Ah Work...

This is a little snap shot of the kind of things I deal with every single day.
Background: I never lie about payments to vendors. That is the one thing I pride myself on to make sure at the very least there is trust in our professional relationship. This is an email conversation that occurred yesterday:

Vendor:

Christina,

 Can you please confirm check is going out today via Fed Ex overnight-  B (my boss) said he signed the check.

C

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Me:

He did not sign the check. He had to leave early. It will be going out tomorrow.

 

~~~ At this point I had already left for the day so I did not get to see the email emails that followed till this morning.~~~

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Vendor:

Christina,

 I am sure K (her boss) is not lying- he said B signed the check … Let me call him.

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My Boss B: 

 When I spoke to Ken I was already on my way to the airport.
B-)

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My Boss B:

So C you are sure that K is not lying, but you are implying that Christina is lying about something that Christina knows for sure and K can only guess?
How insulting is that???
B-(

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I cannot believe that C would even say that. Thank goodness I did not see the emails till this morning, that would have ruined my day for sure. And my boss ROCKS!  

Slap in your face C!

Anniversary

I am officially a crapy wife. I forgot that yesterday was our anniversary! Isn't it normally the husbands that forget stuff like that? David got me flowers and a gift card to Macy's to buy school clothes. :)

On another note, it has been one week since the paci incident. I think I am ready to toss them in the trash. Tonight I will hold my paci tossing ceremony to make it official. I will post pictures later tonight.

Did I mention that I had an interview at a local high school yesterday for a teaching position? I feel the interview went well. I originally wanted to teach middle school but after meeting with the administrators of this high school I am excited to get a chance to work there. It is a very small school with about 25 teachers in total. They don't have EL students at the moment which would relieve some pressure off of me. I will keep you posted on what happens. If I do get a call back from them the next step would be to present a sample lesson to them.

Paci update

Well I have stuck to it. Paci's are gone for good now. Kaitlyn is still not that happy about it and has been crying the last two nights when I put her to bed but I am not exactly sure if it is because of the lack of paci's. I think it might be that she wants to stay up and hang out with me. The first two nights after the initial night she did ask for them but it was not that big of a deal when I said "I don't know what happened to them, I'm sorry, no more pones." (she calls them pone) She just looked at me like I was crazy then went to bed without a fight.
This weekend I got her a pillow too. It does not even faze her that she has it. She has been sleeping completely on top of it as if it were a bed topper. LOL.

Job interview

Wish me luck. I got a call today during lunch for a job interview at a charter high school close to where I work right now. Tomorrow at 2pm! I am very excited about this. I was hoping to get a job at a middle school but I heard great stories about this school so I am willing to give high school a shot if they want me. The principal seemed willing to work with the applicants as far as placing them in subject mater they are comfortable with.
I am very comfortable with Algebra, am willing to do Geo BUT it is not my favorite subject at all.
I will keep you posted.

Taught first lesson yesterday

It was my turn at the lab school to teach a lesson. My partner and I were assigned "percent equation". It was nice to have a partner to help with this. He forwarded me a power point, I adjusted it to my style and I forwarded him the written lesson plan based on my changes. We each taught one period by ourselves. I was lucky to get 2nd period, the rowdy group of kids.
I set up my computer and tested the smart board to make sure everything was working. When the students came in I had them working on a warm up. After the warm up I pulled out the class rules and reminded them that I expected them to follow all the class rules that were set in place when the lead teacher was teaching. Then off I went. I love the smart board - when it works. I should have used the lead teachers computer because a few slides in something went crazy. Every time I would use the markers on the smart board the text from my slide would disappear. So I had to copy all the problems on the whiteboard to work them out. Not that big of a deal but not what I wanted.
Once I went over a few problems with the students I had them take out their personal whiteboards to do some practice. I set up rules and went over them before we started a one minute free write on them (to get it out of their system). When we got into actually using the whiteboards for problems I set a time limit to keep them focused.
At any rate....
I would say my classroom management was amazing, not one kid misbehaved.
What worked:
The use of a kitchen timer to set a sense of urgency and keep the kids on task.
Going over the ways a % can be written.
Relating the word "Part" to is and "Whole" to of.
Telling the students what exactly to copy into their notes.
Having students box the question and under line the key facts in word problems. This made it easier to put their answer into a sentence.
What did not work:
The smart board - but that was a technical issue.
Showing the students how the previous equation turned into the new equation - this just confused them even more.
My time management. I barely made it through my lesson and did not have enough time for class work to really see who understood what we went over.
Using the seating chart to try to call on students. That chart confused the hell out of me for some reason. 
What I would do different:
Spend less time going over examples together. I think they got the idea after the first two.
Set clear steps for them to follow to get the answer to the problem.
1. Box the question and under line the key facts
2. Find the Percent, Part, Whole
3. Change the percent to a decimal
4. Plug into the formula
5. Solve
    a. multiply
    b. isolate variable
6. If percent is the answer change from a decimal to a percent
7. Write your answer in a sentence.
My questions:
How do I help that one student who did nothing in class. I told him to at least write the question down if he did not know how to do it and to make sure to copy all the notes but he still did not even do that for the most part. I even asked the person sitting next to him to help him out with one of the problems. I don't have any specifics on him as in if he is EL or has and IEP, yes I should have those but I only attend the lab school every other day and was not their when this was gone over with everybody.....

No Paci?!

Yesterday David washed Kaitlyn's bedding and forgot to put her paci's back in bed. When Pam came home with Kaitlyn and put her to bed she could not find the paci's. The end result, first night ever - no paci. I got home right after Kaitlyn was put to bed so I did not want to go in her room. If I did go in there she would have never gone back to sleep. I just waited to see what would happen with the video monitor in hand. To my surprise she did great! She did not ask for them at all; she did look for them but went right to sleep with out them.
After she was asleep I went in her room, picked up all the paci's and put them in a Ziploc bag. For now I am hiding them in the kitchen just in case this was a fluke. I am ready for her to be done with paci's but at the same time I am not. My plan was to wait till she had all her teeth, we still have 8 to go.
At any rate, I am going to keep going with this to see how she does. Fingers crossed!

a moment in time

David when he was Kaitlyn's age - he is the kid with the bottle in his mouth:

 And here is Kaitlyn:

LOL they look like twins!

And just because she was so stinking cute even though she was whining....
this morning:

Yesterday before leaving for Gracie's house she was watching the 4th of July video and saw she had the ribbon hair clip in her hair. She ran in her room and was pointing to the bin I keep the hair clips in saying - nawan, I am thinking this means I want. I asked her if she wanted the hair clip and she said yes. It was the first time she has ever wanted her hair put up. So cute!

Toddler bed Week 1

I am pleasantly surprised at how well the toddler bed transition went. The hardest part for her is nap time. I would say on the worst day I had to put her back in bed 4 times but it keeps getting better. At night she maybe gets out of bed once but it is always to go get a book to read then she stays in her bed till she falls asleep. This weekend I even decided to ditch the sleep sack since it was falling apart and shedding everywhere. She has done remarkably well with just a blanket. I tucked it in at the foot area and partially up the side by the wall. The past couple nights she has not moved around the crib as much as she use too and staid covered the entire night.
My little baby is growing up. I call her my little big girl.
Next step = pillow.

 The blanket on her bed was made with all of her old receiving blankets she used as a baby.  My mom and grandma made it and it came out beautiful!

Great News

This morning about 40 min ago I talked to Gracie, she advised me that she only has one treatment left and her MRI already came back clear! NO MORE CANCER!!!!! This made my morning. She is still going to have a mastectomy after her body recovers from the treatments.
Words cannot describe the joy I feel.

First night in toddler bed

Success!
Kaitlyn staid in bed all night long. She got up in the morning and got out of bed only to pick up her seahorse because it fell out of bed. Climbed back in bed and waited for me to come get her.
When she was first put to bed she seemed a little nervous or scared because the crib railing was not there. She laid perfectly still for about 30 min before rolling over and going to bed.
I am hoping every night goes this smoothly.

That is the picture of her when she was still awake.

5 more weeks

5 more weeks of summer school hell. I cannot wait for summer school to be over with! I miss Kaitlyn. I have been relatively OK with everything up to now. I am past the half way point, the end is near.
I absolutely hate Tuesdays... This is a mandatory class which we did not pay for and will not get credit for.  It is suppose to be a lesson planning class but we have yet to make a lesson plan. And even after we do make a lesson plan the chance that we will use it in our actual class is highly unlikely. Another downer to it is that 3 of our assignments in our other classes rely on the lesson plans from this stupid non existent class... I am so tempted to not show up but the director of the program might kick me out for not attending. SO LAME. As a class we have voiced our concerns with him multiple times with no resulting outcome. Oh well - 5 more weeks of this crap!
Now if only I can find a teaching job. That would be one less stress and at the same time add 100 more stresses  LOL!  I so cannot take my current job anymore. I am so miserable.

On another note, we converted Kaitlyn's bed to a toddler bed today. This should be interesting:

Too bad I will not be home to experience the first night of putting her to bed in toddler bed. I hope it goes smoothly.

Pony tail # 1

First real pony tail:

I have a better picture on our real camera, this is just a snap shot from my phone.
She was playing dress up and rocking out with a guitar. LOL.

Ok here is the pic from the good camera:

4th of July 2012

We had a great forth of July this year. Kaitlyn and I met up with Christina, Katherine, and Joe at the RPV annual 4th celebration at 11am. We walked around, visited the petting zoo, ate the best pizza I ever had, and rocked out to some patriotic music. Over all it was a great time even though we did not do much while we were there and only stayed a short time.
We arrived at 11am to make sure we could get a parking space. Little did I know we would be parking in soft dirt. For the car that was not a problem, it was a problem for strollers... I parked and put Kaitlyn in her stroller and had to pull her backwards (like you do at the beach) to get her around. Not that bad if the parking was really close to the park but it was not. Luckily a nice gentleman helped me about halfway there. He picked up the front of the stroller and I carried the back. Right when we made it to firm ground I saw Christina pull up so Kaitlin and I waited for her and watched the helicopters take off. Poor Christina has a double stroller that she had to drag backwards through that soft dirt and she parked even farther away than I did.
We all made it out of the parking lot and headed over to the booths. There was not really a whole lot to look at. We cruzed over to the kiddy area first. They had a couple rides, two huge slides, a bounce house and a blow up obstacle course thing. Nothing that our small kids could participate in by themselves so we headed over to the petting zoo.
The petting zoo was a nice size and was filled with animals, all of which were just as tall or taller than our kids. Right when we got inside I saw a little girl get trampled by a huge sheep. This really freaked me out so I ended up keeping Kaitlyn right by my side. Kaitlyn was not interested in the goats that kept coming up to her and sticking their nose right in her face (freaked me out too). I ended up spotting some pigs and bunnies that we could check out. I got Kaitlyn to pet the pigs and bunnies after some coaching. She was much happier being held by me looking down at the animals. I don't blame her!
After the petting zoo we headed over to the food tents and ended up getting some pizza. Rosemary, red grape, prosciutto pizza to be exact. It was the best pizza I had ever eaten. Kaitlyn was not interested in eating, she just wanted to dance:

I wish we would have remembered the name of that pizza place, I would love to go to their actual location for dinner every now and again.
By the time we were done eating and dancing it was already way past nap time so we decided to call it a day. BUT right as we were getting ready to leave we spotted this famous lady and had to take a picture with her:

Kaitlyn was amazed at how tall she was and was a little turned off by her at first but by the time we were leaving she gave lady liberty a high five.
After that we left to fight the parking lot dirt again so we could go home and take a nap.
:)