Summer Lovin'

had me a blast.  Unfortunately thats over, and now I'm in school mode.  School mode consists of going to bed between 9:30 and 10, getting up at 5:15 and generally being too tired to do anything else.  It also means that there may be a tiny little bit of teacher talk showing up on this blog, so if that is completely uninteresting to you, don't bother reading this post.  This is what my classroom looked like when I walked in on Aug 10th.

What a MESS!  As you can see, I have a huge classroom which is kind of a blessing and a curse.  These pictures were taken as I'm standing on a ladder trying to figure out what to do with my fabric panels (which line one wall) that they had come in over the summer and painted baby poo brown.  It was awful. There was no way I could look at that mess all year, so my assistant and I spent 3 days covering the panels with fabric and then hanging them all back up.  After two weeks of work it now looks like this...

This was as close to the same view as I could get without standing on a ladder.

This is the view if you stand in the back of my classroom and look in.

Reading/writing center.  Someone donated this great pop up tent.  I think its supposed to be one of those ball things but I am using it for a reading nook.

Woodworking center.

toys and games area

Kitchen...everyone's favorite center of course and yes, I painted that house on the wall myself.  I never claimed to be an artist so please don't judge me.

My fabric wall panels and my birthday board.  Our school has a bee theme so I made a beehive for each month and put a little black bee next to their name and birthday.

My new place to hang student work (inspired by Pinterest!) I hotglued clothespins to my new fabric panels and hotglued some ribbon and bee foam stickers I got at Michael's onto the top.  Michael's gives 15% off to teachers all the time which is awesome.  As for the fabric panels and clothespins, I am pretty much an expert at ghetto sewing.  Ghetto sewing = the use of hotglue, staples, velcro etc. in lieu of needles and thread.  All of my curtains in my room I made this way too.  I'm thinking of trying it out on the house sometime ;)    

A place for everything and everything in its place.  That should last for about 5 minutes!  Today was the first day with all of the kids at the same time and so far it seems like they are a pretty good group.  It is crazy starting from scratch...you forget how little they are in the beginning.  Today we worked on sitting on our bottoms.  And that's pretty much it.  For an entire day.  And we'll probably be working on it all day tomorrow too.  

This is my new behavior chart (also inspired by Pinterest!)  They are going to be "building rainbows" so everytime they do something good (i.e. sit down for 16 seconds) they get to add the next color.  When they get all the colors they can choose something out of the treasure box.  There are also gray clouds with sad faces on them to be used if necessary.  Cloudy day for you=no treasure box.  We'll see if it works!

Family Time

When we got back from our honeymoon, my sister and her family were here with my mom.  Even though we only got to hang out with them for a few days we got to do some fun stuff and it was great to see them!  I took a few pictures...

Rockstar Baby

Love it!

Good Vibes

We are back from St. Lucia!  It was a fantastic trip.  We did alot of relaxing by the pool and we ate at some great restaurants.  We took a few excursions while we were there...we went on a boat ride that took us snorkeling, then to see the famous mountains in St. Lucia (the Pitons), then up a volcano to a hot spring, and back down to a waterfall.  We also took a taxi into the capital city (Castries) one day to do a little shopping in the market.  One night we had a candlelight dinner on the beach...I felt just like a contestant on the Bachelor. Complete with the rose.

Todd on the beautiful beach behind the resort.

Us at the top of the resort.

Yummm.  If you haven't discovered coconut water yet, I highly recommend it.  They just whacked off the top of these coconuts and stuck straws in them. A.Ma.Zing.  I'm thinking I might see if Todd can lop of the tops of some coconuts for me...it has to be cheaper.

Our candlelight dinner.  I felt just like Ashley.  Which would make Todd JP.  Ooh-la-la. ;)

The Pitons.  Our guide told us that the one on the right is actually taller, it is just a trick of the eye.  He also told us that these are "St. Lucia's boobs".  Later in the tour he proceeded to show us her "buttcrack" and her "_______" as well.  No, I'm not making that up. 

Apparently the Pitons are on Oprah's list of things to see before you die, so we can check that one off of the list.  

Mudbath!  This was so much fun.  After caking on the mud you climbed in the natural hot spring to rinse it off.

And it was HOT.  115-120 degrees.  Definitely stung at first but it ended up feeling really good because it was raining a little and kind of chilly.

Out at dinner.  

In Castries checking out the market.  We had a really nice cabdriver who ended up taking us on an impromptu backroads tour because he had lost his cell phone and was driving around to his friends houses looking for it.  It was a little scary, but interesting to see where the people live.  St. Lucia is an extremely poor country.  Our tour guide told us that there are 7 women to every 1 man.  Apparently it is something to do with the potassium in the banana that causes more girls to be born than boys.  Todd has now sworn off bananas for the rest of his life. Ha.

These were the cliffs that surrounded the whole resort.  That blue house that you see is not part of the resort, we were told it belongs to the St. Lucian equivalent of Judge Judy.

And the pièce de résistance...this is the picture that we paid Sandals $16 for.  Yes, I said $16.  What. A. Ripoff.  I mean, its a decent picture, but for $16 I would expect them to get on some photoshopping techniques that leave me looking like a cross between Jennifer Aniston and Marisa Miller.  Oh well.

It was a great trip.  I would highly recommend St. Lucia and Sandals.  Loved it!