77 Days of Summer

(Insert the groan or cheer about my returning to writing here.)

I love that some people love to read my writing.  That makes me feel very special.  However, what I REALLY love about being back on the blog is the writing itself.  I know that somewhere deep inside me there is an author of something more than that one journal I had published in Middle Ground.  Yet I also know that person isn't going to come out of me until I make time to write... and that is probably not going to be until my kids are a little older.  Or who knows.  Maybe it will NEVER happen because if I am not making the time now, who is to say I will make the time later when life will be equally as hectic in other ways (bball games, practices, choir concerts, overnights, etc.)

So anyway, I am happy if you are happy that I am writing today but I am HAPPIER (no offense) for myself to be WRITING.  Writing is one of the few stress relievers I have and when I don't write, logically I am more stressed.  I don't always come in with a plan, even though my blog was set up to have a weekly one, but perhaps my subconscious plan is always to clear my mind.

So it's summer, and I am back.  There.  I state this boldly with every doubt in my mind.  However, I have determined that I am going to make the most out of this summer and try to knock out as many to-dos as I can, so I am going to record my days through SHORT posts and pictures.

I counted 77 days of summer.  That's a lot of time.  Why then have I felt like it is almost ending since the moment school got out?  Probably because I went right back to work to get more stuff done, and I still have many days of schoolwork to do.  Probably because I have another new prep next school year to prepare for.  Probably because every summer is over so quickly that I always look back and think, "What did we even DO?"  Probably because I have two little boys to entertain both for their sake and mine.

Today is Monday, June 10th.  Ok, that's a lie.  It's Friday the 14th - Happy Flag Day!  I was going to lie to you and pre date this entry because I am OCD about putting posts in order, but I guess it is also good to admit that the first time I MADE time to post about my week was at the end of it.

The only way to make a real change (and a change is what I need) is to openly admit what is going on and be truthful about life behind closed doors.  So I am opening my doors in hopes that what I write is something I can be proud to call my summer vacation of 2013.  Granted, I won't be doing any monumental tasks and the likelihood of that trip to Monterey, California is pretty slim.... so I probably won't be doing much in the way of traveling either, but I am an ALMOST full time stay at home mother over the summer, and I want to do a good job at that job AS WELL AS try to improve my health, the feel of our home, my teaching career, and most importantly - my areas of disorganization.  This may not seem like a lot to some of you - and it probably really isn't - but if I don't document what I have done, I might not feel obligated to WORK at it and I definitely won't reflect on it nearly as much.

Having said that, my goal is to do a quick update answering these questions every day:

What did I do today for: 

• William
• Landon
• Our Home
• My Health (Physical, Mental, Spiritual)
• My Students
• Others

Since it's NOT Monday, I am going to go back and create a blog for as many days of the week as I can before I hit the hay tonight.  Wish me luck on this venture.

Thanks for reading.

Sunday Summary - June 11th-17th

What a Week!!!

For the first time since school got out, I finally felt like it I was "sort of" on VACATION!!

Monday, June 11th

• It rained today.  That was the first in a while.  We've had a pretty dry past few weeks.
• William went to his babysitter's house today, while I ran a couple of errands before going to work.  I needed to go to Hobby Lobby and Michaels in order to prepare for a craft project for William's big boy room.  I am going to do some wall art that I was inspired by from a Pinterest picture (below).  I am basically going to use this artwork as inspiration, but my final project will not be like this.  Since I am using a Cricut machine to cut the vehicles out, it will be like the opposite of this.  I probably won't use a map either, but this does look really cool!
• At work I got a good amount accomplished.  I did every single one of my POs for my seven classes (six of which are ones I have never taught before.)  That took a while, since I didn't really have any clear direction.  I hit a wall of exhaustion in the afternoon and actually contemplated lying down and taking a nap in the back corner of my room.  However, one thought of how gross my classroom pillows are really shook that thought out of my head and kept me plugging away.

 

Tuesday, June 12th

• Today I was NOT alone at work - hip, hip, HOORAY!  Two of my friends came to school to craft, so I took a break from my classwork to craft with them.  I worked on William's big boy bedroom project.  (By the way, I am not sure if I have ever told the Blog this but William's room will be done in trucks, trains, planes, and boats.)
• So, what did I accomplish during our craft time?  Well, not TOO much because I am not 100% sure what wall space I will be working with at our new house.  It all depends on where the furniture is going to fit and what furniture he will have in his room... In fact, we aren't even entirely sure which room William will have - although I am fairly certain it will be the pink and orange polka dot one (sans the pink and orange polka dots of course!)  I did, however, decide what size the vehicles I wanted to use in my frames and cut samples out to maneuver.  I went from originally thinking I would do four frames like the one above to just three.  I chose a truck, a plane, and a tractor since there wasn't a sailboat design. Plus I am going to spell his name out with the Choo-Choo train letters.  It was nice to chat with my friends and watch them be super productive making t-shirt quilts, and I feel excited about the project I have for William.  I just wish we could be in our house to get it STARTED!

Wednesday, June 13th

• Today I took William to the lake for the day.  It was VERY nice to have a day away from Toledo and WORK! Cathy had called me a couple of weeks ago to let me know that two of Dominic's cousins were going to be bringing their kids up for the day today.  That's a pretty big deal because we don't get to see them much and therefore William doesn't get to see/know their kids much either.  Unfortunately my sister-in-law could not come and then at the last minute Cathy couldn't come (Dom's Grandpa is having surgery tomorrow so she was busy preparing for helping him with that) but it was fun to see the girls and their kids and to hang out with Dom's Aunt Sharon for the afternoon.  
• When we first got to the lake, William was sad because of course he expected to see Grandma and Grandpa Krupp, but they were not there!  He got over it quickly once he dug out the toys from their shed.  He doesn't forget a thing, so he marched right over there and started pulling them out.  There are new lake toys that I didn't even know about since this was my first trip up there this year, but he remembered them from his trip with Dominic over Memorial Day.
• Later, when the kids starting arriving, William and his cousin Mitchell became instant friends.  It was adorable how quickly they connected.  I have a picture of the two boys holding hands that just makes my heart melt.  I will post it below.
• I will admit that today was a bit challenging being 9 months pregnant, running around chasing a toddler who is all-too-bold about going right into the lake.  I think I over-estimated my strength.  It was much harder to handle him today than it would have been if Dom or Cathy would have been there.  We still had a good time, but I was worried a lot about watching him. 
• William and I decided to come back to Toledo for dinner in hopes that we would see Daddy, but Daddy was out golfing so we had dinner alone.  We decided to get Chipotle (William's favorite) but he had a bit of a meltdown when we got home.  He was PERFECT at the lake, but the lack of nap did him in by dinnertime. All-in-all it was a wonderful day! 

Protecting his head while playing trucks at the lake

"Mommy, I got binoculars!"

Mitch and Will - My Favorite Picture of the Day!

 Big Day in the Sun + No Nap = Meltdown!!!

Thursday, June 14th

Playing in the river at the Zoo.

•  Today William went to the ZOO with his babysitter, her husband, her kids, and one of her son's girlfriends! He had two exciting days in a ROW!  Plus he was just at the Zoo last Saturday. He loved the Polar Bear again. The first picture below is a picture of him eating a "graham snack" on the way to the sitter's.  He said he was a camper and campers eat graham snacks.  I told him this yesterday and he remembered. LOL!

William is saying, "No pictures!"

• I had a good day as well.  First thing this morning I attended the first of our weekly staff brunches that we are holding over summer vacation for anyone interested in creating a more positive learning environment for our school.  I felt as though the meeting was incredibly upbeat and people brought a lot of great ideas to the breakfast table.  (There was also really good food.)  I am hoping that all of this work we will be doing over the summer will truly pay off.  I'm keeping an open mind and a positive attitude.  Perhaps we will even DOUBLE the size of this committee by the end of the summer!!!
• After brunch I had to run home because the couple buying our house was getting it inspected.  After that, I went to the Waterville garage sales.  I didn't buy nearly as much as I did last year, but then again I bought most of my stuff in Perrysburg last year.  This year I was mainly looking for stuff for William's big boy room since I don't know if this baby is a boy or a girl.  I did find him a Radio Flyer tricycle, which was another one of my main goals, and I was able to talk them down from $10 to $8.  I am going to save this for when we move so William will have something exciting at our new house.  Plus the driveway there is paved smoothly, which will provide a much better surface to practice riding around on.  I also found him a bookshelf for his room.  I got that for $8 as well, even though it was marked $10.  
• I headed over to my cousin Dawn's house toward the end of my time in Waterville and got to catch up with her for a while, so that was very nice!  She is always so generous in what she gives us for William.  Whenever he is wearing something nice, odds are it came from her.  Will gets all of his finest hand-me-downs from his cousin Zachary (Dawn's son).
• I ended the day at my 36 Week check.  You probably read all about that in Thursday's blog though!
• In the evening, Dom was able to get home early enough for us to check out some furniture for William's new room.  We grabbed Wendy's for dinner (and made the mistake of feeding a toddler some Frosty) before went to Value City Furniture to search for twin mattresses.  My favorite part of the trip was when I had William lie down on the mattress and he sprawled out his arms and legs, reaching way up high over his head, and exclaimed, "Mommy, I don't fit in here!"  Precious!  After that William's sugar-buzz kicked in and he was sprinting all over the furniture store.  It was time for us to leave.  We weren't planning on buying anything that night, just getting ideas.  So we left.

Friday, June 15th

• Well, since I hadn't been as productive at work this week as I had planned on being I went to work this day.  I did get a good amount done, but it seems as though these projects I am working on are never-ending!  I am just glad that this baby is providing me with a relatively clear finish-date.  Usually I spend the entire summer working at couple days a week.  This year I am going to be going in until the end of this month and then possibly a couple of days during the first week of July if baby is not here yet.  Then I am going to be FINISHED until October 1st when I come back from my maternity leave!
• This evening we went to a pool-party at our friend's house in Perrysburg.  I brought a tomato/avocado/corn dip that my friend made for our Home Group session a week ago.  I think it was a hit!  A picture is attached.
• William always LOVES going to this house and he had SO MUCH FUN tonight!  It was great to see him be so bold in the water.  I think part of this goes back to our trip to the lake this week and part is just him still being fearless.  He was leaning into the water on his tip-toes and then sort of falling into our arms.  He kept calling it "jumping" into the pool.  The only time he jumped was toward the very end.  His feet actually left the ground!  I am so proud of how good of a swimmer he is.  I really need to enroll him in some swim classes.  Once we move to Perrysburg and things calm down a bit, Dom and I want to get a Y membership.  Then we can do some classes with William.
• The evening ended with William's first S'more ever.  It was a hit!  The other day I told him that campers eat graham snacks, so he was alllllll over graham snacks again. 

Monday = Mama's Day: Summer Vacation??? I think not!

So technically I have been on "summer vacation" for 10 days.  Our teacher work day was June 1st.  I admire the people who are able to leave that day and not look back.  I just don't know how they do it.  I have always worked a lot during my summer vacation, and this year is no different.  I have been in my classroom working every day EXCEPT last Friday, because I had to meet with the bank for our home purchase and then attend the home inspection of the house we are going to buy at the end of this month. 

So what have I been working on at school?  Well, first I needed to just tie up some lose ends from the year.  Then I needed to search for texts, supplies, and workbooks for my SEVEN classes that I will have next year.  That's right... I am teaching six new classes on top of the one I taught this year.  This might not be that big of a deal any other year, but the fact that I am going to be on maternity leave for the first six weeks of school and then have a newborn/no sleep for a large chunk of the remainder of the year makes this entire thing significantly more stressful.  I am excited about teaching these six electives (even though I am not excited about the fact that I will have the same number of regular English students as I did this year, crammed into larger classes) but I feel like I don't have a true sense of direction.  I guess the hardest thing about work is that I have too many freedoms.  I have always been given the freedom to do pretty much whatever I want in my classroom, which is nice and all... but I would prefer to have freedoms within a boundary that was designed for me.  Of course, in English we have the state Common Core standards so at least I have somewhere to start.  But with electives, I have even MORE freedom and no official texts, so it's a completely blank canvas.  That's great for most people, but that requires a lot of time to plan and search for lessons, time to seek out the best texts and documents to use, and time to create most of the documents on my own. I am working as diligently as possible right now WITHOUT kids to teach and papers to grade, and I STILL don't feel like I have the proper amount of time it will take to do an excellent job at all seven of these classes next year.  Hence the reason why I am always so shocked by teachers who don't have to take their work home or work over the summer. 

Most people just tell me to relax and let it go, that I don't have to do an excellent job because the expectations are not there since the classes haven't been offered in years.  However, I see it differently.  Think back to when you were in high school.... you sat in a desk assuming that the teacher in front of you knew everything (or almost everything) about the subject that he or she was teaching.  If you didn't think that about the teacher, then it was likely that the rumor was that he or she was incompetent.  I don't want the kids to think I am incompetent, but I would be lying if I said that I knew everything about what I will be teaching next year!  Now think back on your high school experience and ask yourself if you ever thought about how much experience the teacher had with the subject that he or she was teaching... I don't think I ever thought about this.  I just looked at my schedule and saw a teacher's name and then assumed that that person was going to do a good job... and if he or she did not then I didn't like them or the class.  Well shoot, now I want to go back in time and cut new teachers some slack!  It's exhausting trying to master the content of one subject, let alone seven!

Don't get me wrong:  I love my job and I am excited to do something different next year.  I just want to do as good of a job as possible and it seems like whenever a teacher starts getting into the grove, the game changes.  Pray that I will be able to handle all of these changes with ease next year and trust me when I say I am doing my part right now in preparation for what the next school year will bring.  Like I mentioned earlier, I have yet to start my summer vacation and I will be at work every day this week except Wednesday as well.  After I finalize the POs for my classes, I will begin to revise my syllabus from this year and create syllabi for my six new classes.  Then I will start writing my maternity plans. 

Ultimately, I feel a bit relaxed when I remind myself that as soon as this baby comes I will be off until October 1st.  I may be working hard now, but I will be doing everything other than working on school work once baby comes and all of this hard work and preparation will have paid off. :)