First Week Done!

Whew! What a week! As you can tell, I haven't had much spare time to breathe this week! The first week of school always seems like it lasts for about 3 weeks. By the time Wednesday got here, I was like "Really? It is ONLY Wednesday??". Since 6th grade is the entering grade at the Middle School where I teach, I am always overwhelmed with all they have to learn! They don't know their way around the building, so after every class period they are like "where do I go??". The other crazy thing is that for some odd reason, when they print their schedules out, homeroom and lunch are not on the schedule in the correct place. So, they get TOTALLY confused! We have to teach them how to have a locker and all that fun stuff too. But despite all of these minor headaches, I LOVE teaching 6th grade. They are the perfect age! It is when they are old enough to be responsible (It doesn't mean they are; they just should be!) and they are not quite to that teenage attitute yet. (That comes in the Spring after they have their "Worth the Wait" program in Science!)

Overall, my students (all 88 of them) seem to be WAY better than my group last year. I sent home two papers to get filled out on the first day of school, and my team had all of them back within two days! Whoa! Last year it took two weeks! I have one class with 15 boys and 3 girls. I was petrified to meet them on Monday because just 2 "bad boys" and the whole class goes down the drain. Luckily, all 15 of them are the BEST boys and it is now my favorite class! They are so sweet!

So, even though I am hoarse from teaching all week, aching from standing all week, and exhausted...I am definitely thinking this school year will be one of the best I have had, if not the best! Keep your fingers crossed!

***On another note, Kailey seems to be really adjusting to going back to "school". The first week was rough, but this week went a lot better! She is having fun playing with her friends! This morning I had a meltdown (my first one though, pretty good huh?) because she has a small cough and stuffy nose and I wanted to stay home with her! But, she doesn't have a fever and was acting completely normal, so she was able to go to school and I had to also. I just hate moments like that, where I can't be a stay at home mommy when she needs me! :( At least we have a 3 day weekend! Hooray Labor Day!***

The Picture Game

Ok here is a fun "get to know your friends" post, as my friend Erin put it, when she tagged me to do it! Here are the rules: Take all the pictures right away (no cleaning up first!!!), and then tag three friends to do it too!

1. Favorite Destination
This is from our first family vacation to San Antonio! I wouldn't say it is my favorite destination of all times, but it is one my favorite places to go for a few days!




2. Self-Portrait
I look so wonderful on this Saturday evening!


3. What the kids are doing
Miss Kailey is asleep right now. No this is not from right now, I thought it would be rather rude of me to go in there and flash her into wakefulness, so this is one I took a month or so ago!

Addie is just chillin..


4.My closet
Yeah. It is really small and realllly messy!


5. The laundry room
A.K.A garage! Our laundry machines are in the garage, so it's not very cute!


6. The Fridge
Nothing special in there!


7. Favorite Room in the House
I love Kailey's room. It is just so beautiful to me..she seems to enjoy it too!




8. The Bathroom
When we moved into this house the sink and countertop were both yellow and it had a 70's light fixture and sheet mirror. We worked hard on completely re-doing everything, including putting a soaker tub with tile walls instead of the fiberglass shower! I didn't take a picture of that though, just our black-white-and-red shower curtain!


9. The Kitchen Sink
I just made a pie for our 95th anniversary church luncheon tommorow, so here are the remnants!


10. Favorite pair of shoes
They are red with white polka-dots. Really cute!



I am now tagging Jenn, Melissa, and Kelly! (If you guys want to do this, that is!)

First Day Back

Thanks to those of you who have been praying for me! I appreciate it, and need it! Things went better than I thought, leaving Kailey. She did pretty well yesterday at daycare, except when she got tired in the afternoon. She is used to taking 2 pretty good naps each day, and yesterday she only slept for 20 minutes! I think she just has a hard time sleeping there with so much going on. So needless to day, whenever she saw me she started crying! (Which ironically, was a good feeling!) I however, did not have a good day yesterday! The first day back is always so overwhelming. We go and sit in the library and get shown powerpoints and are lectured from 8:00-4:00. So I had the worst headache I have ever had in my life! I am 98% sure it was probably a migraine! So far today, it is going a lot better, at least physically! I don't have a headache (yet) and the stuff we are going over is going to be very beneficial! Hopefully I will get everything ready in time for next week. That is always the worry. I actually have dreams that I am not ready almost every night! So thanks for the prayers, and keep them coming!

Back to School :(

Well the dreaded day is here. I have to report to school for inservice, starting tommorow morning. Summer sure did go by fast! I have been getting pretty teary-eyed for the past few days just thinking about tommorow. I have really enjoyed being a stay-at-home mommy for the past couple of months. Kailey has learned how to do so many things while I have been at home with her, and she has developed such a personality. I actually think it is going to be harder for me to leave her tommorow than it was when I first went back to work after she was born. She loves going to daycare, because she is definitely a social butterfly. Really, I am the one who is going to struggle. I just hurt when I think about what will happen if she gets hurt, or if she gets really tired and won't stop crying. I am the only one who knows exactly how to make it better! I know they will get used to her again and figure her out, but I just feel sad for the next couple of weeks. I wonder if she will wonder where I am, and why I left her! At least Casey will be right down the hall if she gets really upset. That is my one sigh of relief. Other than that, I think I will be crying all the way to school tommorow if I let myself! Pray for me and all the mommies who are leaving their babies!

Playground Fun

We have a playground right behind our house. I have been waiting to see when a day would come when it is not 104 degrees, so that we could try taking Kailey back there. Well the past few evenings have really cooled down, so we tried it! She had a blast! She and Casey had fun swinging, and she and I had fun sliding! Here are a few pictures, and a video of her swinging with Casey!

New Discoveries

Kailey has been moving all over the place! I knew once she started crawling, she would be pretty hard to keep up with! She has started really being adventurous and crawling after us when we leave the room. It is really cute! Whenever she crawls down the hallway to find one of us, she gets soo excited when she does. Today she discovered the windowsill in the breakfast nook. She spent several minutes there, with Addie, just checking it out!






We have also begun giving Kailey table food every once in awhile. We have tried giving her spaghetti noodles and green beans, but she never puts them in her mouth! She just plays with them. This is crazy to me, because she puts everything else in her mouth immediately! One thing she is getting really good at eating though, is cereal puffs. They are the Gerber kind that dissolve in her mouth. It has been really cute to see her go from not being able to grab them at all, to getting pretty good at eating them. It is adorable!

Pictures

****Update**** Ok seriously. I am having the hardest time picking which pictures I want. All of my extra time these days is spent staring at these pictures or watching the Olympics. AHHH I am going crazy!****

A couple of weeks ago (On Kingwood Trip #2) I took Kailey to get her pictures made at this really great photographer's house. It was pretty pricey, compared to what you could get at like J.C. Penney's, but I just wanted to do it once, since I knew they would be so good! They turned out really cute, especially considering that the day of Kailey was teething and fell over twice! She was not in a good mood, to say the least! If you would like to see the pictures, you can view a slideshow of them that will be up for about 10 days. You go to www.fabulousoccasions.com and go to the portraits section. Click on the "clients" button. Then the password to view the pics is "kailey" in all lowercase letters. Let me know what you think!

Olympic High

Does anyone else get this like really excited feeling in their chest when watching the Olympics?? Because I get so excited! I feel like I have been watching them like 24/7 for 10 years. But it has only been 3 days! All I know is that every time Michael Phelps is about to swim I get SO excited. I am sure you'll agree that the 4 man freestyle relay from last night was the best thing ever! My mother-in-law is here with us this week, and her and I were watching (while we were waiting on Casey to get back from his youth trip. One of the alternator's broke in one of the church vans! I digress..) and both of us were on our feet and we like did this weird scream where we both screamed so loud and then immediately covered our mouths because Kailey had been asleep for like 2 hours and we didn't want to wake her. Right now, I am watching the mens gymnastics. It is also making me excited because I thought they were going to BOMB this year because the Hamm brothers had to drop out. They are doing SO GOOD! I am anxious to see what happens. Anyway, to sum it all up, I LOVE the Olympics. Anyone else in the same boat??

So sad!

Many of you probably heard about the accident with Stephen Curtis Chapman, back in May. For those of you who didn't, to sum it up, his 17 year old son accidentally ran over their youngest adopted daughter, Maria. She later passed away at the hospital. It was definitely really sad! I heard that they were going to be on Good Morning America this week, and I missed it! But, luckily we have You Tube! So, I found the entire interview, and thought I would post it on here for those of you who are like me and want to know a few more details!

Mish Mash

This will be a post of many random thoughts:

First of all, I just wrote this post a minute ago and Kailey deleted it, right before I hit "Publish". She loves the computer. I am having to fight her off right now! She thinks it is a game. Oh, and she says hi!

Second: Kailey is doing fine from "the incident". I probably overreacted, just a little bit, but it was just really hard not to, considering all the blood! But she is doing great and she has two new teeth on her top gum!

Third: Casey is out of town again this weekend. He took the youth to Rock the Desert in Abilene. It is always a bummer whenever he is gone. We miss him a bunch. On the bright side though, the Olympics start tonight, and after I put Kailey to bed, I can watch them interruption free!

Fourth: I just gave Kailey a straw and she actually started crying from excitement in her effort to crawl to me to get it. That is how much she loves straws!

Fifth: I had my first team leaders' meeting at school today. That's right, I am team leader for my team this year. It will be a bit more work, but not too bad. It will be ok because I am organized and like to know what is going on anyway. But it definitely got me to thinking about how school starts in 2 weeks. It is such a bummer to think about having to send Kailey to daycare again. She loves it there, but it is hard to be away from her all day. It will especially be hard now that I have spent all summer with her. But, I think it will be fine once we get back into the routine, because I do love my job.

Ok I think that is all. I just thought I would let you into my head full of random thoughts!

First Real Injury

I know I have said in the past that Kailey has started getting injuries, now that she is more mobile. But tonight she got her first one that drew a lot of blood. I think that I probably cried more than she did. We were at church in youth group, and always when the time comes for the Bible Study, I take her somewhere else. Otherwise she interrupts Casey with all of her chattering. Today we went into one of the Sunday School classrooms. She was having a blast. She pulled herself up with this black square table, and I was playing peek-a-boo with her. I would hide under the table, and then pop up. She just laughed and laughed. It was probably the hardest she has laughed ever. It was so cute! I love when she laughs. Well then tragedy struck. She got so excited that she kind of jumped and she didn't land on her feet. She caught her jaw on the table. I am guessing that what happened is her razor-sharp bottom teeth hit her top gums, based on where the cut is. Of course at the time of the injury I had no idea what was cut, I just knew something was because she was GUSHING blood. I mean it. Her shirt (which ironically says " I love to giggle") is covered in blood, my shirt is covered in blood. I RUN to the downstairs bathroom. By this time I am crying; She is not. I sit her on the counter and put wet paper-towells in her mouth. The bleeding stopped almost right away, but when I look into her mouth she has a big cut on her upper gum. By this time she is laughing and playing again. I am still crying. So, luckily tonight Casey wasn't doing the Bible Study and I compose myself to go in the room and get him. I had to angle Kailey to where nobody could see her front, because it looked like we had been involved in some sort of crime. Whenever I pulled him out I told him what happened and he is looking at her like "she's fine. she's not even crying" I am crying a lot by this time and I am like "I broke her. She is so badly hurt and it's all my fault". He thinks I am crazy. Maybe I am. All I know is I do not like when she gets hurt. I think she will be fine though, it was just really scary! I would post pictures, but who wants to remember this moment? Not me!

Straws

Kailey has developed quite a liking for playing with drinking straws! It has become a must whenever we go to restaurants and she starts getting fussy. I just hand her a straw and she becomes instantly mezmorized! She always twirls it in her hand and stares at it. It is so funny! My sister Allison came to visit us this past weekend, and she made a video of Kailey playing with a straw at lunch.



She literally played with this particular straw for nearly an hour. She even fell asleep with it in the car!

Our visit with Caden

Yesterday we went to meet Caden! We had a really good trip. He is so much more adorable in person. He is SOOO tiny! Kailey was never as little as he is. He is just so cute! Kailey didn't notice him most of the time, but there were a few times when he was crying that she was looking at him. I got some really cute pics! My sister-in-law also made a really cute video of Kailey watching Caden that I will post when she sends it to me. We had a great time, and are really thankful for our new nephew/cousin!

Kailey giving caden some kisses! So sweet!





I had some cuter ones of her looking at him, but he didn't have his diaper on, so they were not appropriate...





Kailey also had a really good time playing with the toys around the house. The family that is allowing Kenya and David to stay with them has 3 children and lots of toys! She loved this rocking horse a lot! She seemed like such a big girl compared to Caden! It was neat to see just how much she has grown.