Hurricane Day!

No school! Yay!

It's easy to tell hurricane season.

Beautiful sunsets. Weather forecasts by streets instead of counties. "It's raining on Collier Blvd now. Residents on Livingston Road are experiencing sunny skies (they're about three miles apart)! Torrential rains at 4:00 pm, over and dried by the 95 degree rays just in time for dinner. Palm trees slowly waving goodbye to the orange-red sun as it sets on another day. Those same palm trees have been striving all year to recover from Hurricane Wilma last October. They're in the prime now, leaves looking postcard perfect. Soon, their hard work will be destroyed.

Our first big hurricane is now on its way. Who knows how strong it will be and where it will go for certain, but one can bet their thousand dollar roll-away storm shutters that before November, those palm trees will be reduced to amputatees with very bad hair cuts.

It's easy to tell hurricane season in Collier County. This county is known for overwhelming its teachers. So I'm just praying for a mild hurricane that will down some power lines and do just enough damage to cancel school for a few days. I don't want anyone to get hurt or to have to spend a lot of money. I just want a vacation!

This week, John and I will probably be cleaning out our coolers (sitting outside since Hurricane Wilma), deciding if we should evacuate (we won't), and possibly purchasing some new candles (yay!) and maybe even some cool camping gear. Sweet. I'm always up for spending some money.

I wish I were a baby.

Because then I could cry all day.

I'm a little stressed.

I love myself.

My hair looks pretty today despite the humidity.

I am following the curriculum given to us by the district to the tee. Four days and running. It's a flippin' record!

Here we go.

Well, it's that time again. One of my favorite weeks of the year (just below the seven days from October 29th to November 4th) began today. It's the first week of school! I love the first week of school. New kids, new friends, new clothes, new notebooks and backpacks and pencils and a nice, clean classroom. Aaaah.

Well, I spent 56 hours last week preparing my classroom and going to silly teacher in-services. It's good that I got paid for 37 of those hours. Oh, the joys of being on salary.

My classroom is the bomb this year. I am totally getting awesome at this stuff. Haha...well, anyway, it was looking great and arranged perfectly, but as I was leaving Saturday evening, I noticed an ant crawling on the little armchair in the classroom library. And then I saw two ants, fifty ants, hundreds of ants all over the chair, the carpet, the books, the window...

I ran to Walgreen's, bought sixteen ant traps, and laid them all over my classroom (8 of them in the classroom library, where I saw all those nasty ants eating away at my books!).

I have everything in my classroom that I need. Except a nice classroom carpet. So if you know anyone with a cute, colorful classroom carpet, just ship it down here UPS style.

I have my work cut out for me this year. Every year one lucky teacher receives the cluster of very low readers. Guess who got them this year? You guessed it. Moi. I'm excited, seeing as I just finished teaching preschool and know all about teaching kids their letters, numbers, and shapes. Exactly what these three or four kids need to learn considering they speak no English, know about 6 letters of the alphabet, and can't count to ten in any language.

It's been nice talking with you this summer. Talk to ya in June.

Cake!

Guess what? I signed up for a cake decorating class at Jo-Ann's! I'm so excited. I wanted to do a sewing class, but it was from 6:00-9:00 and that's too late for me. I'm hoping my Aunt Cheryl's cake decorating talent is somewhere in my genes. This level one class will teach me how to make one of those character cakes, with all those star things like the one I had for my second birthday.

Then, if I really like doing it and am somewhat good at it, I'll take the level 2 and 3 class and practically be a cake decorating professional. I don't really know how cake decorating is very useful, considering perfectly wonderful cakes are not very expensive. But, it's nice to impress people with my beautiful talents. Since I can't play ultimate frisbee, I figure why not try cake decorating?

Cake decorating is kind of an expensive hobby. I really hope it's worth it. :)

The actual school year is almost here! I am SO excited. I love back to school week. New supplies, new students who are still quiet and shy. How exciting. I miss MOST of my fellow first grade teachers so much, and I'm hoping to try starting a Bible study at my school. Which is really, really terrifying for me. It's going to be a great year!

Just pray that this kid, Max is NOT in my class, or my entire year will be hell.