School is Starting Soon!

At the end of last school year, I packed up all of my stuff and dumped it in a classroom at Kennedy Elementary.  So on Monday I spent most of the afternoon arranging furniture, and then today I worked on unpacking my 20+boxes and organizing my materials.  Here's a quick tour of my new room!

My office space filled with boxes...

My coworkers office space filled with boxes...

Our student work space filled with boxes... 

My office space looking beautiful, unpacked, and cozy!

My coworkers office space looking much more useable. 

Our student work space, organized and neat!

My desk looking ready for work! 

The wall by my desk with a white board, pictures of my previous classes, and other motivational and informative wall hangings. 

My storage area - books, files, etc.  And my pelican hanging from the ceiling!

Day 362: Clean Carpets!

We haven't had people over to our house in ages, mostly because our apartment smells terrible!  With Bubsy and Mystic both having advanced kidney disease, Bubsy had, and Mystic has a problem making it to the litter box.  The Stanley Steemer guys said the stains aren't coming out, but that the smell should be under control now!

Eric and I moved the furniture BACK into place, and had a fully tech night - blogging, internet shopping, and Netflix!

Empty dining room.

Full kitchen.

Empty living room.

Full office.

Mystic, Addy, and I chilled on the porch while the Stanley Steemer people worked.

Mystic cuddled with me, and Addy got scared and had to watch the men work through the window.

Shots, shots, shots!  Tequila helps us work!

The living room put back together, view 1.

The living room put back together, view 2.

When I posted yesterdays post on Facebook, the captcha said "THE geakee"!  I thought it was fitting!

Day 352: Summer Nanny Job

This is my third summer working as a nanny for a great little boy named Jack.  He is seven now, and has just finished first grade.  I originally found this family by posting an ad on craigslist, saying that I could work as a summer care provider for kids of all ages, that I had just received my degree in Early Childhood Special Education, and that I had experience working with children with special needs.  Jack's family and I were a great match - he has autism, and they were interested in someone who could provide therapies and educational opportunities at home.

Throughout the week Jack and I go to speech therapy, behavior therapy, and social groups, but we also have swim lessons, trips to the library and zoo, and are working on learning to ride a bike.  Jack talks, gestures, and signs, and I often act as a gateway between him and the world - because most people wouldn't understand his meaning (and he wouldn't initiate conversation without a prompt).

Over the years I have grown to love this special guy and his family!  We have had a great start to this summer, and still have lots to look forward to!

Today we were playing with a balloon kit, and I made him a star!

After work, Eric and I helped Mom and Alan with some cleaning and moving in their house, and we all went out to Dairy  Queen afterward!

Day 345: Andrew is Visiting!

This was the last day of my summer break - it was filled with reading, napping, laundry, napping, dishes, and some more napping.  Eric spent another day on "the route" )Time and a half for Memorial Day, wooo!) and will be sad when his boss starts scheduling him for in town deliveries again.  He really likes the pace of the route and the hour of overtime because he doesn't have to take a lunch break.  Woo!

After he got home from work, Mom and Alan brought Andrew to our house for the week.  They stuck around for awhile to get Andrew settled, and to mingle with the cats - but then they headed out to enjoy their baby-free night.  Eric and I had been hoping to watch Andrew for a few weeks to help Sarah out financial and time-wise to help her get a job without the worries of scheduling babysitters and such.  That didn't end up working out, but we are really glad to have him visiting this week!

We started our night with a walk to the park, playing with other kids, playing at home, making/eating dinner, then some quiet play and stories before putting Andrew to bed at 9pm.  He went to sleep like a dream, which is lucky for him because we've got to wake up at 6:20 every day this week for jobs in Olathe!

One of our photo screens (the ones that were behind us during our wedding ceremony) fell over while I was napping today because the wind coming through the window was so strong!  So I tied a ribbon to them, nailed it to the wall, and went back to sleep.  Voila!

In the past two weeks since we've started recycling, 2/3 of our waste is recyclable!  Yea!

Andrew made some girlfriends at the park, it was too cute!

Peek-a-boo!

The pavilion was covered in broken glass, and Eric cleaned it up.  What a great guy!

 Andrew played "Here, have a wood chip" with Eric.

Going for a bike ride! (Just for the photo op, no actual bike riding occurred :p)

A yummy, healthy dinner - pasta, green beans, mashed potatoes, and rolls.

Andrew's pseudo-high chair.  He stayed on the sheet the whole time.  When he tried to stand up and walk off of it, Eric turned on his serious voice and said "Sit down."  Andrew promptly sat and kept eating.

When we thought we would have Andrew for most of the summer, I planned on cloth diapering him.  I bought a few cloth diapers on craigslist - and here is Andrew in his first ever cloth diaper!

Day 306: What a Mess!

While I was at work this morning, Eric did his usual job hunting, picking up the house, and playing some games.  I had a professional development meeting where we talked about how to provide meaningful (and an appropriate amount of) homework for kids.  Then in the evening he had work, and I started to tackle the scrapbooking mess.

This was my groups visual map of good homework practices, I drew all of the pictures!

This is the beginning of sorting all of Grammy's scrapbooking stuff.  I probably threw away about 1/3 of the stuff because it was damaged or not usable.

I happened to find this gem in one of the drawers!

Day 302: Errands for Mom

This Sunday was a little different than usual.  Eric stayed at Mom & Alan's house while Ashley and I went to the Palm Sunday service at St. Thomas.  He was planning on riding the motorcycle, but he didn't want to move cars and things around in the garage, so it didn't end up happening. 

Then Mom wanted to take us out to lunch at Sweet Tomatoes because Alan and Ashley aren't terribly fond of it anymore.  But on our way, Mom was hit with a major migrane and we had to turn back.  Mom had a lot of things she wanted accomplished today, so she enlisted our help on her to-do list.  I detailed her car in and out while Eric went to the gym, then we went to Sweet Tomatoes for our lunch and to pick up some food to-go for Mom, and last we picked up a new case for her iPad on our way home.

Before we brought everything back to their house, we stopped at Papa's to clear out all of Grammy's scrapbooking stuff.  All of the shelves, drawers, and boxes filled Eric's trunk and backseat to the limit.  Yikes!  Now I have all of that to go through - and decide what to keep, give away, sell, and trash.

Mom's medicine hadn't taken the edge off of her migrane by the time we got home, so she took a stronger medicine.  We had plans to play a game with Paul & Deb and had them come over to Mom & Alan's house so we would keep an eye on Mom until Ashley got home.  We played Quirkle, which is a game where you collect points by lining up colors/shapes in a certain arrangement.  It took us a few plays to get the hang of it, but it was a pretty fun game.

After Ashley got home from work, Paul & Deb took us out to dinner at Applebees - two free meals in one day... success!  Finally, we headed back to Eudora to enjoy the remaining hours of the weekend in peace.  Goodnight!

Delicious Sweet Tomatoes lunch!

Our yummy Sweet Tomatoes dessert

All of the scrapbooking stuff we took out of Papa's house - yikes!

Day 301: Parallel Lives

Today was pretty typical of Saturday's, Eric worked at 9:30 and I got up at the same time to get on my day's work. I was your typical ADD housewife, switching between cleaning, blogging, dancing, and relaxing every few minutes. I was incredibly productive in getting the house ready for our family's pre-Easter next week. Then in the evening I went to a classmate's house to work on a project. While there, a kid stopped by doing school fundraising. He said, and I am quoting directly "this card is $10 and good for 5 free medium pizzas from Wheat State Pizza, more than a $50 value!"  I literally ran to my car, got the money and paid the boy for one of the cards.

Before I left my classmates house, I called to order a pizza to bring home to Eric when I actually read what was printed on the card... "With the purchase of a large or extra large pizza at regular price, get a free medium pizza!"  Yes, the "regular price" was underlined.  This kid scammed me into a BOGO that I would never have bought knowingly - when do Eric and I buy pizza?  Never.  Lame lame lame.

As for Eric's day - he woke up with me in the morning and headed out to work straight away.  It was a hard day at work because one of their new hires decided to quit by just not showing up, so they were short handed.  He ended up working an hour late, booo.  But then he got to hang around the house and play while I was out doing school work.

We finally got to have some dinner, watch some Scrubs and That 70's Show, and spend an hour or two together after I got home.  Woo!

Addy is the naturally occurring gargoyle in our house.

Day 287: Spring Cleaning

WOW!  I was crazy productive today!  We're preparing for a multi-family garage sale next weekend, so Eric and I have been combing the house for stuff to sell.  Last night we went through our storage space and discovered that we have already de-junked that, so the only remaining space with "stuff" we don't plan to keep is the...dun dun DUNNNN...office!  So when Eric left for work at 10:30, I got up and started picking at the office.  It started with "here's one thing I can sell" and "I'd better wash this blanket", and quickly escalated into completely reorganizing, de-junking, and cleaning the room.  Hooray for having a functional office and guest room again!

After Eric got off of work at 7, we headed out to see Steven, Leslie, Grant, and Edie.  Edie made everyone dinner and cupcakes for the lovely Leslie's birthday.  We had salad, cheese and bacon quiche, mushroom and asparagus quiche, and vanilla cupcakes topped with strawberries.  We narrowly missed out on the fun of the police hunting for Steven, Leslie, and Grant because they were playing airsoft in the woods.  When we went back to their apartment, we had some drinks, played "Start the Party" and watched "Get Him to the Greek".  All in all, another successful Saturday!

A newly organized craft space - hidden away in the closet for me to use (and hide) as I please!

 Eric starting the party!

 Jessica waving the white flag!

 Happy (late) birthday, Leslie!

I poured my first ever layer shot, we called it an Apricot Grenade - grenadine, apricot schnaaps, topped with 151!

Day 256: Rub A Dub Dub

So when I take a bath, which is 2-3 times a week to help relax after work, Mystic usually pops up at the foot of the bath to try and drink the water, and Addy pops up by my head and stands with her back feet on the edge of the bath and her front feet on my shoulder.  She seems to like rubbing her face on my book and just reminding me that she's still there.  Well...tonight she slipped and fell in the bath.  I'm laughing really hard just reading that sentence!  I ended up just giving her a bath because she's been looking pretty grimy lately, haha!

She's such a little rat!  Her tail is too heavy to hold up when it's wet, haha.

Day 254: Mental Health Day

Today was pretty crazy for everyone - Eric had work in the morning (which never happens) and I called in sick so I could take care of some other business.

First off - I had to finish an assignment for my KU independent study class.  In an independent study class, you receive a guide for the readings you're supposed to do and the assignments you need to complete - then you do the work at your own pace.  KU gives you 6 months to complete the class, and the last day for my behavior management class is Tuesday.  Every time I tried to start working on this class, something more important came up.  Fortunately, when you have finished 50% of the work for the class you can file for a 3 month extension...and this class only has 4 assignments!  I finished the first assignment on Friday, and the second one this morning.  Extension granted, AND I got A's on those first two assignments!

Next up - I got caught up on a lot of cleaning today.  All of the laundry is done, the bathroom is clean, and all of the dirty dishes are IN the kitchen!  I feel like I can breathe easier when I am home and I don't see chores that need to be done every place I look!

Followed by - Alison spent the morning and afternoon with me for some girl time because she wanted to get her mind off of her and Rob breaking up.  Ali has gone through so much - but she keeps getting stronger and focuses on what is best for her and Zach.  I taught her to knit - and our next lesson will be teaching us both how to purl.  Then maybe in the future we can learn to knit patterns (Ha!  We'll see about that).  We also made chocolate chip cookies from scratch.  They weren't as good as last time, but they were still delicious!  Eric came home from work and spent some time with us as well, lightening the conversation by interjecting puns all over the place.

Then - I had a meeting that I still needed to attend at school (why can't subs go to meetings for you?), so Ali headed back to Olathe to pick Zach up from school.  One block away from my school, I stopped to see three cars parked in the road and 6-8 people standing around watching a dog hop around the road yelping.  Before I knew it I was parked and to the dog with my jacket off.  I used the jacket to cover his head while I got the collar off of him - the tags showed us that his name was Smokey, and the owners name and address.  Because we were so close to the school and their day had just ended, there were 5-6 kids huddled around Smokey.  I had to keep reminding them not to pet near his head so he wouldn't bite them because he was scared and hurt.  We couldn't get the owner on the phone, so I skipped my meeting and took him to the Lawrence Humane Society.  Smokey's owner got my voicemail and met me there, so here's hoping that he recovers.  There were no outward injuries - but there was a lot of visibly bruising on the tummy side of his pelvis.

Finally, when I returned home from the humane society (along with missing my meeting), Eric and I headed out to Olathe for an evening with Mom, Alison, Zach, and Kristie.  We played Squeeballs on the Wii - which is a bunch of REALLY strange mini games, and Kinect Adventures on the XBOX - where we did some running and jumping games.  We shared wine, snacks, and stories - a nice end to a VERY long day.

Mystic on the pillow, Addy at the foot of the bed.  This is their contribution to cleaning the house.

Eric said we're a few decades too young for knitting.

This is a picture of Smokey wearing a hat of his 12 year old owner.

The XBOX Kinect takes random pictures while you're playing the games - Eric was playing a game where you have to jump...and he hit his head on the ceiling beam!  And the Kinect got a picture of it!!!

Day 228: Snowtorious B.I.G.

Last night was a shocker - KU called a snow day before Lawrence did!  This was surprising because KU hardly ever calls off school.  Unfortunately, yesterday was the last "free" snow day, and now we have to start making the time up.  Today, we didn't hardly leave bed all day.  We both spent the majority of the day reading, and Eric probably ran through 150 pages!  In the afternoon, I bundled up and threw both of the cats in foot deep snow :)

Eric went to work in the evening and made it there with no trouble on the roads.  But it was totally dead all night.  I remained in bed - reading and surfing the net.  Around 6pm, I started to feel guilty for having two and a half lazy days in a row so I got up and changed over the laundry, sorted and put it away, and then worked on the dishes.  I got all of the plates, bowls, and cups clean and put away - but gave up at the silverware and Tupperware containers.  

Videos of the cats cold plunge!

Day 193: Work, Play, and Cleaning

Today has to have been the most productive day of Christmas break yet!  For Eric - he actually was scheduled for 40 hours, which is rare.  So he spent his day working a long shift.  I spent my day working on various neglected chores like dishes, laundry, and vacuuming.  But really, the chores didn't take all that long and were spaced out between bits of various games.

I'm loving "Just Dance 2"  it's fun to listen to music, dance, and get some exercise in!

Day 162: The Office!

Way back when (When you ask?  On Day 8 of us being married of course!, we posted pictures of the post-wedding apocalypse that we call our office.  It was pretty much where we threw anything wedding related, and anything that didn't belong somewhere else in the house.

Over the past few days, Eric and I have nearly made it to the finish line in getting it back to a functional room!

The desktop computer hasn't been functional in ages, and we got the desk cleaned off and the computer up and running.

We've got all the board games and Wii equipment in here.

The bed is completely clean!

And I can't just hide this - there is a pile of clutter in the entrance to the room, but that will be taken care of this week.  Huzzah!

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