A Perfect Weekend

Jon and I have had a perfect weekend. The events of the last three days may not have been what I would describe as the perfect weekend had the questioned been posed. But, as the weekend comes to a close, I can say with confidence it was near perfect. Here's how it went:

Friday night-
Dinner at Nabeel's. Nabeel's is one of our favorites and we haven't been in quite a while. I love the greek salad with chicken salad and a side order of fried potatoes.
Relaxing at home.

Saturday-
Bagels for Breakfast. I picked Panera because I love the cinnamon crunch bagel. Panera tried to ruin our perfect weekend by having terrible service. As with everything in this life there is not such thing as true perfection.
Errands, Estate Sales, and Garage Sales. The best parts of this portion of the weekend were driving with the windows down and the cute red purse I found at an estate sale.
Planting flowers. A part of the errands mentioned earlier involved buying new plants to replace all the mums I managed to kill. Though I'm not so great with plants, I do love them! Afternoon chat on the front porch. Our friend Amit, my parents, and my brother and sister-in-law all stopped by. We spent hours enjoying the sun on the front porch.
Italian for supper. Manicotti at Giuseppe's.
Time alone. Jon had plans with some guys, which he thoroughly enjoyed. I headed to the store to pick out a magazine. At home I took a shower, put on some soft PJs (a gift from my mother-in-law, Ginny, who shares this love with me), and rounded up my doggies for some snuggling in bed. I waited up for Jon by watching episodes of the Office. We may have finally earned the name of this blog by staying up until after 12:00!

Sunday-
Late morning. I slept until 9:30!
Almuerzo de Enchiladas. We had lunch at my favorite Mexican restaurant- Cocina Superior as Brookwood Mall. Their chicken enchiladas are delicious!
New cell phones and Ben and Jerry's. I finally got a new (working) cell phone. Jon also got some Nextel's for work. My patience while he spent about an hour getting these earned me some Ben and Jerry's. Chocolate Therapy- Yum!
Tannehill State Park. Jon and I decided we needed a excursion. He suggested Tannehill, so we headed there to enjoy the beautiful day.
Movies and hotdogs. We're ending the day with movies and a hotdog dinner. Jon's the chef!

Always an Adventure

Teaching is always an adventure. As with all adventures, there are pleasant parts and not so pleasant parts. In the case of teaching there are pleasant students and not so pleasant students. I'll share with you a story about each kind...

Mema (I changed his name) is a new student this year. He is from Japan, knows very little English, and has mild autism. He is so cute! This week I discovered he is an incredible artist. When I asked the students to write a journal about what they like to do at school, Mema drew a Nepolean Dynamite style lion. When I asked him if it was a lion he shook his head no, added a belt, and wrote GRRR to the picture. Then I asked him how this showed what he liked to do at school. He drew a rectangle around the creature. Added a spiral down he side to show that it was a piece a paper and then squeezed a picture of himself holding a pencil into the corner of the page. Clever! Apparently he likes to draw at school.

And now for the not so pleasant... Lila is another new first grader. She spends her time in my class rolling on the floor, giggling obnoxiously, and pestering the other students. I've tried my range of classroom management resources (though this is admittedly not my strong point) and have no clue how to motivate this kid. By Friday this week I was fed up. She started the day as usual and I decided to get tough. I gave a very forceful lecture ( I try to avoid these, but I'd used all my other tricks) about how she would do what I told her to today because I was the teacher. She responded, "So?" I continued my lecture and ended by explaining that if she chose not to do as I asked then we would go to the office and call her mom. Her response: "You don't know my number. Tell me my number. You don't know it." Determined to behave like an adult and not engage in a "No, you don't." Yes, I do." argument, I decided to ignore her and turned my attention to the other students and my lesson. My childlike tendencies got the best of me, however, when she announced that her telephone number was 831. "That is not enough numbers to be a telephone number Lila, apparently you don't know your number either." To that, she babbled out a few more numbers. I regained my adult posture and continued ignoring her. It sounds like the lecture was completely ineffective, but she actually did what I asked for the next 20 minutes or so. Our time together ended with my wadding up her paper and throwing it away because she folded it when I told her not to (I'm going to admit that was not a necessary move, but I wasn't thinking straight at that point). Oh, my!

The picture shows all the countries my students are from. The number on the jersey represent how many students are from that country.

It's Official

Some of you have heard the word and others have not. It's official now- we're selling our house. It has actually been official since Monday, but I haven't had time to blog about it until now. It's all rather sudden and exciting. We've been talking about wanting more space for a few months now, but our ideal time line included me graduating, me getting a raise, and then our finding a house. Things don't always go as planned and we found a house we liked ahead of schedule. Click here to see why I love it.

We have a contract on the house, so everything is now dependent on our selling our house. If you know someone in the market direct them to these picture or this MLS listing.

Space Invaders

I've stayed home from a family reunion this weekend to study for my comprehensive exams that I'll take next month. Jon went without me, but I have been far from lonely. You see, I live with three space invaders.

This morning when I sat to begin typing essay outlines, I was immediately joined by Macy, Leroy and Moses. They have no respect for any other object that requires an inch of my lap, so the laptop had to find a new resting place. At one point I got up to get a hair drier and then sat back down on the opposite end of the couch. Though the dogs had returned to their naps after having been shoved from their positions so that I could stand, it took them only a few seconds to realize I had returned to a seated posture. They promptly relocated themselves! I tried the switch again once my hair was dry and I went back to studying, but had the same amount of success as in my previous attempt. At one point, Moses was unable to find a spot on my lap so he climbed up a settled himself around the back of my neck.

Now as I type, Leroy is stretched across my legs which are propped on the coffee table. Macy is nestled up against Leroy in my lap, and Moses is snuggled at my side. Though invasive, they are cute, warm, and fairly quiet company. Click on the picture above to see just how cute they are.