A Day in the Life

Kelly's (I know I mention her in just about every post! Sorry she's my fav!) show us your life this week is what does your typical day look like. Here is a day in the life of a first year 1st grade teacher!

6:00- Alarm goes off for the first time. I hit snooze
6:10- 2nd alarm. Snooze againut
6:20- 3rd alarm. Snooze again
6:30- 4th alarm. Get up and get dressed and ready. Pack breakfast and lunch.
7:00- Leave home. I've gotten into a (bad) habit of stopping in at the corner store by my house in the mornings for a Diet Coke. Yikes! I need to stop that! My sweet friend Janie Jones is usually there too and I love seeing her in the mornings. She's so cheerful and always makes me smile. It gets my day off to a good start.
7:10ish- Get to school, sign in and go to my room. I don't have any morning duties right now so before I get my kids I pretty much just get things out and ready for the day and visit with whoever is around
7:45- Kids come in and start morning work. I stand at the door and meet them while I eat my orange and Special K bar (breakfast 98% of the time!)
8:00- Bell rings and we get started on calendar stuff and reading. We power through reading until 9:50 when the kids go to PE.
9:50-10:55- My conference period. I'm usually pretty productive but there are times when I waste this time and regret it later.
11:00- We get back to the classroom. We usually either watch a storybook video or I read something to them about a current event or our science or social studies topic.
11:15- Lunch
11:45- Recess!! My favorite thing!
12:10ish- Back to work. We do whatever science or social studies lesson or activity we have for that day
12:45- Math and math centers.
1:30- Tier 2 reading intervention. My kids have to work very quietly while I work with struggling readers. We have the kids grouped where we switch amongst the 4 of us 1st grade teachers. I love this time but hate how when one of us is out or we have some kind of afternoon activity (art, etc.) that it gets pushed aside. I wish it could be more consistant but I guess there's only so many hours in a day.
2:00- Second recess! My second favorite part of the day!
2:15- Writing. I love writing! We have great writing lesson plans and it's so fun to hear the ideas my kids come up with.
2:40- Pack up. This is the craziest time of the day. I'm trying to get folders stuffed with notes and papers and the kids behavior chart filled out and they're loud and usually bugging me and the ones who didn't have a good day are bombarding my table asking what color I'm putting on their chart. It's nuts!
2:50- I try to have everyone in their seat, the floor picked up of any trash and it quiet before I start calling everyone to leave. This is always my goal but happens about 80% of the time. Oh well. I have some sweet kids who don't leave until later who stay behind and clean up and help get things in order
4:00- I leave school!
4:15ish- Get home, get a snack, change clothes, and get on the computer to check blogs and facebook. I run any errands I have too.
6:00ish- Either fix something for dinner or go get something. Chelsea has had softball practice and Aaron has had soccer so our normal dinner routine is thrown off right now.
After dinner I usually lounge on the couch with my computer and watch tv until I get ready to shower and go to bed which is usually around 10:00.
I'm usually tired but not exhausted so I have to be careful and not stay up too late because I might not feel tired at night but will have a hard time in the morning.

This might have been totally boring but look at these sweet faces! Who couldn't have a great day with them?!

Just Call me Annie Leibovitz

So excited to announce that I finally ordered a camera last night! I started thinking about a spring break trip to see family in Abilene and then a ton of fun end of the year activities at school, not to mention how boring my blog has gotten and decided I needed it. Who wants to look at someones blog or facebook page when there's no pictures? Not fun!

I picked out a Nikon L100 because I thought it was a great price and just fancy enough for me. Not too complicated but still a nice camera.

I paid extra for speedy shipping (when you're buying a camera whats a few extra dollars?) so it should be here by Wednesday and I'll be back in the swing of things.

Oh and since it is nice enough to come with a strap (the fist camera I've ever had that did) I had to get on Etsy and get this:


You know I love to go to Canton and to me Etsy is the on-line version. Love it! I got the strap cover from here if you're interested. She has super cute stuff and we chatted a little bit today due to some address confusion and she's sweet too!

One more thing- Today on Kelly's Blog I linked up with some other girls because she was having young (around college age) bloggers leave their link. Such a fun idea! I'm so excited to get my pj's on in a few minutes and look around at some of the blogs. If you're visiting from there I'm so glad you stopped by. Leave me a comment so I know who you are. If you're reading and fit the criteria but haven't linked up you should.

Have a great week!

Amazing Story!

Hello! I don't have a detailed post about my life ready. It's been a hard week. Sprained ankle, messy house, runny nose, loud class, etc. have all about done me in for today but I was so uplifted by this. Kelly had it on her blog today as she was talking about how special a "snail mail" note can be to someone. I think the thing that touched me most is the guy in the video looks a lot like Dr. Sargent and this is totally something that he would do. Am I right girls? The rest speaks for itself. B

Checking In

It feels good to be back on this side of a post being the writer and not just the reader. I had a great Christmas break and honestly was not wanting to get back at it last week but it turned out to be a fairly productive week. e. It didn't even cross my mind until I was out and about the Monday after Christmas that evWe had a couple of rough days with the kids (and me!) getting back into the swing of things but we're ready to power though and finish out the year. I'm so thankful for a job that allows plenty of personal timeryone else had to work. I'm very grateful.

My camera is missing so I'm disappointed that I don't have a lot of pictures to remember the last few months by and even more disappointed that I'm eventually going to have to get a new camera if it doesn't show up. I have no idea where it could be. I've looked all over my house, car and classroom. I'm checking craigs list all the time hoping to find a good used one for a decent price. Part of me wants to buy a bigger nicer camera that I know I will take care of and keep in a safe place but part of me also wants just another cheap point and shoot because I don't have the best track record when it comes to cameras. Oh decisions decisions.

It has been sooo cold this week! I don't think it got above freezing for 3 days. I spent a lot of evenings on the couch. Of course the night it rained it was nearly 40 so school went off without a hitch. I'm glad we didn't use a weather day though. I'll be thankful for those when they roll around. We still have a lot of winter left though so there's no telling what else we could have coming.

This weekend has been so lazy. Yesterday it was in the teens when I got up and I definitely didn't want to be out so I posted up in front of the tv and was so glad when Chelsea cooked breakfast. I didn't get up until about 2:30 and ran to Subway in my pajama pants and came home and took a nap while a True Life marathon was on. I finally got up and took a shower and Aaron, Trish and I went to Buffalo Wild Wings. It's hard sometimes to always be around couples but they are all so sweet to include me. I got straight in bed as soon as we came in and slept so good even after not doing anything all day. It was good to get out and go to church this morning and Janie and I had the best time teaching Sunday School. There is a little girl that I've had in VBS before and in my class when I interned at Elysian Fields who visited our class this morning. She is such a talker and we laughed the whole morning at all of the crazy things she had to say. She didn't know Janies name so she just said "Ms. Lynn" all morning long asking me questions and saying the wildest things. Her parents would probably be mortified at everything she told us. We were rolling! I'm going to eat with Mom and Dad and then head home. I might try to get some laundry done and folded but if it doesn't happen I'm not stressing.

Have a great week!

The Nester Tour

It's me again with another home tour! I love looking at everyone's decorations and so I'm going to share mine even though it might seem short because well my house is not very big. Keep in mind I took all of these pictures with my phone so the quality isn't great. Anyway, hope you enjoy!

Welcome to Burleson! Excuse the muddy boots on the porch. Our street doesn't go all out with outdoor decorations so we just did the berry wreath, small trees and of course we couldn't not wrap those columns. I think it's plenty for our little house and the trees are so cute lit up at night.
When you come in you'll see my favorite shelf. We don't have a mantle so the knobs on this shelf worked perfect for our stockings. I got these at Kohls for too cheap to pass up at the very beginning of the season. I dug and dug to find a Lee Ann L, an Aaron A and a Chelsea C. We keep the berry garland on this shelf all the time and it just happens to go with our berry theme. I love the deer and you can't see it good but they even have berries on their antlers. Gotta love the Hobby Lobby tree too!

This is our dining room. These old closet doors were a cheap and easy way to add something to the big bare room in the middle of the house. The berry garland matches the wreath on the door and I picked up the box and tree to go in here as well. Since I took this picture, I've started hanging our Christmas cards here too and it is sooo cute!

Christmas trees are hard to photograph but here's ours. I hope to get a lot of new ornaments and things at the end of the season to add a lot for next year. Hopefully I can keep this tree for a long time. I love it!
Of course we kept with the berries and added some poinsettias.


The kitchen doesn't have a lot but this sign is so fitting for a house of three teachers. It says "Please snow I'm a teacher." I found this at Canton after Christmas last year and forgot I had it until I came across it a few weeks ago. I was so excited! It's the cutest thing!

Thanks for stopping by! I'm so excited to see everyone's decorations! Merry Christmas!

Show us Your Tree!

At Kelly's Korner today she is doing a show us your Christmas tree. I was so excited to post mine! Our house has very high ceilings and so I knew as soon as I started thinking about Christmas I knew that a tall tree would look so great. I picked out a tree at the beginning of the season and even though I looked around some I ended up coming back to it and I love it!

I looked for a long time to try to decided on a theme and after Chelsea (my roommate for you newbies) got a berry wreath for the front door I decided to go with the berries all around and threw in a few poinsettas.

I hope to hit some sales after Christmas and get some cute fun stuff for next year.
I love our simple first grown up tree!

Oh and something a little extra. Can you believe we had snow in Marshall today? Of course it didn't stick but my little first grade babies were going nuts! We went to the playground and they ran around singing Jingle Bells the whole time. So sweet! I even had a few kids ask me if since it was snowing if that meant it was Christmas today. So funny!

Happenings

Ah it's been so long! I'm not even going to get into how I never post and blah blah blah because I feel like I do that every time I post.

Today we started back to school after Thanksgiving break. I spent the whole week at my parents house. I know they only live 20 minutes away and I could have just gone over there when I wanted but there's something about being in your own house that makes it hard to relax. I knew that if I stayed at home in town I would be constantly on the go cooking, cleaning, running around town, spending money, etc. so I decided it would be like a little vacation to just get out of here for a few days. The two times I did stop by my house I was so glad that I was away! Chelsea was home with her family and Aaron was staying here alone. Apparently all he did all week was go to football practice, eat out and play his new Playstation 3. My cute little house was a man cave for 6 solid days. I'm glad he enjoyed his break though.

I did a lot of relaxing but had a ton of fun while I was out of school too. One of my favorite things to do is shop alone. I love to shop with my friends and my mom but when I'm alone I can totally do what I want to do and take how ever long I want doing whatever I want. Monday I went to Hobby Lobby and the boardwalk but traffic in Shreveport was horrible for some reason Monday afternoon and I decided that I was not in the mood to be stressed over it so I came home early. I helped Mom get ready for our Thanksgiving company on Tuesday and Wednesday and we cooked and entertained on Thursday.

Now a lot of people have their own opinion about Black Friday but all I have to say is you can't dis it until you try it. We didn't go until just a few years ago and Mom and I have gone every year since. We've never gone after any big ticket electronic but have always gotten some smaller things (GPS, clothes, kitchen stuff, movies, etc.) for great prices. Not to mention there's just something invigorating about getting up before dawn and mingling with hundreds of fellow crazed shoppers. This year we did Wal-Mart and Pottery Tent and then seperated and Mom went to Bealls before she had to work and I went to Shreveport to GAP, Hobby Lobby, Target, Kirklands and back to Wal-Mart for some small topiary Christmas trees I had forgotten to grab that morning. It was a great day!

We had a late Thanksgiving celebration with my mom's side of the family Saturday night and after that I headed home. Aaron had done pretty good at cleaning up but between a little straightning up Saturday night and Sunday afternoon everything is back in order and we were ready for our routine to be back to normal today. Supper is in the oven, the Christmas tree is on, Modern Warfare is being played on the PS3. Everythig is right with the world here in Marshall.

13 1/2 school days until Christmas vacation!