Baby Taylor is Here!

Levi Christopher 9 lbs, 21 3/4 inches 5:04 pm on May 21, 2012

Thought 2 years not posting anything was long enough.

Persevere

Persevere til the end in 2010... with Joy.

As I have been sitting here this afternoon thinking about everything our Church has been going through these past few months, our theme for the year came to mind. We have been through multiple people with health issues (big and small), job issues, family situations, celebrations of new births, and new beginnings. There is not too much I can say except from what I have witnessed - putting our faith in the Lord not matter what the situation. Hearing about having no fear of what the future holds because He holds the future. Seeing people say what they believe and then living it. I am humbled daily by knowing our church family and how they live - all for the glory of God.

This verse has come to my mind a lot recently, and I would like to share it with you. All we see is what is happening now, not the Master('s) plan.

For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Jeremiah 29:11

100%

Two milestones happened this semester in Honors Algebra 2.

1) All 32 of my students passed the EOC (making a level 3 or 4) - actually, all of them made an A or B on it.

2) One of them scored a 100 on it with a scale score 176 out of 178.


This is the first time we have had all of our honors students pass and each honors teacher had at least one student make a 100 on the exam. Yea!

Now for another challenge... working with the regular students to try to do the same thing.

Good Kitties!

Iggy and Hobbes are so very helpful with the laundry!




Pretty sure Hobbes and Iggy tag teamed on Wednesday night to give us a gift. As I was walking down the stairs on Thursday morning, I see this gray "fabric" lying on the floor in front of the study. I was like, where did the kitties get this material. As I got closer, I realized it was not material, but a little gray mouse - dead, of course. I did not freak out. I told Justin, he said it was a gift and I should thank the kitties, so I did. Then when he came down, he told me now they got thanked, they would play with it. And soon after he said this, Hobbes started playing with the dead mouse. I wondered where they had found the mouse. When I was taking the mouse outside, I noticed the drying rack tucked beside the washer was moved out a little. They must have gotten back there and found him around the washer and dryer. Such good kitties!

School is in Session

Time to start back. Summer was nice, but now it is time to go back to work. First week of workdays went well. Large classes (32, 30, 33) but you gotta do what you gotta do. You wont hear me complaining too much about it. More students to influence, mostly in a good way...

The Dark Side

I have move to the dark side and it is called ... facebook. Maybe I will update that more than this blog.

Facebook

Justin has caved under pressure and has gotten a facebook page. He has a lot of "friends" now, ha!

Wordle

Check it out. If you want word colleges this is a cool website to to it. But you cant really save it. You would have to print it right when you finish it. Its kinda cool. www.wordle.net

Schooooooooool's Out for Summer!

Exams are over. Graduation was Friday. One of our students gave us gifts. She gave Justin Freudian Slip-pers and she gave me a Calculus T-shirt. She is so sweet. My Alg 2 students survived the exam... Well most of them. Unofficial results: over 80% of our students passes and we were above the county average. Yea! we are improving every year. We met out goal so we are getting dinner at Angus Barn from our Principal (the algebra 2 scores were very low 2 years ago, so he brought in a whole new team to try to bring them up).

Sarah's birthday was on Friday, just like Hannah and Mike. She and Phil are going to Alaska Thrusday to run. We will gather Wednesday for dinner before they go.

We will finish painting this week - our bedroom and trim in the sunroom. And then we will be doing a whole lot of nothing. Celebration for working pretty much non stop during the school year.

Exams

Love them and hate them.
It means the end of the semester and year. I get to spend 3 hours each day with a class, but they have to be quiet the WHOLE time. Especially the EOC, but I am only allowed to watch them for those 3 hours I can't get any other work done. Oh well, I only have about 10 students taking my Calculus exam (the other 19 were exempt) which means I can pretty much do anything while they are taking their exam Thursday as long as I am quiet.
Remember, you need to get a level 3 or 4 on the EOC for me to look good (and for you to pass).

Gone Fishin'

Proof there are decent sized fish in our lake:

A touch of color...

makes a world of difference!

Before

After

While Lydia and gang were enjoying fishing/falling in the lake, Justin and I painted the sun room. It's called "Fresh Lime."

Pics FINALLY!

Ok, so I finally took the pictures off my camera. Here are the new rooms.



This is the bedroom Carroll will stay in :)




And the bathroom she will use.
Well, maybe she will like this bathroom better. Our office is the same color, but I did not get pictures of that.


Guess I should have put the toilet seat down before taking the pic. Oh well. I know some of them are blurry - deal.

Painting

We are in the process of painting rooms in our house. So far we have complete the downstairs bathroom, upstairs bathroom and one of the bedrooms. The office needs another coat, and then we will work on our bedroom and the sun room. When we have completed all the rooms I will post pictures. A color other than tan in the house makes a lot of difference.

New Word

Mirthful... look it up :)

Superbowl Party

Oh, man, do I have some great video clips of DDR from Sunday night. Hopefully sometime this week I will post them. Hahahaha!

Snow Days

Well, last week was supposed to be exam week and the new semester start Tues. Jan 27. But due to this...
We got 2 days off school. The kids may have enjoyed it, but they wont when they have no 3 day weekends in Feb or March and spring break is now 1 day shorter (or 3 days shorter since they took the first Monday of break). By law we have to have a certain amount of hours of instruction, but many teachers and students already had plans for spring break and few will probably change them. I will let you make your own conclusions to the quality of day we will have on Apr 6.... Enough of shop talk. Let's enjoy some pictures :)

Geese on the water (as opposed to "dust on the water")






Lastly, Jan 21 was Nate's birthday. By the way Nate, be expecting something in the mail this week. So a little tribute to Nate (some pics from Christmas)...

that thing in his hand is his new iphone.




Hope you had a good day Nate. Miss you and Love you!

Exam Week

I look forward to this week. The end of the semester and the beginning of the next. The kids take a test while I sit there and watch them and get started on planning the next semester. I have already gotten the first unit planned (except for fixing the test) for calculus, and we have only had one day of exams. The only one I am concerned about, of course, is the EOC. I just hope they take it seriously and work hard throughout the whole thing since it will be the last exam they take for the semester. Hopefully next week I will use my time wisely and get way ahead in my planning, so I can enjoy the weeks more and maybe add more students to my tutoring schedule.

Power Outage

I got home last night to a dark neighborhood. I got home a little after 6 (only Nate can complain about longer days to me). I noticed our section of the neighborhood was a little darker than I remember, then I try to open the garage to no avail. It took a second to register... all the houses are dark which is weird because we always have the kitchen light on dim and the houses around us usually have some lights on. So I got to be Amish for a night. Justin was sleeping, because well, what else can you do in the dark? I wandered around with only the light from my cell phone for a few minutes before lighting some candles, found the phone number to report outages and called, had a banana and peanut butter for dinner and did some Algebra 2 by candle light before going to bed around 7:30 (because what else can you do in the dark?). Justin came in about an hour later saying the electricity was back on, but that didnt matter I was in bed and staying in bed until the alarm went off in the morning at 5 was out the door by 5:30 and realized I should have done more work in the dark because I needed an answer key for first period. And that reminds me... I need to make the key for their Calculus test tomorrow. Just remember, I love what I do. I work hard and get all summer off.

Iggy fell in the bathtub

Now, the cats like to walk around and go into the garden tub when there is no water in it. Don't really know why, it just seems they are fascinated with it. Iggy also likes to get up on the side when someone is in the tub and play with the water - and many times we laugh because he does not move when he gets splashed with water. Last night Justin was in the tub and Iggy was walking around the tub and slipped into the tub. Luckily, Justin moved his legs before Iggy could scratch him. He struggled to get out, knocking a lot of our candles on the floor. He was soaked (except for his head), and we laughed, and then I got my Sham WOW and followed Iggy down to the kitchen where I finally cornered him to try to dry him off a little. Poor kitty. I wonder if he will ever get up around the tub next time one of us is taking a bath...