How it went

First of all, I talked to my mom on Saturday.  I mentioned Emma had gone to New York and my mom said, "You didn't write that on your blog!"

So here it is.  Emma went to NYC.  She told us awhile ago she was planning to go because she and Heather (who is going to NYU law school) wanted to see the movie Dune together.

Adam said, "You know about Water Gardens, right?  Here in Pleasant Grove?  $5 Tuesday?

She knew about it; she still bought plane tickets.

I told her to send pictures.  Since she's Emma, she sent pictures that were both artsy:

And of art:

She sent a lot of pictures of art.  I asked her if she saw any school-aged children at the Met from Greenwich, Connecticut who had run away from home and were living there.

She didn't.  Adam said, "Of course not.  They're hiding."

My favorite picture she sent was this one.

I love those cute girls.

***

In other news, I survived Friday!  What a day! Most of my students came in with a sucker in their mouth.  Then one girl who was dressed as Santa handed out a candy cane to everyone.  

It was 8:00 AM.

We did a little bit of math, we read a story and answered questions about Dia de los Muertos.  They unscrambled Halloween words.  It all felt like a great accomplishment.  

We had a Halloween parade around the school, led by this group.

Riley, on the right, is the head custodian.  He is a little less excited about all of it than the rest of the administration.  He can be a little curmudgeonly, but he has lunch every day with a few boys who struggle and it is the highlight of their day.  There are students who have behavior plans with "help Riley" as their reward of choice.  He will also drop everything for a rock paper scissors match with any student who asks.  Often I see him out playing with kids at lunch recess.

How can you not love working with these people?

Here's the faculty before school started.

Our third grade team went for a theme.

Then we had to explain it all to our students.

Here is my class.

They add a lot of joy to my life, even though they exhaust me sometimes (like on the day we celebrate Halloween).

The fact that this guy was there all day helped keep order.

Not really.  There wasn't much order.  He's awfully cute though.