My Sweet Girls

I realized today that I haven't updated on Kailey and Makenna in quite some time. I know I post pictures of them on Facebook, but I haven't written about them in awhile.

Kailey Rose:
She will be 5 in 2 months. TWO MONTHS! Isn't that crazy? When I started this blog she was only 6 months old! Kailey is so full of life. She asks a kajillion questions a second, because she is just so curious about everything around her. It can get to be a bit overwhelming at times, but I have to remind myself that she is learning, and that is how she learns best! She started 4 year old Pre-K this year, and so far things seem to be going really well. She knows her letters by sight (upper and lower case) and she knows most of their sounds, although she is definitely still working on that part of it. She is taking gymnastics again this year, and she is one of the best in her class. She loves going each week. She is also taking TOTS basketball at school, which she is super excited about as well. She is an Awana Cubbie this year, again, and she will be hopefully memorizing a bunch of new verses this year. She is also still in children's choir at church. She still has trouble being dropped off at her church activities. We are working with her on not being so shy (at first). After she is in there she is fine. At home she talks our heads off and is SO LOUD. She doesn't know what quiet means at all! She is a wonderful big sister to Makenna. So wonderful that she told me she "wishes she was Makenna's mommy". Good grief. Really that just means she wants to boss her around and not get in trouble. :)She definitely has her moments of disobedience, and drama queen-ness, but she is a most wonderful blessing in our house, and I can't imagine life without her.

Makenna Grace:
She will be 2 and a half in November! She thinks she can do anything her big "sissy" can do. A lot of times she can! She is so petite. She still only weighs around 23-24 pounds, and is still wearing 24 month clothes. She is talking up a storm. She will repeat anything anybody says, and she talks in complete sentences, even though sometimes it is hard to interpret! She LOVES playing with her baby dolls, and is such a sweet girl. She loves to eat, and is definitely our good eater. She had to go to the dentist last week because she chipped a tooth in the bathtub, but he says it should smooth out over time. She is an Awana Puggle this year, which we are looking forward to watching her participate in. I still call her my sweet angel baby, even though she definitely has her moments of disobedience as well. She sticks up for herself when Kailey is trying to push her around, and it is sometimes hard not to laugh when she does it. If I start counting for her to obey (like 1, 2, 3) she just looks at me and goes "4, 5, 6, 7". She adds so many snuggles and smiles to our house. I love her to pieces!

Hopefully this updates you on my sweet girls. It at least makes me feel like a better mother. :)

It always takes 3 weeks

Eesh. I know that I still need to blog about my cruise, but I just had to take a minute and blog about school. It was definitely one of those days.

First of all, let me just tell you, I have the BEST students on the planet Earth. They are perfect little angels. I keep waiting on the "other shoe to fall" because I am SO incredibly blessed. I have 2 Pre-AP classes for the first time ever, and all 5 of my classes are under 25 students. I mean, that hasn't happened in like 3 years. Usually my classes are around 30 each, and they put most of the SPED inclusion kids in my room. This year, they chose to cluster them in my partner's class, so I only have one. ONE. I mean when does that happen? Two of my regular classes are sitting at 19 and 17 a piece. I mean. That is like under 20! I am SO blessed. I can like actually teach them!

At my school every teacher is on car or bus duty every day after school. Every.Single.Day. We are a "dock" school for the district, so we have 2 buses that leave at 3:45. The rest of the buses are at one of the other middle schools and at the high school at 3:45. So they load those suckers up, and then they come to my school. Well it takes about 30-35 minutes for them to get to my school and us to let all those kids switch buses, and then let all of our late bus riders out of the building to load. It has been SO overwhelming. Because if you aren't outside, you are inside trying to keep an entire classroom of middle schoolers from tearing down the building for 30-35 minutes.

Then today, we had a faculty meeting after school. We almost always have them on Wednesdays, and they usually only take like 20-30 minutes. Well today we had two people from downtown come and do abuse awareness training and bullying training (which we are required to do every.single.year). Then after they were done, we needed to meet about a few other things. I didn't leave school until 5:24 today. On a Wednesday. Kailey's children's choir started at 6:00, and we had to eat dinner!

So Casey picked them up, went and got dinner, and we all ate in about 20 minutes time. I felt so bad just stuffing Kailey back in another class after she was in daycare all day long. So we did that, came home, and the hubs stays at church until at least 9:00 on Wednesdays, so I have to bathe them, brush them, brush their teeth, read them books, etc. and it is literally my only time to spend with them on Wednesdays, which makes me feel awful. And I'm sure people wonder why the youth minister's wife used to not even stay for church on Wednesday nights...this would be why.

So, I am just now sitting down for what feels like the first time all day, and it is 8:00. I still have about 60 papers to grade before tomorrow, because it is "Meet the Teacher" night and I need something to hang in the hallway (by my own requiring it; nobody else requires it of me). I would just hang them without grading them, but I need the grade because Progress Reports come out next week and I have to have a major grade in the grade book.

So I will sit here and grade these papers and put them in the grade book and hang them in the hallway tomorrow and stay until 7:00 greeting parents and miss another night with my girls.

It ALWAYS takes 3 weeks. By that I mean, it always takes 3 weeks of the school year for me to feel like everything is going to be ok and that I am not going to run from the building screaming. I have 2 more days of my 3 weeks...We will see.

Isn't it strange to think that this would be my last week of maternity leave, and I would be starting school for the first time on Monday?? Crazy. I now know for sure that God definitely would have had my back for the start of school. I mean he literally put angels in my classes, and everything would have been ok. I worried for nothing. Obviously. :)