Does this qualify me as passive aggressive?

I'm too proud to beg

for your attention and your friendship and your time,

so you can come and get it from now on.

My Song

Brandi Carlile

The Story of My Life,

OR Why I Will Never Be a Sexy Mama

Yesterday evening Robb and I walked out of our realtor's office (another post for another day). He was kind enough to tell me he thought I looked really good. He liked my outfit, my eyes were so pretty, and my hair looked really nice, etc.

Caught up in the moment, I decided to play along as we each headed to our cars. I slid my hair out of its ponytail and went for the sexy hair shake...

...and my sunglasses went flying to the ground. Noisily.

At which point I started laughing so hard I cried.

Maybe someday I'll get it down, but for now this type of scene is all-too-common for me to consider myself good at pulling off sexy. Guess I'll just have to stick with cute!

Summer School

For the first time ever, I decided to go ahead and teach summer school. My grade level preferences were (in order), 2nd, 1st, and 3rd.

They offered me 4th. Well...okay. It's only for 19 days.

Then they came back and said enrollment was off in the upper grades, but would I like to teach Preschool? Um.....not so sure about that one. So my assistant principal tracked me down and reassured me it would be fun, they'd provide curriculum, I'd have TAs, etc. So I went for it.

Now, let me just say that 24 four year olds is a lot of four year olds. However, it was only three hours a day, I had THREE TAs (one of my official TAs had a daughter who liked volunteering), and - best of all- preschoolers learn through play. Yes indeed, you read that correctly. They paid me to play blocks and play dough and paint with these kids. So we focused on letters and numbers and colors and shapes and had a lot of fun. In the end, they're just too stinkin' cute NOT to love! (Except maybe when they're throwing tantrums...but let's not get into that.)

(More for me than for anybody else:)

Lucia, Maria, Salma, Miriam, Andy, Virginia, Giovanni, Marisol, Sergio, Yenisis, Andre, Benji, Stefanie, Me

Maritza, Brenda, Diara, Karina, Reynaldo, Luis, Isabella, Brian, Viviana

Andre

He kept inviting me over to his house to watch a movie and eat popcorn.

Starting a little young, eh?

Parents - Yes! They still make bristle blocks! ;-)

Diara

(This little girl was SO tiny!!!)

Luis

He has the most beautiful eyes of any person I've ever met. Sigh.....

So long, summer!

Catch up

So...at the beginning of June we celebrated Robb's birthday with some of his friends. We had just bought a new game, Quelf, and we decided to try it out. In case you can't tell, we had a good time.

Me, having a "spastic fit" and reciting the alphabet backwards. (Hard to do mid-fit!)

I got a card that said "Act like you're a big shot photographer. Tell everyone to pose, give you their best smile, etc." Here's what I got.

(Tim, you win. Hands down.)

Robb, playing Fido - and doing a frighteningly good job of it!

Long story short: With the right group of friends (NOT shy people), Quelf is a lot of fun.

We recommend playing with two dice, though, since it can drag on.

Get yours today! (Or come visit and we'll play.) :-)

Attention, please

After lunch my kids lined up to come back into class.  While we were waiting for the stragglers, one of my girls showed me her red-stained fingers.  I asked "What happened to your fingers?"  She responded "I was doing an art project."  

Thinking that she had perhaps visited the art teacher or her first grade teacher during recess I asked whose room she'd been working in, and what her art project was.  "Oh," she said, "I wasn't working in the art room.  I was coloring my eraser while you were teaching us our science lesson.....but I was paying attention!" 

Easter

On Easter Sunday Robb and I sang in Sacrament Meeting.  Since my life was consumed with the stake musical (more on that later), we didn't have time to work on anything super complicated. We lucked out when we found a "new" hymn in the April Ensign.  It's called  "Behold the Wounds in Jesus' Hands" (and it's on page 61 of your Ensign!)  :-)  I just wanted to share it with you, because it's quite beautiful and definitely brought the spirit to our Easter Sunday.  Here's a link to listen to (I think) a BYU choir singing it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRoy7P9W14Q

Super Green, or My Teacher was Weird on St. Patrick's Day

So I decided to indulge my weirdness on St. Patrick's Day.  It all started with the $1 display at the front of Target (gets me EVERY time!)  I found some sweet shamrock shades - with glitter, thank you very much - and had no intention of going beyond that.  Then my mother-in-law sent us a St. Patrick's Day package.  What can I say?  (Besides "You ROCK, Diane!)  No, really.  The cool striped socks and green carnations inspired me.  Needless to say, it was easy to get my students' attention.

What???  Why are you looking at me like that?

My kids dubbed me Super Green.

Don't ask what my super powers were - it's top secret.