i don't mind spiders, as long as they aren't hairy

Nichole walked into my room this morning and asked if I had seen the floor between our rooms. I said no and asked her why and she led me over to this.

Yup. A tarantula. In our classroom. Thank God it was dead otherwise I would have really freaked. I grabbed the broom and dustpan and tried to sweep it up, while screaming, but it didn't move. It was literally stuck to the ground from whatever had come out of it from its death. I told Nichole to tell me when it was unstuck and closed my eyes and started sweeping. She laughed and said it was unstuck, but was now stuck to the broom. I screamed again (not sure why, but I'm sure it was justified) and shook it onto the dustpan. I then threw it out in the compost outside of the classroom and of course took pictures along the way.

I emailed our principal and head custodian and Marco suggested that we get a snake to take care of any of their family members. I told him Nichole was all over it.

the end of spring break

The day I left Chicago was Miles' 1 month birthday AND St. Patrick's Day. Of course Rebecca had to dress him accordingly, and luckily I had just given him this super cute outfit.

And I also made this super cute onsie for the day! (Yes, I put a beer in Spongebob's hand.) It was super sad to leave him especially because I won't see him again until he's almost 6 months! This is going to get really annoying having to reintroduce myself to him every time I see him.

When I got back to Houston a group of us went to this crazy Irish bar in the village. Apparently Shannon didn't realize it was St. Patrick's Day. Obviously she kept getting pinched. Also Jillian and I were matching in our sweet $8 Target shirts.

Before heading back to Austin we had our usual Ewing BBQ. This time however I upped the stakes. Mom and dad were getting a little complacent in their BBQ cookings. We haven't changed it up in awhile, and I figured it was about time to do something new and see if they could rise to the occasion. So I had mom make homemade curly fries! She used to make them all the time growing up, and I don't think she had made them in 10 years. They were pretty amazing, and a big hit!

RIP Tater Twister. It broke towards the end of mom curlying 5 lbs. of potatoes and she had to start doing it by hand. Don't worry though, I'm buying her another one so we can continue our new BBQ tradition of homemade curly fries.

Olivia even made it to her first Ewing BBQ! She had a blast munching on burgers and fries and was pretty wiped out by the end of it.

Finally I made it to San Antonio for part of Emily's bachelorette party! We all bought her some cute lingerie from Anthropologie and she was holding up the underwear so everyone could see it and then the entire room we were in started yelling and cheering! She even ended up getting free drinks from a table of guys who obviously liked what they saw.

Spring Break is officially over. I have absolutely nothing planned for this week, and have not made any copies. It will be interesting to see how tomorrow goes since I don't plan on going in to work today to get things ready. (I wrote this Sunday and am only posting it now. Monday was a great lesson for the kids on being flexible and spontaneous.)

my sister's household sure is different

Obviously as you get older things start to change. Change number 1 happened when this kid came around.

Soon after he was born one of the first conversations Rebecca and I had was all about his lack of pooping. When I got off the phone with her I thought, so is this what our relationship has become? I guess we're now talking about pooping.

Things got even crazier when I got to their place over Spring Break. Usually next to the sink are all of our leftover beer bottles from the night before. Here's what has taken their place.

Along those same lines, Rebecca and Michael are usually almost constantly asking me if I need another drink, or that I should start drinking, or where is my drink...you get the point. Well, not this trip. Instead of Rebecca asking where her drink was, she was drinking down gallons of water. (This is making Rebecca and Michael sound like alcoholics. They aren't in case you were wondering.)

The third big change is bedtime. On the weekends we would always be up way past midnight. On weekdays, even though Michael has work, we would rarely go to bed before 11. It was usually closer to midnight before we'd finally go to sleep. Well, I was shocked when I looked at the clock Saturday night when all the lights were off and everyone was in bed.

Monday night was the same, as was every other night. Around 10 Rebecca started hinting she wanted to go to sleep until we all finally went around 10:30.

I get that they had a baby and are tired all the time because they wake up throughout the night. It is still weird when you visit them and they are the ones wanting to go to bed before me. I'm usually the first one wimping out on them, not the other way around.

I can't even imagine what their place is going to look like once Miles can start crawling and walking around. Their house is going to be so junked up with toys! I bet Rebecca is going to freak out. Or start teaching him right away how to put his toys correctly away in the right containers.

miles

Over Spring Break I was in Chicago for most of my week visiting the cutest nephew anyone could ask for. It was funny because everyone says Rebecca and I sound the same, and I think he thought I was Rebecca sometimes when I was talking. 

Poor kid has acid reflux so he was crying a lot, but somehow I was able to calm him down sometimes. Rebecca even called me the baby whisperer. Maybe I just found a new profession? I should look into this. 

Miles makes some of the funniest faces! He really likes making different old man faces too. I also had fun playing with his hair as it started getting a little dirty. Enjoy all of the super cute pictures!!

Bath time!

We had a few photo shoots in the bathroom. He totally loved it.

I think this is my favorite old man face of his.

I couldn't help myself from taking some pictures of him starting to cry. Even his crying face is cute!

All better, if not a little confused.

I loved it every time he sneezed. It cracked me up!

June can't come soon enough so I can go back and see him. He better remember who I am!

gross

I'm sure if I haven't said it yet on this blog, I've said it to you in person that kids are gross. Mostly because they never wash their hands, EVER. We even have signs on the bathroom doors that they have to look at on their way out reminding them to wash their hands. Because I know my kids are gross, I can't even imagine the rest of the kids in the school. As a teacher I have a pretty awesome immune system. I rarely get sick minus my yearly cold or two. 

However, horror struck me as I got...pink eye! I have never had pink eye before in my life, so the Monday it started itching and getting red and goopy I went and asked Heather what was wrong with me since she was a mom and she should know. 

Super duper pink before going to bed. Gross.

Well needless to say I couldn't go to school the next day when I woke up and was only able to open one eye. I literally had to pry my eye open in order to see out of it.

It's opened and cleaned. This was as wide as I could open it. I tried really hard and this was the best I could do. It hurt trying to open it that wide too.

Swollen, pink, gross.

I went to the doctor and he gave me medicine for my eye. I was paranoid because I didn't want to get it in the other eye, or infect anyone else. Of course he also said it looked like my other eye was already infected so I should start putting the medicine in both eyes. Awesome. Both of my eyes hurt like hell all day. They itched, but when I itched them (and then of course immediately washed my hands afterwards) it hurt even worse than before! 

He said once I started the medicine I was OK to go back to school and wouldn't give it to anyone else. Last thing I needed was a class full of pink eye and me getting it again before I went to Chicago. I was totally fine and not contagious anymore once I left for Chicago, but my doctor said I had to go the full 5 days of putting medicine on to keep me un-contagious (is that even a word?) and said I was fine to go to Chicago and see my new cute nephew without a problem.

Of course Rebecca saw my eyes had some stuff on it (the liquid medicine had gooped up on my eyelashes...oops) and when she asked what was wrong I said my eyes were irritated and my doctor just told me to put it on. Of course she didn't believe me and freaked out and asked if I had pink eye while she literally scooted away from me. I lied, not very convincingly and luckily she dropped it. Even though my doctor said I was good and clear, I didn't want to tell Rebecca because I knew she would freak out the entire time  I was there.

I am pink eye free, and keeping my medicine on hand in case another gross kid gives it to me. The joys of being a teacher.

black history month continued

The Black History Month unit I put together is pretty awesome if I do say so myself. It is probably my favorite unit that I teach all year for several reasons. One, I have always been interested in Civil Rights and slavery. Two, it's one of the few times the kids come in with NO knowledge of any of this, so they are really interested and get excited for social studies everyday. (It's really fun watching them learn all of this new stuff.)

So this year I put together a learning walk where there were 5 stations and at each station they would read about that area, answers questions about their reading and then do some activity with it. The 5 stations were: 

1. Escaping to Freedom where they read about escaping slavery, and they had to create their own map of where they started and where they went to get to freedom. The following week they wrote a journal entry telling about one of their days journey to freedom. One kid kept writing about how he was wiped (whipped) all the time and he escaped and his mean white slave owner kept dragging him back to the big house for more wipings.
2. Underground Railroad where they read about Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad and different ways they communicated. They then created their own quilt piece that had a secret message within in it like when to escape, where to go, etc. and we made a big quilt out of it that's now hanging in the classroom.
   
3. Civil Rights where they read about Rosa Parks and then had to write a journal entry either as Rosa Parks or as a white person on the bus. They had to write about how they felt, what was going on, and what they would have done if they were that person on the bus. One kid started his journal with "Yo, Rosa, get outta my seat! Stop the bus, bus driver, she won't move. Let's arrest her!"
4. Langston Hughes where they read about his life and then they had to create their own dreams poem based off of his poem. One kid wrote a poem about his dream of having lunch with a hockey playing monkey. All of the poems were equally ridiculous so as a class we started over after analyzing Langston Hughes' poem again.
5. Harlem Renaissance where they read about this time period and famous artists and people that made it what it was. They then looked at several pieces of art created during that time and they then created their own. It was quite interesting to see what they would do if they lived in that time period.

Most did pictures like these two where there are African Americans playing instruments or dancing.

Or of singers on the stage.

More than half of the class didn't get the memo that they should NOT be drawing white people. I mean come on kids, we're studying the Harlem Renaissance for BLACK History Month.

And then there was this interesting one...I don't think this kid is going to be an artist when they grow up...

Yes, I am being braggy, but get over it. Their slave journals and maps look pretty awesome. All we have to do next week is make them look old by tearing them up and getting dirt on them. If I remember I'll take some pictures to share when they're all finished.