A moment of pride

***WARNING - this blog contains a not so humble attitude. Please forgive the temporary insanity of the writer. She hopes to be back to normal after she gets this off her chest.***

I just have to take a quick moment to say that I am so proud of my class this year. They are doing an awesome job! I just finished testing for my report cards and all I can say is, wow! I am so impressed with my group. 12 of my 17 kids are on or above grade level in reading right now! I cannot even express to you what a huge change this is from the last time I taught first grade. They have been working hard and it shows. I guess in being proud of them, I may be taking a bit of that pride for myself. I am just working on celebrating the little victories with my students and this seems like a big one! YEAH!!

Okay, my moment of pride should be over now. Back to reality. :)

Saved by Pizza casserole

I walked into the door of my house at about 6:50 tonight (actually walked in it five times because I had groceries in my car). After a very long day at school (I have no time away from my kids on Tuesday expect lunch) and then an even longer staff meeting afterwards (solid 2 hours of people arguing over the same points over and over again), and a long trip to Meijers (I was low on groceries) I finally made it home (20 million parthesis later - like I can spell that word). After changing into my pj's, I contemplated supper for which I was starved. Instead of eating, I decided to read my sisters blog first which was a bad idea because it only made me even more hungry, especially for pizza. I was contemplating getting dressed and going back out for pizza (big decision for me, once I am home I hate leaving again) when there was a knock at my back door. Who should be there but my dad with a container of left over pizza casserole for me. Pure happiness. Adam agreed, because he warmed up more of it when he came home later. Things I learned from this are:

1. The power of unspoken prayer - I really wanted pizza, and God took care of my need
2. Living near your parents isn't so bad, especially when they bring you left overs!
3. Pizza casserole is really good - I think I already knew that though.
4. Sometimes you've gotta celebrate the little things - like supper!

PS - the kid who's dad accused me of not feeding him lunch is gone now. Dad moved him to a new school. God is always looking out for me, I am so blessed!

PPS - Ria where are you???????

When it rains, it pours:a recap of my past week when I didn't blog

Yes, I haven't blogged in over a week. Yes, I have a million excuses of why I didn't but I won't bore you with too many details, just the short recap.

Did you ever notice that the only time you ever get phone calls is when you don't have your phone on? I accidentally locked my phone in my car on Thursday and bingo, had 4 messages waiting for me Friday morning. I NEVER get that many calls in one night. I rarely get that many calls in one week!

Let me see, my week at school. Well, I was accused by parent of withholding their sons lunch from him. That was a new one. How stupid can you get to accuse your child's teacher, the school secretary, the head cook, and all the lunch aides of refusing to feed your child lunch. It was so ridiculous, I really wanted to smack this parent in the face.

Second school item, we had a shooting in one of our high schools. Just in the middle of the hall one kid pulled out a gun and shot another kid. No worries though apparently, because our district didn't bother to inform parents or teachers of what happened and we still have gotten no follow up e-mails on the incident. Yeah, I feel safe. Being that any nut that decided to walk in our building with a gun would probably get to my classroom first (I am the closest to the front entrance), I guess we think it could never happen again.

I have picture frames all over the floor of my house because we still haven't gotten around to putting them on the walls. My big sis helped me arrange how they are going to go and I am afraid if I move them, I will forget. So, the are still sitting all over my house waiting to be hung.

Had my first non-family company at my house Friday night. I think I can count best friends as company. Jewels and I enjoyed a lazy evening and then decided we were too old and tired to stay up until 3 like we used to so we went to bed.

Good news, I have finally been passed down the 1st season of Gilmore Girls to enjoy. It went through both of my sisters, my mother and now me. I had to wrestle my dad for it, he thought he should get first dibs but I won the battle for now.

My brother/roommate has been I don't know where until some unholy hour in the morning for the past two nights. What joy is mine. Sometimes living with him is just like living alone, there is no one else here anyway.

Came up with the storyline for my next great Christian novel. Too bad I never manage to finish one and attempt to get it published. I only have about 6 in the works now. Most of them have characters, and plot and about 10 pages written. I need to spend more time at my computer that doesn't involve blogging.

You do realize this is why I named my blog Becs Babble. Here I go babbling again. After a night of sleep, I'll see what else I can babble about in the morning.

Taking a day off!

Okay, for most people this is a simple task. Call into work say cough...cough "I am sick and won't be in today." And then enjoy your day off. To a teacher, a day off takes a lot of preparation. I was writing and getting lesson plans together for over 2 hours last night. Not because I am poking, but because it really does take that long to do it decently.

First off, you need to make sure your substitute has enough details. Even little things like the bathroom procedures and where the kids sit in the lunch room seem trite but it makes a huge difference in the day running smoothly. Secondly, you never know what kind of person you will get as a sub (at least in my district where we call into a phone database). Any person walking the planet with 90 college credit hours can be a substitute teacher. It could be 90 hours in basket weaving, and they can still sub! So you have to give a lot of details on what to do, or you will come back to find the day you missed was worthless and the students learned a concept wrong. Thirdly, I think it's very helpful to leave a brief description on the kids so that the sub knows what they are dealing with. They need to know that your chronic liar will try to be getting everyone else in trouble during the day, or if they let Diamond talk to them once during the middle of a lesson, she won't stop all day. Just knowing who can be responsible enough to take a note to the office can make a day run much smoother.

So, I guess my point is that taking a day off as a teacher is not as easy as it is for people in the other job worlds. It takes a lot of planning and a lot of time to arrange it properly. By the time you are finished, you feel you've earned a 2nd day off!

Questions for Heaven

I ran across an old song that I hadn't heard in a while by Chris Rice called Questions for Heaven. In the song, he talks about all the questions he has for God when he gets to heaven. I know that the Bible tells us that once we are in heaven, we will understand what confuses us on earth. Some people have said that when we are in heaven, it won't really matter to us anymore. Still, I had to think about the questions I would want to ask God some day in heaven. Some of them may be trite and others more profound. Feel free to add your own list.

1. Why did you make mosquitoes? Do they really do any good?
2. Were there any times you just wanted to hit humans in the head and tell them to listen?
3. What sin disappoints you the most?
4. Do you really care who wins the World Series, NBA Finals, Super Bowl, Stanley Cup, etc?
5. What makes you laugh?
6. What happened to the dinosaurs?
7. Is there more to space than what scientists have discovered?
8. Does it make you angry when people change your word to make it more "politically correct" or in "modern day language?"
9. What surprises you the most about your creation?
10. Why did you wait so long to come back?

I am getting distracted, I had more ideas when I started writing. I will let them fester a while and come back later...

True signs that I am becoming domesticated

My friend Jenay keeps telling me that I am getting too domesticated now that I am living in my own place. As I sat on my floor tonight with my tool kit and electric screwdriver putting together my new computer chair, I realized she just may be right. I don't know if using tools makes you "domesticated" but it certainly gives you a feeling of power. So as I was cleaning up my mess, I was thinking about all the other things that make me "domesticated."

1. Paying the bills (ie mortgage payment, personal loan payment, gas/electric bill, cable bill, etc). Not that this is the fun part of living alone, it's the part that makes you cringe.

2. Buying groceries - before it was some snack I wanted now it is the milk, meat, cheese, bagels, eggs, salt, flour, and so on and forever. I can't believe how fast a cart full of groceries can add up.

3. Hosting company - yup, kept my first overnight guests. My AZ sister and my two cousins (who read my blog but don't comment - Hi). It was fun!

4. Doing laundry - with 4 girls in the house on Sunday morning, this accounted for every bathroom towel that I own.

5. Doing household chores - (ie. Dishes, vacuuming, dusting, etc.. All the things I have avoided most of my life because I hate them).

6. Parking in a garage - okay, so this doesn't make me domesticated, but hey it's nice to finally get first dibs on the garage. It took me 25 years to get to park in the driveway instead of the court.

7. Having most of the mail in the mailbox belong to me - well, actually I think I still get more that belongs to the guy who lived here before me.

Okay, that is all that comes to mind right now. Now I get to do one of my new grown up chores of bill paying (yippee). If I have blogged about this before, please forgive me but seriously.....If I can't remember what clothes I wear from one day to the next, how and I suppose to remember what I've already blogged about. Pathetic I know...

Happy, Happy, Happy!!!!

Do you want to know why I am happy???

Because there is hockey once again.

Don't stop reading yet!

Seriously though, I am a hockey fan (freak probably the better word). Why? I really don't know. Something about the game just thrills me. It's my sport. It's my downfall in life. It combines attributes I like from several sports. First, they skate - that takes more talent and skill than any running in the other three sports. Secondly, they also handle a stick and a puck and sometimes both at the same time. There is speed, there is movement, there is physical contact. Most people get the wrong impression that hockey is a lot of fighting, but that is the bad rap it gets from minor league hockey. There is some fighting in the NHL, but not nearly to that extent. Hockey came back with new rules this year and man has it changed up the game. I am giddy. I am happy. I am forgetting that it is not the weekend yet.

Now that most of you have ignored 3/4's of what I wrote, I will sign off with just two more words about my favorite sport.

GO REDWINGS!!!!!!!!

Some days I wish I would have stayed in bed...

These words from a song I learned when I was little came back to me as I sat at my computer tonight. When things get hairy and crazy in my life, those are times I wish I hadn't gotten up in the morning. I know God never gives us more than we can handle, but sometimes I think I am at my limit. I am just repeating to myself "I am taking next Friday off, I am taking next Friday off." Come to think of it, I am not sure where that song even comes from. Assistance Maryann!

I have a stye by my eye. Never knew what a stye was until today. Apparently it is this swollen, painful, red blob that grows by your eye making it very sensitive. Maybe that influenced my mood today. I don't know if my kids were really that much louder than they are normally but I felt like they were screaming all day. Maybe a stye effects your whole sensitivity, not just your eye.

I thought I had something profound to write tonight, but it turns out I don't. I am just too tired! I will go put a hot compass on my stye (mom's order) and leave the interesting discuss to all of you.

Weekend Wrap Up

I seem to have the same problem every weekend. I go into the weekend with great and grand plans of what I will do with my Saturday and then before I know it, Saturday is gone and I have done nothing! It never ceases to amaze me how slowly a work day will go by but a Saturday will be over before you blink. I get nothing accomplished on a Saturday.

The most interesting part of my weekend came on Sunday, when my parents (who like me to ride with them to conserve gas) left me at church. I have been riding with them almost every Sunday since I moved out and they left me at church. Luckily, the one family that lives near us hadn't left yet so after trying Dad's cell phone and my sister Kayleen's, I got a ride with them. They literally got all the way back to their house and saw my car before they realized they had forgotten me! And I even had stuff sitting in their car. Doesn't that make you feel just so loved, your parents forgetting you exist? I will be reminding them of this for many years to come.