Showers of Happiness

Yesterday was a very special day-my sister in law's shower. Being one of three who helped organize it I was actually pretty nervous going into the start of the day. I wanted to be sure that my newest sister, Beth, had a wonderfully happy day, and everything she had hoped for during her shower. I also wanted to be sure that I was properly fulfilling my role as one of her maids of honor (Technically I'm a matron of honor, but that sounds so.....oldish to me. So I call myself a maid of honor!) I'll let the pictures be the judge, but I'd say the day was a pretty fantastic one!

Tonight, I picked someone up at a bar...

A sushi bar that is. That's right, Russ and I went out for sushi tonight to our all time favorite restaurant: Jerry San's Restaurant and DaikoSushi. While there, we befriended another couple over plates of raw fish. Interestingly enough, the rules of dating seemed to apply to meeting a future couple friend. Do we give them our number or wait until they give us theirs? This debate ended when she wrote her digits down on a busines card. On the way home, Russ and I even began wondering how long to wait until we email them....one day? Two? What is the appropriate amount of time? The dating etiquette you figure out, once you've done it long enough...but this is a whole new ball game for us.

Of course, this is no ordinary couple....nope, these are not your basic, blue-blooded Connecticut natives. They were a blend of exotic (he's from New Zealand) and down South friendliness (she's from West Virginia and still has a clear accent). These unique individuals are also not your every day run of the mill wage workers either. They happen to hold relatively prestigious positions--he's an engineer for Sikorski and she is an attorney in Hartford. We knew we liked them when she told us that if she could do it all again, she'd be a teacher. Actually, that's when we knew we'd get their number. The conversation began with a discussion about redoing kitchens, and Russ and I realized we were out of our league when they mentioned they were spending $15,000 on cabinets alone. But talk continued and we discussed everything from American Idol (he actually likes Taylor Hicks, while she is a Chris Daughtry, Katharine McPhee fan) to the worst sushi they've ever had (monkfish liver) to the differences in our families (she's from a small close knit one, he's from...well, his family is in Australia). They even offered Russ a taste of some squid sushi. (He was brave and tried it, although he washed his mouth out once he got home.)

Here's to new friends....and a two day wait until we email them!

Happy Birthday!

Today, April 26th, a very special little girl turns 3! To my favorite Juliette: Happy Birthday and lots of love!

Just a few reasons why life in a third grade classroom is *always* interesting...

Today was the first day back after a ten day vacation (including weekends). Typically third graders return in one of two states after a long vacation: either they are so well rested that they are hyper and chatty and filled with pent up energy, or they are exhausted from a less than normal schedule and return quiet and ready to resume the structures and routines of our classroom. This time they were chatty and hyper right off the bat. Of course, it might have had something to do with the donuts that were (I kid you not) twice the size of the Dunkin Donuts kind that a parent sent in to celebrate her daughter's birthday. Despite my explicitly stated rule that there are to be no food related treats to celebrate birthdays. Don't parents understand that even though I am trained to use an epipen I'd prefer not to when one of my students goes into an anaphalactic shock from eating something they are allergic to? Nope, apparently not.

But that isn't even what made life in our little classroom community so interesting. Today, in the middle of my math instruction, I intercepted a note passed by one of my little girls to one of my boys. I took it away and threw it in the trash, but my curiousity later won out and I retrieved it. (Before you are grossed out by that, it was at the top and nothing else had been thrown away.) The note read:
S-
I saw A put his hands down his pants and touch his wiener.

So, of course, upon reading this note I did what any good teacher would do.
I showed it to as many of my colleagues as I could. (OK, OK, I also took some other, more appropriate, teacher action, but that is too boring to mention). The best reaction? My principal who indicated that I should have her correct her spelling. (Don't worry, he was kidding.)

But the day doesn't end there.... nope, it gets still more interesting! Today was also the first day of Reading Celebration week. My students got to write on a Graffitti wall (it was a VERY large piece of paper stretched around a VERY long bulletin board), and list their favorite book and draw a picture to match. Well, apparently, one of my boys drew a picture of Calvin and Hobbes. He drew a speech bubble coming out of Calvin's mouth with the words F*$! repeated several times. Nope, I didn't catch this at the time. Maybe I should have but the bulletin board is huge people, and my class was not clustered together, they were spread everywhere and we were under a time limit. So I didn't catch it at the time. But boy did I hear about it later. From one of my colleagues, and from the parent who had to correct the mistake. I'm sure I'll be hearing about it tomorrow too because apparently it caused quite a stir among another third grade class, and you all know how rumors fly....

At least I can't say I'm bored!

Addicting

I am one of those fortunate few that managed to avoid all addictions. Never smoked (except for once when I took one puff and spent fifteen minutes coughing), never became much of a drinker, certainly never did drugs, never even got seriously addicted to any one T.V. show. Yes, there are shows I really like, and I'd be slightly disappointed if I didn't see them, but I was never obsessed with any one show. I have finally found my addiction. Blogging.
Since creating mine, I've spent countless hours checking it, adding links, reading comments and exploring others. I keep telling myself that once April break ends I will return to my normal busy schedule and will not have as much time to spend blogging. But I fear the addiction has set in and I'm hopelessly lost.

Home Depot vs. Lowe's

Since Russ and I are on vacation this week, we thought we'd take some time to try to accomplish some house related projects. We don't close until June and we don't move until mid-July but it seemed a good idea to get the ball rolling....We decided to tackle the biggest project first--redoing our kitchen. And it's a good thing we did! Little did we know this would be far more time consuming than we had originally thought. Who knew you couldn't just walk into a store and ask them for a quote on a new kitchen?!?

So we visited two stores so far--Home Depot and Lowe's. We went to Lowe's on the recommendation of my sister and brother in law (one of the perks of being a middle child is that someone has gone through it all before and you can learn from them). However, the kitchen designer they worked with no longer works there and the kitchen designer we chatted with seemed more interested in selling us stock and trotting out her resume than actually helping two very confused new homeowners. So off we went to Home Depot....the first time around we met with a nice gentleman who basically told us that all we had to do was give them some money and they'd send someone out to do the measurements......hmm.....Well, we had already made the call to try and get into the house to take our own measurements so we decided to call on Greg, my amazingly handy brother in law (who we will be calling on a lot in the coming months I suspect) to help us out. Which he did, happily I think. (Did I mention that he basically redid his whole entire house himself? OK, not quite all by himself, but close enough). Anyway, measurements taken we trotted ourselves back to Home Depot hoping that we had the right numbers. Success! The kind man at Home Depot was actually impressed with our numbers (after we explained what they were). Woo hoo! Let's start designing a kitchen!

Nope....now they need to plug the numbers into a snazzy computer program that will design it for us, then meet with us to talk about all the different possibilities, then comes choosing cabinets and styles and colors and counters and the kind of edge on the counter and.....long story short (I know, I know, too late!) the process has only just begun. And vacation is ending soon. But honestly--what's more fun than thinking about all of these possibilites for your house?!?!

And so it begins...

Well....this is it.....I've caved! My sister and my brother's girlfriend both have blogs. After spending hours upon hours reading theirs, I finally decided to start my own. At first I thought it would be something I'd do when Russ (my husband) and I started our own little family...then after seeing how busy and tired my sister is raising two amazing little girls I thought I'd start it sooner--you know, just to get in the swing of things before the baby (that exists only in dreams) actually arrived. Now, here I am, happily typing away on my newly created blog.

I suddenly know what it feels like to be one of my third grade students when I ask them to share something they've written. I'll admit, it's a little scary to throw your thoughts out there for the world to see...however, I will listen to the same advice that I give my students and share my writing in the hopes of learning something along the way.