New PJ's

This post is really just so my mom can see the new PJ's she bought Kailey, on Kailey! She was really sweet and found some footed PJ's and sent them in the mail. I have been having trouble finding 12 month footed PJ's and was finally resigned to the fact that my baby is not a little baby anymore that can wear footed PJ's. But my mom found some, and now I can go back into denial of Kailey's real age! Yay! Haha. Here are some pics of her in one pair of her new jammies!

Wordle

Here is a fun thing Casey showed me how to do. You go to this website and type in the URL of your blog and it creates this wordle with the words from your blog that you use the most. The words that are the biggest are the words you use the most. Something to try just for fun!

Whew! What a week!

By the time Tuesday got here this week, it felt like it had been a month since the weekend! I had so many school/student issues this week it was insane! First of all, I had a student return to me after moving districts the second week of school. We are now about to begin the 10th week of school, so he missed a lot. In the time he has been gone he has been caught in the electrical closet, set a roll of TP on fire in the bathroom, stapled his hands together, and the list goes on! He has really bad OCD and we are having to be extremely patient with him. I feel really bad for him because he is a really sweet kid, that definitely has major issues. Needless to say, it has been a stressful week dealing with that alone!

I ended up having to write 3 office referrals this week, which is insane! I haven't written any all year, and now 2 in one week! One was because a student yelled the Lord's name in vain at some kids because he got frustrated. (poor baby...too bad he has been taught that is how to deal with it!) Then this other student was told to spit his gum out twice in 1st period, once in 2nd period and then he STILL had gum when he got to me in 4th period. That is defiance if I have ever seen it! Then today, a student was caught cheating on the spelling test. I felt really bad because he started crying. I hate when they cry...that is why I like middle school because they usually don't care if they get in trouble and they rarely cry. It was really sad, but what was I to do??

All of this madness was topped off by the decision I made to quit watching my most favorite show off all times, Grey's Anatomy. They had to go and put a "lesbian" relationship in there. WHY DO THEY ALWAYS DO THAT??? It makes me SO MAD! That is DISGUSTING! I just can't support it, so I gave it up. But it was hard!

Anyway, enough of my whining. It has been a rough week!

But...there is always a bright side...Kailey is getting so close to walking! She has been standing on her own all week, and today I got her to take a couple of extremely tiny baby steps until she got scared and sat down. I am so excited though, I bet it won't be long now! And her first Fall Festival is tommorow, where she will get to be a butterfly. How fun! Why can't all week be the weekend?? It makes me soo much happier!

Crazy video!

This has absolutely nothing to do with my family and Kailey, but I was looking at yahoo earlier and this video was on the home page. Check this out! It is soooo crazy!

The Merry-go-Round

Last weekend while our family was in, we also went up to Waco to the Heart of Texas State Fair. My brother-in-law David has family that owns and operates a gordita stand there! (And they were so good!) So here is how last Saturday went:

8:00 Began cooking for brunch.

10:30 Hosted Southern Living at Home Brunch

12:30 Babies were gone all morning and needed to go down for a nap!

3:00 Leave to go to the Pumpkin Patch and take pictures (switching outfits once while we were there..)

5:30 or so we arrived at the Fair

So needless to say, Kailey was not in a very good mood. She was screaming, and inconsolable, which is not like her. We walked around for a bit, but nothing was working so Casey's mom had the idea that maybe she would like to ride the Merry-go-round. We weren't sure if she would be allowed to ride it since she was so small, but they said we could ride it together. It was great! She LOVED it. She squealed as the horse went up and down and had a blast. I was so glad Casey's mom thought of it! Here are some pictures of Kailey's first Merry-go-round ride! (Excuse the outfit. As I said before..it had been a long day!)

Fall Fun!

This past weekend Casey's sister (Kenya) and her husband (David) brought our nephew (Caden) to visit! We hadn't seen him since he was born so we were really excited to have them visit! Caden is so sweet and growing so fast! We took the kiddos to a pumpkin patch to take some pictures of them in their Halloween costumes and Thanksgiving matching bodysuits, that their Gran bought them. They turned out really cute, so I thought I'd share them with you!

Here they are just looking at us like we are nuts!

It took everything we had to get the babies to stay sitting upright! Kailey kept almost falling over from the weight of her wings, and Caden can't sit up yet, so we had to prop him with a diaper bag! Then, Kailey decided to taste some of the hay!

And here are some pictures of our sweet little butterfly!

10 months old!

Can you believe it? Kailey is 10 months old today! It has truly gone by soooo fast! She still continues to make us smile every day and she is such a tremendous blessing in our lives! Her latest accomplishments are:

-Growing seven teeth!

-Attempting to stand alone

-Really wanting to grab for and eat table food (even if she can't!)

-Walking with her push-toy all over the place!

-Jabbering constantly

-Smiling and Laughing all the time!

Here are some pictures of her sleeping in the car yesterday:

Here are some pictures Casey and I took of her today after church. She would not hardly look at the camera because she was so facinated with all the grass she was sitting on! (She even decided to taste some, as you can see!)

Pictures are In!!

Some of you may remember when I got those really nice pictures taken of Kailey, back in July. It seems like it has been forever, because it took so long to get them back! Because of Hurricane Ike, my photographer had to evacuate and so it just took forever for her to get settled back into her house enough to where she could get my pics to me. It was definitely worth the wait! They turned out so cute! I am probably not allowed to scan them and post them, so I did a lame-o thing and took pictures of the pictures! haha It looks silly, but at least you can pretty much see how they turned out! The photographer was Lindsey Moore and she did a fabulous job!

Discouraging end to the school day

My day was going so great at school (as most Friday's do..). Today was the end of the first six weeks and I actually got all my grades done and submitted right before sixth period! I was so impressed with myself and it is such an accomplished feeling. Then I got discouraged. Yesterday and today my students have been taking this new-fangled test called a "TCA Benchmark". Basically it is a miniature TAKS test that my students will now have to take at the end of every six week period. This in itself is mind-boggling because I do not teach for the TAKS test until March and April. Right now we are focusing on writing projects, prepositions, and genre. All of which, were not on this "TCA Benchmark". So the kids have to sit there and read 3 passages and answer 16 questions about these passages. I, of course, have been asking them the main idea and author's purpose of the stories we have been reading in our genre unit, but just out loud. I have not done a "main idea" lesson because that is not part of our unit. So anyway, I go to grade these dang tests and only 44% passed. That is discouraging, but when I really think about it, it's not. I mean I haven't taught them how to read the passages, or how to answer the questions. That is why it is so absurd they are even having to take it in the first place! Anyway, the thing that is discouraging to me is that my results will be compared with the 2 other 6th grade English teachers. One of them will probably be similar to my results, but then the other will have blown us out of the water. The main reason for this is that she has 2 Pre-AP classes with 25 GT identified students. I have 1 Pre-AP class with 2 GT identified students. I can hand those two kids a jiblet of paper and they can create something amazing--my point being YOU DON'T HAVE TO TEACH THEM ANYTHING FOR THEM TO "GET IT". Unfortunately even though we have pointed out to my principal 3500 times that the classes aren't even he says they are. So I am so upset that I am going to be compared with these other teachers and be "failing" in the eyes of whoever looks at this test. So basically, if I had to summarize my rambling thoughts, I am going to have TAKS anxiety at the end of every 6 week period now instead of just in April. FUN TIMES!

I apologize for being so negative, but I am sooo discouraged! On the bright side, Kailey is doing well! She had her first "snack time" at daycare the other day. It was so cute to think about her being big enough to do that! She is almost 10 months old. Crazy! (Was that good enough for a positive spin? I hope so because it's all you're getting! haha)