Sarah says. . .

The girls are playing school. I heard this from Sarah as she was talking to her 'students.'


"Art is about imagination. Maybe you see snow as pink, maybe you see the sky as purple, maybe you see the clouds in magenta colored pink, and maybe you see the world in swirls. That is the point of art. And tomorrow you are going to paint the way you see your classrooms."

I love my girls!

Grownup

"I feel more grown up than I ever have before" Yes, this was my daughter's quote. I let them have their Izze Sparkling Juice in a wine glass - they were really impressed when I had them used the cut glass ones ("You mean we get to use the fancy ones?"). This was partially because they are heavier and the stem is less delicate than my other stemware, plus they aren't as tall. But, they thought they were special.

They asked to sit at their little table with a tablecloth, so we had more space at our table. Everyone used the china and silver(plate).

Before dinner, Sarah told us the history of the first Thanksgiving. It was a perfect recitation.

Dinner was good (except for once my Turkey was done first - about an hour before I was ready).

All in all a good day.

Oh, and I ordered a new Macbook Pro (my HP is indicating that it's tired and time to think replacement.) I'm so excited and I can't wait for it to arrive.

Where does the time go

I'm trying to figure out why I couldn't manage to update in a week, but then I realized that DH was out of town last week and dealing with tired, grumpy kids and a toxic work situation left me uninspired. Then it was time to clean house before my ILs came for Thanksgiving.

Sydney was sent to her room for time out a few times on Saturday. Ummm, this is what we found - an extremely tolerant kitty.




I've finally decided that I'm going to buy a new laptop. This one has a few minor things that are going to continue to get more irritating. Plus, this way I can get the Christmas deal savings. I also reminded DH that since I use it as teaching, we can take it off on taxes.

I'm just trying to get by ducks in a row to survive the end of the semester, the Christmas season, and the last few weeks of this job.

Sydney got her second cast off. She not so sure about bending her elbow, but is thrilled to be free.

And, I have two very sweet kitties to give me loves.

Oh, and my ILs are going to watch the girls so DH and I can go on a DATE!

Delayed update

Oh, I forgot to update on Sydney.

On Friday we saw the doctor. He first cut off the cast. Sydney immediately started to move her arm. The doc told her to wait until she had the xray before she moved it too much, so Sydney plastered her arm across her chest like she was saying the Pledge of Allegiance. The xray was finished and read and the new bone was proclaimed ready enough to be without a cast.

Yesterday, I got a bug up my butt that I was going to get the kitchen clean - I mean really clean it. Cabinets got emptied out, drawers cleaned out and re-arranged (I moved the cooking utensils to the chefs table so they were between the counter and stove - I've been tired of walking around the chef table to get things I needed for the stove). I've not finished the job, but it's really looking nice.

Unfortunately, I think we will have to go to the vet tomorrow. Sparkles had a paw stepped on by accident yesterday. She's not walking on it yet. We'll see how she is doing tomorrow.

And, I'm thanking the producers of the TinkerBell movie for making a movie that isn't so obnoxious that I can't stand watching it after the 10th viewing. With Sydney still down, she has been watching a lot of it, which means so do I. LOL.

I managed to recover one of our dining room chairs yesterday. Only three more to go! And, I have to finish grading nine more papers (more like eight and a half because I read one as a draft and so I just need to grade the components).

Last night, we went to a sock hop to celebrate the 50th anniversary of our preschool. They had a contest to see who could hulahoop the longest. Sydney came in second in her age group. Sarah came in first - which was even more impressive because they competed in two groups and she won the first group and had to repeat her performance for the second group. She was really proud of herself.

Off to start my list for the day!

Classroom experiments

I don't post as much about my class on this blog as I would like to. Because it's open to the general public, I'm always afraid a student will find something I wrote and take offense - so I'm generally careful about what I write.

But, this I'm very excited about.

This year, I changed most of my paper assignments. The first assignment stayed the same (but will have to change for next year because the assignment was to write about why our country was so hesitant to elect a woman or minority as President).

So, I changed the second paper assignment. The students had to pair up and write a paper describing the election process and then re-engineer/re-design an aspect of the election process (i.e., campaign finance, the electoral process).

Then, because the paper topic lent itself to a presentation, I used that as their presentation project. I gave them some ideas of ways they could do their presentation that didn't involve a traditional powerpoint presentation. They could do a speech, present a bill to congress, do a play, etc.

They surpassed my expectations!

One group chose to present a bill to Congress. They even looked up the proper format of the bill (preamble, number the lines, etc), another group did a play inviting some of their friends to help.

I've now thrown out their third paper topic. I've always hated it. DH and I talked at lunch and created a topic that is more relevant to them, the student - but still fits the class.

For the third paper, they are going to write about some aspect of the culture of our university - for example, Homecoming, winter festival, etc and then they will compare the current activities to a period in time in the past (say 40-50 years). Then they will talk about how it defines the culture of our university. So, instead of doing a traditional documentation support, they will work in the archives and interview upperclassmen.

I think they will enjoy this more than writing about why our culture allows corporate crime.

Hopefully one down!

Today, at 3:15 EST, Sydney has an appointment to check her right arm to see if its ready to have her cast come off today.

Wish us luck!

Happenings

It was a tiring weekend here.

Friday was Halloween. It was so nice outside (normally it's snowing), we had our Halloween parade at the school outside.


Sarah carved her own pumpkin (on the left with the square and triangle eyes). Sydney couldn't quiet manage to carve hers, but she did draw on the face (on the right, with two triangle eyes) and I cut around the lines.


In the past week, Sydney has been chewing a lot of gum. She has taught herself to blow bubbles. She's quite proud of herself and has only gotten gum in her hair occasionally.

Last week we had Sydney's weekly appointment. Her right arm is doing really well. We are hoping to have it out of the cast in 2 more weeks. Her left arm isn't healing quiet as well. We are hoping that it will start and that we can go down to a short cast in two more weeks. We see the doc on Thurs to see what is happening.

On Saturday, Sarah's basketball camp played some games. They really enjoyed it.

On Sunday, I took the girls to see High School Musical 3. It wasn't too bad. I did like the message that "You have to pursue your dreams, not your parents, not your your boyfriend/girlfriends, and you can't give up what you want for your high school boyfriend/girlfriend."

And now another week begins.