And that's how wacky Wednesday began

 Yesterday my document camera was displaying my screen like a keystone.  It's a problem that I kind of know how to fix and kind of don't know how to fix.  I got one side going straight, but I couldn't get the other one straight.  Miriam suggested resetting the whole thing.

Then it was upside down.

(The bell is there because every day, one of the class jobs is to pick a picture to draw by their name.  It weirdly helps them to remember to put their name on the paper.  The student picked a bell and some of them didn't know how to draw a bell, so I put a bell on the board.  Like you do.)

During my lunchtime I plied Google for answers about my document camera and everything was for document cameras that are much newer than mine.  

I finally went to find Riley.  Staying in the custodian's good graces is the best advice I could ever give a teacher. 

He said, "Oh, yeah, that's an easy fix."

But then he struggled a bit to read upside down and I can read upside down easily--a skill honed by helping students at my desk.  Between the two of us, we figured it out.

Before I rest on my laurels too much, here is another thing to attend to....

Highs and lows

The lows:

I woke up feeling anxious.  No reason.  

I came home with a sore throat.  Too much talking.

I went to Walmart on the way home from school and I don't know if there is a worse time to go to Walmart (so busy) or a worse mood to take to Walmart (stick a fork in me and I am done after school).

Mark is sick.  We don't know if he was glutened or what.  He doesn't feel like eating and his blood sugar has been all over the map.  It is wearying to helplessly witness his health struggles.

Dolly Parton passed away.  I don't know if I have ever felt more sad at the passing of someone who 1) I didn't know or 2) isn't a church leader I have loved listening to for years.  I broke the news to my team while we were meeting, because Mark had texted the news.  They were stunned and sad as well.  What a legend!

I had two new students yesterday and I struggled to catch them up while I'm still trying to move everyone along as well.  I had them water color painting their self portraits at my desk while everyone else was doing other stuff and everyone needed me at the same time.  One of the painters spilled his entire cup of water on my desk and guess who is out of paper towels?  (I have put in a custodial request, but here we are.)

The highs:

Kim is back from her vacation and we are going to resume walking today.  I need it!

Every day, no matter what the day throws at me, I have a safe comfortable place to come home to.

Adam isn't halfway around the world, just across the country--makes talking easier.

Megan (the ILC coach) helped me get my students logged into their computers for the first time.

Fuji Apple Clear soda from Walmart is almost worth going to Walmart.  So good!

We had a very productive team meeting yesterday.  It was long and we were scattered all over the place, but at the end, we reached some actual clarity about things that had been percolating in our brains.  Alissa said, "Good sesh."

She wasn't wrong.

Finally, it turns out you can find something on Amazon to help you display the silver mounted bits your dad made you.

These are the days

 These are the days of paying the piper at home because last week I just collapsed in a crumpled heap after school each day and I have some tidying to do!

These are the days of our boys texting back and forth in our family group chat about who will inherit what.  (I think it's spurred on--pardon the pun--by the silver my dad gifted us with.)  It's funny to me that the business major knows exactly how to divide things advantageously for him, the PhD jokingly said Emma could keep the stuff and he would keep his "sense of superiority."

As for Emma, she was at work and didn't chime in.

None of it surprised me, is what I'm saying.

These are the days of starting actual curriculum at school.  I forgot how to access the phonics slides and I was answering so many email before school, I didn't have a chance to practice.  Jamie came in serendipitously and saved my bacon.

These are the days of Adam leaving again.  He flew to the East coast and then in a few days he will go to Nashville.  So in the span of a week, he will have been in Greenwich time, Pacific, Mountain, Central and Eastern.  On the way to the airport, he called me and said, "I am tired."

Shocker.

These are the days of absolutely baking on the blacktop during afternoon recess duty.

These are the days of looking longingly at the mountains for the first signs of autumn, my favorite season!

These are the days of my team and me walking into each others' classrooms and asking, "What are you doing for this?"  "Did we talk about that?"

We share a brain.  It's a good brain (collectively).

These are the days of Mark and I getting home about the same time.  "How was class?"  "How was school?"  "Dinner at 6:00?"  "Yep."  Then we went our separate ways like the introverts who haunt this place when Adam is away.

These are pretty good days.

Weekend

 You've had a birthday, shout hurray!

We celebrated my dad and it was a good time.  It was also a good time that Adam got home Friday.  We were both too tired to think about dinner so we had bread and cheese and fruit which is one of my top five dinners.  Also, chocolate lava cake from Marks and Spencers.  I slept 11 hours that night.  I never knew I had the capacity for that much sleep prior to cancer!

On Saturday we headed to Starr Valley.  We stopped quickly at our house and there were two mouse in traps (so horrible and I am not even the one that empties the traps, although I was the one to clean the floor--horrible).  We made our salad and went to Marianne's.

All my dad's siblings had come and it was nice to see everyone.

Demar, Lora (his wife), my dad, Drew, Claudia, Olivia, Brad (her husband), Jennifer, Joe and Jeannette (his wife)

I love how much they all love each other.  They had kind of a wild childhood with plenty of independent adventures, but Grandpa and Grandma also raised them to be a close-knit band.  It is aspirational.

Olivia made my dad banana cream pie.

After we ate, everyone shared a memory of my dad.  My favorite part was my aunts and uncles disparaging each other's memories and saying, "That's not how it happened," and "Who's telling this story anyway?!?" and "You have a very creative memory."

They were good stories all the same, whether or not they were disputed.

The aunts and uncles all went to Aunt Olivia's and my dad stayed to visit with us a little.  We gave him the gift from Marianne and Olivia and me.  It was Marianne's idea to create a book containing all the blogposts my mom had written from their mission to Nauvoo.  My dad cried when he opened it (and so did the rest of us).  It was more a gift from our mom than us, because she had written it.

Before Ammon went back to Utah, we posed for a picture (Enoch and Tabor weren't able to come and they and their families were missed).  Olivia and I did this with our hands to make my dad laugh and it worked.

Making him laugh has always been a dopamine hit.

Our dad went to go spend the rest of the evening with his siblings and Marianne and Robert came over to our house for frozen pizza.  Olivia was invited too, but didn't see the text early enough.  She came over to visit and I love being in their neighborhood.

Sunday morning Adam and I decided to take a walk.  I was expecting a gentle walk along the fragrant willows, but we decided to go up and see the top of our property line.  It is a nice view.

I used to play there as a kid, but Adam hadn't been all the way up.  My dad called just when we were reaching the top and I said, "If I sound winded, it is because I am winded!"  It is steep.  He said he had two bits to give us.  He made two bits for each of his children.

He wrote up a description for each of us, "for when you sell them at an auction."

I said, "You know none of us are going to ever sell them."

He said our grandchildren might.

I hope they never get that hungry.

I need to figure out how to display them.  I'm pretty sure Amazon doesn't have a-bit-stand-in-case-your-dad-made-you-two-silver-mounted-bits....

We went to church and happily, Edgar was the high council visitor and Olivia and Ruben were speaking with him.  Marianne led the choir and it was a big choir and I was related to everyone except 4 of them.  I whispered that to my dad and he said, "I am too."  It was a great meeting that I was grateful to attend and then we drove home.  I had to stop singing on the way home because my throat started hurting.  Any trip with Emma and Mark is going to involve music.  And we started the trip by singing hymns that are based on Psalms.  There are a lot of them!

I am grateful to be home and looking forward to another week of school. 

Grateful Friday

 Yesterday my students worked on their self portraits.  It's a good first week activity to practice listening and following directions and routines.  I told them they could use colored pencils or crayons, no markers.  (Markers get a little crazy + I have skin toned colored pencils and crayons.)

One boy really wanted to use markers and he kept asking and I kept saying no.

When it was time to make their name tag that will accompany their portrait on the wall, I showed them a few variations of how they could make their name.  Then, I said, "But you can do it any way you want."

Of course, a few of them had follow up questions.  "Can I do rainbow colors?"

I said, "Yes, you can do whatever colors you want."

"Can I do two colors?"

"Yes.  Whatever you want."

More questions and I finally said, "Follow your heart."

The boy who wanted markers came up to me and said, "My heart really wants to use markers."

I told him too bad, not on this project.

We read the story Elmer.  It is about an elephant who is patchwork instead of gray and feels like he is a misfit, but then he realizes he is funny and all the animals love him.

To practice brainstorming, we gathered ideas about what made them unique.  I started by showing them how I can write backwards.  (Always a crowd pleaser for 8 year olds!)

At the end, I took a picture because I was so delighted by their ideas:

I am a lot less delighted by this marker I am using that is staining my board pink.... I will remedy that eventually.

All that aside, I am feeling grateful.  I am enjoying this class.  I love being a teacher.  I am grateful to feel healthy.  I am grateful for Mark being my buddy and helper and all the things.  I am grateful Adam is coming home today (!) and I'm grateful we are going to Nevada this weekend.

Both our dads have the same birthday, August 22.  I am grateful for both of them!

So far so good

 I can't help but compare the beginning of this year to the beginning of last year and there is truly no comparison.  Last year was so hard!  I was freaked out by cancer and getting all the (painful) diagnostic procedures/surgeries done.

And my class was a lot.  I got through by the skin of my teeth and with so much prayer!

Yesterday was just pleasant.  A boy shyly brought me this:

Another boy meekly came and told me at the beginning of the day that he didn't have a pencil.

I told him it was in the white basket inside his desk.

He went back to his desk and returned later to tell me he didn't have a pencil.

I went and looked in his desk and his desk was completely empty!  I don't know how I didn't notice that.  I felt sheepish for sending him back to his desk the first time.

The AC is working splendidly.  My students are sweet and well-behaved.  We had fun together and they were nervous, but I did manage to make a few of them laugh.  I read them two books. I can already see that some of them are really chatty, but nothing a little desk rearrangement can't fix, or at least temporarily fix.  Some kids will just chat with anyone.

At the end of the day a boy picked up his lunch bag and it wasn't after all his lunch bag (turned out it belonged to a first grader).  It was unzipped and there was a cascade of a barely touched pizza lunchable.  Basically there was grated cheese confetti.  Such a mess.  The boy felt really bad and apologized profusely.  He said, "I didn't realize it wasn't zipped up!"

I assured him it was OK.  A scatter of grated cheese at the end of the day is not too bad for collateral damage.

When I left school, I told Matt that without some of my friends from last year's class, I feel like I am on vacation.

He said, "Don't count your chickens before they hatch!"

And I guess that is good advice, but I am happy so far.

My throat is sore from talking so much, but that happens every year.  It takes about a week for my vocal cords to get accustomed to constant use.

I really wish I could talk to my mom.  I always used to check in with her about school and tell her about my first day.  She would always tell me that I was an amazing teacher and my students were so lucky to have me.  She never saw me teach, so she really has no idea what kind of teacher I am, but that's the kind of mother she was.  She always thought her kids were the best at anything we tried.  

I miss her.

Here we go!

 Today's the big day:  first day of school!  I am excited and a little nervous.  Mostly excited.  My class is so cute and I have everything shiny and new and I am ready.

Yesterday was finishing touches day.  They tested the fire alarms, they are still in the throes of the construction project so at one point, they gave us a five minute warning they were turning off the water and we all ran for the bathroom.  They worked outside all day cleaning off the blacktop outside my classroom which is where my students are supposed to line up.  Here's hoping they finished that!  We were supposed to email if our phones don't work and mine doesn't work, but I'm totally fine if it doesn't work.  When I am in the middle of teaching and someone from the office calls me, I usually ignore it anyway and they end up talking to me over the intercom.  

I don't know in what world you can turn your back on 3rd graders and just talk on the phone!

Riley thinks our Forever In Third Grade pictures look like we're memorializing third graders who died.  As in he asked, "Why do you have pictures of dead children on your wall?!?"

What?  Why would we do that?  Riley also makes up idioms that I would share just to give you the flavor of that guy, but they aren't exactly for polite company.

He is a character.  Yesterday I overheard him walking down the hall, telling his crew of custodians which teachers he likes and which teachers he doesn't like.  When he passed my room, he said, "I like Davis."

Friends, that was hard fought.

I had two to do lists, one I for sure for sure had to do yesterday and one that would be nice to get to.  I did everything on the first list and almost everything on the second list.

The biggest accomplishment of the day was that when a black pen exploded and I had a hand covered in ink, none got on my white pants.  A day of miracles.

Matt recommended we go to lunch with our teams, since it was our last day we could.  Alissa said, "Let's invite fifth grade."

I went to arrange the playdate and Caroline said, "OK, but don't invite anyone else."

I said, "So you're one of those people, huh?"

She said, "No, I didn't mean that.  I shouldn't have said that."

But it was just us who went to lunch together.  We went to Marley's and Lacey told us her engagement story that happened a few days ago and we compared notes on how everything was going.

At 2:00 we all convened for cake in Caroline's room because she made a cake (and she invited everyone because she isn't after all one of those people).  Three boys who are now in 7th grade, but who love Caroline because everyone does, knocked on her door and she let them in and they ate some cake too.

I think my takeaway is that being an elementary teacher is where it is at. 

You can have your cake and eat it too.