompts.... and there seems like there should be something else I should do..... oh, yeah, wait for it-  TEACH! :)  I almost forgot that's what it is I started out to do- be a teacher. :) hahahahahahaha  In all seriousness though, I am happy with the testing results for my kids so far.  No one will be able to label me a "bad teacher" this year- thank God!!!!

Everything at home is good too.   Robert is hoping to buy his first vehicle today; he's going to with Rob to make an offer on a used truck in a little while.  By May, he'll be back on the road with his job and gone most of the rest of the year (out of town on the weekdays travelling and working- home hopefully some weekends).  Barbara was able to get two classes this semester and is still working at McDonald's while hoping for more gainful employment with more than two days a week soon.  She found out she has enough college credits to substitute so she's started that ball rolling.  I hope she can get some sub jobs before too long. :)  Matthew is looking for work and starting to move on as it looks as though his ear will not cooperate and will prevent him from following his dream to join the Army.  I know it's been hard for him, and I'm praying that he will be able to find his place in the world soon.

My mother-in-law was in the hospital pretty much all week this week.  It was hard for Rob to be here and not know really what all was going on.  I was trying to scramble some grocery funds together for him to go home, but she's home from the hospital and hopefully doing better.  Please pray for his mom that she will continue to heal and feel better. 

What other minute details can I bore you with? :)  I made my third grocery cart seat cover this week for a coworker's baby shower, and it looked really nice! :) I'm actually getting better at sewing!  I'm almost ashamed of that first one now that I finally figured out a tricky part of the pattern/directions (thanks to my awesome hubby!), but thankfully the last two have looked nicer and probably not too many people see all the mistakes I know about.  I'm so thankful for the nice machine I was blessed with last summer and the push to get back to sewing my cousin gave me!  I wish we had an extra room where I could set up a little studio.  I haven't done as much with card making or crafting this past year, and a large part of it is there is no place to do it unless I just permanently take over the small kitchen table and clutter up our kitchen.   My next project is to make a walker bag for my mother-in-law.  Barbara and I found a really pretty quilted fabric for her, and I hope to get it done this week. Someone at work said I should open up a shop.  I think about that a lot more than anyone knows, actually. I would love to have a small gift shop where independent crafters/artists could sell their stuff- including me, of course.  I just don't have any idea if that's actually a good idea or how to go about finding out or getting started. 

Barbara, Matthew, and I are doing an after school craft club still, and we started paper mache snowmen this last week.  We used small styrofoam balls as our base and I think they're going to be really nice when we get done.  Now I need to start practicing (in my spare time) how to do origami and kirigami because I have to be able to teach the kids how to do that in a couple weeks!  I have a couple books for my research; I started that over break but I didn't have the paper with me to try it out.

Well, I have probably put you to sleep by now.  I should get my grocery list finished and get on out the door.  I have a TON of assessments to score this weekend and data to enter into excel forms.  Report cards are due Friday too, and I have projects I need to do. 

So bye!  Hope January brings you something wonderful!  Love from NC!
Beka :)