Overheard this morning...

I spent most of my day laughing at how crazy my kids are, it all began with this exchange before the day officially started:

Girl walks into the classroom wearing some cute shoes.

Me: Good morning, I really like your shoes!

Girl: Thanks.

Boy: Your shoes aren't in dress code!

Girl: Yes they are!

Boy: I don't think they are. Ohhhhhhh, you're going to juvie!

Me: What????

Good to know the kids take the dress code way more seriously than I do - I usually just send them to the office, they think they should go straight to Juvie!

Meanest Teacher Ever!

I've tried to convince people that I'm really not as nice and patient as they think I am and today I may have proved it.

Today was our first Math Benchmark so by lunchtime we are all pretty much done for the day. We do things and say things that just don't come out right. My class stopped at the restroom on the way back from lunch, as we always do, and I noticed that two boys were hiding around the corner totally cracking up. My experience tells me that if there is laughing going on in the bathroom (especially the boy's bathroom) something inappropriate is probably going on. So in a "can we just hurry up and get back to class already" way I semi-yelled into the bathroom. Now, what I meant to say was- stop messing around and hurry up, but what came out was, "HURRY UP AND NO SMILING!"

And after I said it, I honestly didn't think a thing about it. As we were walking down the hall though, Marcy stopped me as she was cracking up and asked, "Did you just say no smiling?" I admitted that I did indeed say that but that's not what I meant and I tried to explain myself but I'm not sure she bought it. I could forever be known as the teacher that doesn't allow smiling in her class! Fortunately, Marcy was the only person around who was actually LISTENING to what I had to say!! :)

While all that may make it sound like I had a rough day, I really didn't. This was the most successful benchmark I've ever given and my class worked so very hard, I'm super proud of them!

Happy Birthday Chicas

First of all, I must wish a very Happy Birthday to my sister, Ashleigh. Today she is 24 years old and I'm kind of jealous. Twenty four sounds kind of nice. Anyway, Ashleigh is a super cool person, an incredible teacher, and the keeper or sharer of my most embarrassing moments! :) We certainly haven't always got along, but I'm blown away by her giving spirit to me even when I don't deserve it.

A really fun thing about Ashleigh's birthday is that Allie's birthday is the very next day! So, tomorrow we will celebrate again as Allie turns the big 2! I can't believe she is already that old.

Well, Ashleigh and I take our role as "aunts" very seriously, and we felt like we needed to find Allie a very special gift for her birthday. She's got quite the imagination and is always pretending to cook stuff, so we felt like the perfect gift was a little play kitchen. Do you know how many varieties of kitchens there are? There are wooden ones, plastic ones, walk-in ones, big ones, small ones, even some with "stainless steel" appliances. I "shopped" online first, but ended up going to 3 Targets, Walmart, and Toys 'R Us before finding the perfect kitchen. As if that wasn't adventure enough, we had the hardest time getting the thing in the car!


And it was even more difficult to get it out! After emptying the box of it's contents I realized how big a job this was going to be.



The number of parts was insane and it took about 2 hours for us to fully assemble it. But when it was finished, it was perfect!



I can't wait to see Allie's face tomorrow!

What a day!

Today has been an absolutely great day. I got to sleep in later than I have in a really long time. I also got to enjoy a little flag football and some baseball. I bought gas for $2.93! Then, at the very last minute I decided to go to the Baylor game in Waco tonight. I got to Reagan's game about 2:30 and the whole crowd was abuzz with college football talk. I was already pumped about being able to watch Baylor on TV again, but the more I thought about it, the more I really just wanted to go to the game. So, I rounded up two of my buddies and off we went.

We got on the road about 4:20 and made it inside the stadium well before the 6:05 kickoff. The weather was perfect, the crowd wasn't big but it was loud, and the game was fun. I don't know what the predictions for this game were, but I expected Iowa State to give us a run for our money. Instead they just gave us lots of room to run! It was very cool to be on the winning side of a Big 12 blow-out. I'm pretty sure that has never happened to Baylor before. The final score was 38-10.

We enjoyed the game from a couple different angles (one of the benefits of a Baylor home game-lots of room to move around) and even squeezed in a little game of football on the field afterwards. All in all it was a great day, it's always a little more fun to be completely spontaneous. Here's a couple pictures from our adventure:

The team coming onto the field

Alex and Reagan

Alex and Reagan on the field

Alex (white blur) running for a touchdown

DOOOOOOOMMM!

Anyone else a little tired of hearing about how the United States is on the verge of financial collapse?

I won't pretend to remember much from my days as a Finance major at Baylor but I do remember a few key things. The first being that your opportunity for return in any investment almost always coincides with the level of risk you take. Big risk equals big return, little risk equals little return. Banks and mortgage companies took big risks in handing out loans like they were candy. They weren't just being nice, they were hoping they would reap an amazing return on their investment. Their hunches were wrong and they lost. If I take a big risk expecting great returns and I lose, well, I lose - there is nobody there to pay me billions of dollars to take away the loss.

The second thing I remember about the world of Finance is that the stock market moves on "news." If there is good news, surprise, the stocks soar. If there is bad news, you guessed it, the stocks dive. Pretty complicated huh? So, what I'm thinking is, maybe it would be a good idea to move past all this "the sky is falling" talk and get back to life. If everyone would go to work and work hard at what they do, I imagine everything will work out just fine. I'm starting to feel like maybe we're all in the movie Chicken Little.

Reality bites

Well, about 1 minute and 10 seconds into the game yesterday I was brought back to reality. And for Baylor, that reality stunk!

When it was all said and done we lost 49-17. Not exactly the showing I was hoping for, but I'm still confident we'll end with the best season we've had in awhile. I'll keep you posted!

Much of You

I actually wrote this post over a week ago, but I kind of struggled with whether or not I should actually publish it. I've found that sometimes when I need to empty my head, I can just write without actually making it public and suddenly everything is so much better. I don't really have a good reason to post it now, and I already feel like I'm in a different place than I was when I wrote it, but it's a pretty good reminder to me of my true purpose. In everything I say, in everything I do, I want to make much of Jesus.

Why does it take so long to realize that when there seems to be a recurring theme in one's life it is probably God trying to tell them something? Maybe it's just me!

This summer I read Don't Waste Your Life by John Piper. It's a great book, but don't read it unless you're ready to be challenged to see your life and relationship with God in a whole new way. After reading it, I'm still not quite sure if maybe I'm supposed to be living in a hut in Africa teaching orphaned children instead of living in a big house in the 'burbs teaching "rich" (comparatively speaking) kids! Anyway, one of the main points of the book is that we are to live in a way, wherever you are, that makes much of Jesus.

I believe the staff at my church is reading/has read this book too, so I've heard the phrase "making much of Jesus" several times in the last month or so. Then, from I don't know where, Steven Curtis Chapman's Much of You popped into my head yesterday. Finally, last night as I was getting ready for bed I began to relive my day, my week, my month and I realized something that made me very sad: I've been living in a way that makes much of ME. Sometimes knowingly, sometimes with no real clue that's what I was doing - but it's all the same.

I've definitely been a "glass half-empty" kind of person lately and last night it kind of all came together at once. I know that God is good, and I'm praying that He will continue to reveal Himself to me and teach me truth. Slowly, but surely (because God's good like that) I know He's going to fill me back up.