Catching Up

Sorry everyone, I know it's been a while since the last time I posted!  Things have been so busy around here for us!

On October 1 Brandon started going to school four days a week!  He LOVES it, and loves his teacher!  It does make for many long nights though, as he is pretty tired by the time he gets home at the end of the day.  I also started volleyball season October 1, so that has been hard trying to juggle him and the volleyball season.

Hanging out in Mrs. Chapman's room while mommy is talking

Moving away from the table when he was done with lunch, October 29

He loves looking for "yellow bus" on the drive to school

For Fall Break Natalie and I went on a little trip to Northern California!  We were able to go up with my mom to visit!  We were able to see many people we love!  We spent time with Bree, my grandma, great grandma, aunts, cousins, and my second grade teacher!!  I love those women, and I know each one of them helped play a very special role in who I am today!!

We love Aunt Bree (and our nephew!!)

Four Generations 

Brooke was so excited to hold Nat

Sleepy baby on the flight home!

While I was in California with Natalie, Brandon was able to have a sleep over at Grandma and Papas, and then have some special bonding time with daddy!!

CHEESE!!

This kid LOVES to eat apples!

Natalie has been growing like crazy!!  We went in for her six month appointment on Halloween, and she is now in the 98th percentile for her height!!  She is only in the 14th percent for her weight, but the doctor isn't too worried about it.  While we were there for Natalie's appointment we did confirm that Brandon might be allergic to peanuts!!  EEK!!  My next step is to get him in to an allergist so we can have him tested for that.

Boo for Trunk or Treat 

Mommy and Batman for trunk or treat

Big boy loves showering in mommy and daddy's room!

Tyler has been working hard on his grad school stuff.  He has finished his student teaching, so now he is just finishing up classes!  He is very excited to have that part behind him, and can't wait to be done with classes either.

I am sure that there is so much more to fill you in on, but that is all I have time for right now!  I am getting ready to head to Vegas for a conference, and I was at work until 9:30 last night trying to get everything ready for my sub on Monday and Tuesday!!  Our grading period ended yesterday, so I have to work on report cards while we are gone too.  I'm excited about the trip though, spending time with friends, and seeing CHELSEA!!!

Newborn, 6 months - man how time flies!!

B's funny Christmas shirt

Family of four . . . 18 weeks!

Sorry for being so far behind!!!  :(

New things about Natalie:  Natalie has decided that since we are back to work now, she wants to get up any where from 2 - 3 times a night.  She also enjoys waking up at 5 am, and being up for the day.  This past week she even did two 3:30 am I'm up for the day mornings.  Luckily for Tyler, he got up with her Saturday morning when she did this, so at least he had a relaxing day after.  Not so lucky for me, I got up with her when she did this on Thursday morning.  It made for a long morning.  Natalie has finally decided that she likes a pacifier sometimes now too.  She has been rolling like crazy, and is constantly rolling from her back to her tummy.  She can't figure out how to get back over though, so after a few minutes, she is crying, and asking for help to get back onto her back.  She is still sleeping swaddled (shhh, don't tell our doctor, Nicole don't let Jon read that!!)  It's the only way she'll sleep.  Right now, I have put a blanket over her swaddle.  I don't know if she has been too cold, and that is why she was waking up more, but since I started adding the extra blanket we have been back to waking up between 2 and 3 again, instead of this 11:30 non sense.  She is eating any where from 3 - 6 ounces at a time now too!!  I can't wait to see how big she is when we go to the doctor tomorrow!!

In our PJs to celebrate Aunt Chelsea (they have a dragon on them!!)

New things about Brandon:  I can't believe that my little boy is 2!!  Where has the time gone!?!  Brandon has started school in the last few weeks.  He has now had school for four days!!  The first day was a blast.  My dad was able to come pick me up from work, so that way we could drop Brandon off together for his first day of school.  Brandon went right into his room, sat down and started playing.  He did cry when my dad picked him up, but just because he was so confused, and didn't know what was going on.  

Brandon's first day of preschool, August 15

The second day I dropped him off wasn't too bad.

Even got to see daddy in the morning!

Last Thursday now, that was awful!!  :(  When Brandon got up in the morning he wouldn't even go to Wanda when she came over.  He didn't want anything to do with her.  He just wanted mommy to hold him.  Now keep in mind I was also trying to pack his lunch, make his breakfast, and get all of our things together, to try to be out the door by 6:45!!  My poor guy started crying the minute I walked out the door!  It was sooo HARD!!  Luckily one of the teachers in after care is a friend of mine, and she sent me pictures all day that day reassuring me what a great day he was having!!  

So thankful to Mandy that she sent me this picture, that I edited in Instagram on my birthday!

This morning when I went in to drop Brandon off, he didn't want anything to do with it as soon as we got close to the door of the school.  I was able to get him in the room, told him to go play with his dinosaurs, and then he started crying again.  :(  Luckily the same teacher was there, and sent me pictures again today!!  I seriously don't know what I would do without her!  She is amazing!!  Brandon is loving school though, and you can tell that he is learning a lot!!  Almost every day he has come home with a new word, which is amazing!  When we went in for his two year appointment Brandon's doctor told us that we should put him in speech.  I am hoping that he will quickly start to pick it up the more that he is around kids who are talking.  

Anyone see the trend in the pictures yet?!

New things about Tyler:  Tyler started school the same day as Brandon!!  Tyler is very thankful to have another teaching partner this year, but isn't so happy that he is student teaching finally.  This just means extra work for him this fall. Hopefully by Christmas though he will be all done with everything.  That will mean next year he'll have his credential, he'll be a called worker, and he'll get a raise!!  AMEN!!!

New things about Cassandra:  I too have started school, and I have never felt so behind!!  I don't know where the time goes every day.  I am being way too adventurous this year, and I am tackling all new ways to teach almost everything.  I have realized that the only three subjects I am teaching the same as I have in the past are religion, science and social studies.  Even though I say I am teaching science and social studies the same, I still am changing things, as I always go in a different order, and try to find new ideas on Pinterest or TPT to help update what I do! I have a great class though, 26 kids, and I have two awesome aides who are with me every morning.  I have been able to recruit them to do a lot of things that I have always wanted to do, but have never had enough time to do!  I am very blessed to have them, and can't wait to see what my classroom looks like by the end of the year.  Looking at next year's class, hopefully they'll get a few more and we can split the class, or I'll have an aide again next year, which isn't always a bad thing.

My amazing birthday presents!

I have fallen off the bandwagon of working out though.  As soon as school started it got harder to work out in the morning, and be ready to leave by 6.  I have to be ready to leave by 6, because as soon as Tyler leaves, I have to be ready in case one of the kids get up.  If I get the kids up before I am ready to leave, then I know I will never make it in time.  Most days I don't leave for work until 6:50ish, thanks to my awesome ride Ellen, but it makes it harder to justify getting up earlier than 5, when I know I won't be leaving until around 7.  If only I could go to work smelly, then I would totally have enough time in the morning.  Hopefully as it starts to get nicer I'll be able to work out in the afternoons, and then I'll just push Brandon in his stroller, or Natalie.  I know that this is just an excuse for now, but it is one that I have to live with for now.  I did hold on strong, and I made it to the 15th, I just haven't done so well since then.  I haven't been back on the scale since I lost 3 pounds in the firs week either.  I don't want to know how much I've put back on already.  I have stayed away from the soda, but I have had the coffee, and smoothies to make up for it.  I have had a lot of carbs this past week too.  :(

I found this on Pinterest or Instagram, I don't remember which one right now

September will bring new changes again, and I look forward to eating healthy, and staying fit!!  I am going to try and find a system to make sure that I am updating the blog frequently too!  I may not get all four posts in every week, so I will try and come up with new catchy names so you know when I'm going to post!!

Friday Five

1.  I can't believe we have a 2 year old!!!

2.  My aunt is in town for the next week to help us celebrate Brandon's birthday!  My grandma also comes into town today to help us celebrate for the weekend!

3.  Today was my last day getting ready for my new class on Monday!!  I can't believe I will have a class of 26 students starting Monday.  Where did the summer go!?

4.  I started a new book, Gone Girl, since we are going to be doing it for our Messy House Book Club.  I haven't really gotten into it yet, I have been on a dry spell since I finished all of those Karen Kingsbury novels.  I heard it was great though, so I really need to find time to read.

5.  I am super excited for Brandon's party tomorrow!  Stay tuned for pictures!!

Family of four . . . 14 weeks

New things about Brandon:  Brandon was able to go play at the splash pad again this week with our buddy Hans!  It is such a blast.  This week was much warmer than last week though, so we were only able to stay for a week.  Brandon learned a new animal sound this week thanks to our friend Susan too!  Now he can "baaa" like a sheep!  We have started to get things ready for Brandon's first day of school too.  We already received our first emails from his teacher, and we can't wait to meet her next week!

Drinking from the cup like a big boy at Matt's Big Breakfast

New things about Natalie:  Natalie is growing my leaps and bounds.  She is now consistently eating between 3 - 5 ounces at a time!  Where has my little girl gone!?!  She is starting to sit in the bumbo too!  At first she didn't really like it, but yesterday Brandon was running in circles with Derrik and Natalie was just smiling and watching them.  She also fell asleep on her play mat yesterday while Tyler, Brandon and I were having a dance party!  That is the first time she has fallen asleep on her back, without being swaddled!  We were pretty impressed!

Hanging out in the bumbo

New things about Tyler:  Yesterday was officially Tyler's last day of summer.  He reports back to work this morning, and now it is time for him to start getting into the groove of his school year.  He is excited about the upcoming year, and has a new teaching partner that he gets to start working with.

Dance party

New things about Cassandra:  I am excited to not officially start back to work until Monday.  I am headed into work today and tomorrow to get going though, as my room needs to be totally ready to go by next Thursday!  I have also launched a new teacher blog, which I am super excited about!  I disconnected it from my personal blog, in case it does take off, I don't want them linked.  That way this blog stays more personal, and I know only a few of you read it.  :)

mrs3rdgrade07.blogspot.com

I know I have kept saying I was going to work out, I was going to work out.  Well, today begins that journey.  I am ready to go!  I did my first workout this morning.  Natalie decided that 4:15 would be a great time to get up this morning, even though Tyler's alarm wasn't going off until 4:45.  So I finished feeding her, and then decided I had to get up and go out, or I would keep putting it off!  So I did!!

Current weight:  141 pounds

My workouts courtesy of Pinterest

Friday Five

Today's Friday Five is all Pinterest inspired.  Thank you summer, and thank you Pinterest!

1.  I loved this idea that I found on Pinterest from Kathleen's blog.  I found fonts I liked, and typed it up and printed it on colored paper that will match the rest of my room!

2.  I have been looking for new ways to organize my classroom this year, as I will have 26 students!  The most that I have ever had, and more than I have had in many years.  Last year I had 19 when all students were in class, but most days I only had 18.  I was looking for different ideas, and found some really cool toolbox ideas.  I couldn't find a toolbox that was going to fit what I wanted, so instead I bought these drawer organizers at Walmart (it was cheaper than Target), and can't wait to put the colored pencils in here.  I hope this will help keep our community supplies a little more organized.  I am going to do the same thing with crayons. 

3.  We have been eating a lot of Pinterest inspired meals while we have been up at m parent's house.  The picture below, even though it doesn't look very good is a delicious chicken dish!  We loved it, and will be trying it again.  Below the chicken is a picture of the biscuits I made to go with it.  I followed the directions in the recipe, but next time I will not cook it nearly as long.  The biscuits were hard when we went to eat them.  I cooked them way too long.

                                      

4.  We also tried some other Pinterest recipes, but I forgot to take pictures of them.  One of our favorites is for a buffalo chicken, that we then turn into sliders.  I made this multiple times for Chelsea, and my mom requested it too!  With the leftovers we made a buffalo chicken mac and cheese, which was also delicious!  We only put blue cheese on half of it though, as Tyler doesn't enjoy blue cheese.  It made up A TON so we have been eating it all week for left overs too.  With a leftover chicken breast from the chicken dish pictured above we made a chicken salad dish.  I wasn't as impressed with this one, so I don't know if we'll make it again.  My piece of advice for that one is to make sure you are going to eat it all in one sitting.  We had saved some to eat later, and by the next day it had turned since it is made up primarily of avocado.

5.  The last thing we found on Pinterest that we experimented with while my family was in town were some drinks.  There were some delicious ones that we will have again, and some that are for sure never going to be poured in our house again.  My favorite was A Summers Dream, and even though the picture didn't look like this it was YUMMY!!  We tried another drink, called Sex in the Driveway, and it was GROSS!!  I even added orange juice to try and make it taste better, and it just wasn't happening.  I almost don't even want to give you the link, because it really wasn't good.  If you are going to make it, you are taking your own risk.  I am advising you to have a summers dream, not sex in the driveway!

Thoughtful Tuesday

Is a teachers job really ever done? I know I joke around about loving teacher for breaks and summers, but I really do love my kids and teaching! If I didn't why would I spend all summer pinning away on Pinterest, hitting up back to school sales the day they start, looking at curriculum and playing with my Cricut to design awesome stuff for class?!

Thoughtful Tuesday

I think the saying is true, you never know how good you have it until it's gone. I went to work today for yearbook signing and then graduation is tonight. I am going to miss these people. I am going to miss my daily hugs from E. I'm going to miss talking with Eileen after school. I'm going to miss my good morning shouts from down the hall. I'm going to miss the witty humor. I'm going to miss the sounding board. Most of all I'm going to miss my best friend, the person I could go to at any time. I'm going to miss knowing she's right next door, and ready for ice cream whenever I had a bad day. I know God has much bigger plans for her, and I've been blessed by her friendship and love for the past three years, but I'm going to miss her.

Daily Five

1.  We have termites . . . again!!  YUCK!!  This is the third time that the have appeared in our bedroom wall, so instead of calling our same warranty company I decided to finally go with Terminix.  I was so happy with their service, and how prompt they were.  Now granted it is going to cost me a lot more than the warranty I was paying for before, at least I know that they will repair something if there is more damage!!  When I told them what our other company did they couldn't believe we waited so long.  If only I knew more about what people should do to treat termites!

2.  Our athletic banquet was last night.  It was fun to go and see everyone, and even more fun that a couple of us went out for a drink afterwards.  I forget by not going to work how much I miss my friends at work.  I love staying home with my kids, and if I could I know that I would stay home in a heartbeat, but I do miss them!

3.  I reread Lord of the Flies this past week.  I read the book while I was in high school, but as part of our bucket list this year we are reading 24 books.  I have almost reached our goal, but part of it was that we had to read some classics.  We agreed that a classic was anything that an English teacher might make you read.  I forgot how disturbing Lord of the Flies is.  It's crazy what would happen to a group of kids if you left them alone without adults, and what they could do.  I would recommend it, it is a great book.

buy here on Amazon

4.  I have started planning for next year!  I know it seems crazy, but we will be gone for a big chunk of June, and I have a lot to look into for next year.  Plus I will have 26 kids, so I am trying to figure out how I can best accommodate all of them, and still teach everything.  I have started working on my teacher planner first, and have found some that I really like on TPT.  I am too cheap though, and don't want to pay $8 for a document that I'm going to have to edit any ways, so I'm working on creating my own!  Who knows, maybe I'll even set up a TPT store this year!

This looks like a great planner, and where I got a lot of my ideas!

5.  Looking into next year, I have also checked out our new science standards for the state.  They are very different then the ones that we've had for the past five years I've been teaching, so it's time to look for all new material for science too!  It should be a fun year!

Friday Five

1.  My precious baby girl always wants to be held. I love this, but it makes for getting things done quite hard. Brandon was okay sitting in the swing, laying on the boppy, or on the floor. Mrs. Natalie loves laying on mommy. I'm going to have to try and figure out this baby wearing thing.

2.  I finally managed to get my wedding rings back on today!! They aren't as lose as they once were, but they're on!!

3.  My mind has been tossing and turning with ideas for school. I know I missed the TPT sale earlier this week, but I'm going to look through tons this next month, and hopefully they'll run a big summer or back to school sale.

4.  We tried two new Pinterest recipes this week. Both were shrimp recipes, and we probably won't try either one again. The scampi just didn't turn out good enough for how long it took, and the other shrimp was okay.  (I'll look up recipes when I am on the computer and not on my phone.)

5.  I'm excited for my dad to come visit this weekend and for him to be able to spend more time with the kids. Brandon loves his grandpa!!

Friday Five

1.  We had our art fair at school, and it is always amazing to see the great work that is done by our fantastic art teacher!  Plus I took B with me, so the girls had fun checking him out!

B wasn't so sure about Alice

2.  I had a great time at the Creative Mathematics conference today!  I love learning new ideas, and am excited to see how these new things are going to work in my room!

My favorite buy from the conference.  Can't wait to use these with the kids!

3.  Made another interesting dinner from pinterest, a crockpot chicken dinner.

Source and recipe

4.  B and I helped pull some weeds in the backyard!  It is amazing how quickly our yard turns green!

5.  Loving On Every Side by Karen Kingsbury.  If you have not read any of her novels yet, I would check them out!!