The Seven of Us

I am ready for a vacation!!  Have been for  month! Today 5 of my anatomy students, all seniors, dropped my class.  They were my favorite 5, too.  It stinks.  I know that it's not personal--they all have other classes they want to try that are opposite anat--bu tit stinks.  Really a bummer for next semester. I am SO. glad. it's almost Christmas!!  

All week long: padres here, cooking, cleaning painting.  House warm, neat, and cozy when I get home. Work getting done on the new house.  Treated to Pizza Hut.  Soon it will end. NO fun! Really, I feel extremely blessed.  I am grateful for the parents I have. They love me. THey watch over us.  They pray for us. They are interested in us.  They have spent many, many weeks and months here and they have developed a great relationship with their grandkids.  My kids all love them and look forward to having them around.  When my parents come to visit, they come to work.  I don't know that they've ever come expecting a vacation. (Which is good.  I doubt they've ever had one while viiting us! Sure, our lives were a little more relaxed when we were able to just sit back and watch the kids play all day.   But even then, they had to deal with less-than-ideal accommodations in our busy home.  Their bed was on the couch and break...

Today is October 6, and it's been exactly two months since I showed up for my first official day of school   meetings.  I think it's been the fastest two months of my life.

I start teaching a week from today.  Yay!!  I've had enough meetings.  There are a few things I don't know how to do, but I' m anxious to get started.  

Well, here I am... Mid-July of my 39th summer on earth.  I guess to Heavenly Father that's nothing. But there is a lot going on.  I was hired to teach science in Holyoke just two weeks ago.  I start on Aug. 6th!  Yikes!  I lost a lot of work time by not knowing what I was doing right away, and by waiting on the administration , etc.  I am feeling very very pressured to get my prep Done. And, I 'm anxious   to see how the classroom feels and get started.  I will be teaching Biology and Bio II and anatomy  and 7th grade science.  The biology is overwhelming me.  I have not had much time to look at it and I don't remember it...at all.  Yikes.  I am scared--but I know that with hard work and Heavenly Father's help I will be okay.  I just have soo much to do.  Complicating things, I am having serious pain with my scapula and trigger points that developed from sleeping on a bad mattress for two years. I wish...

This is how Kenna spends her free time in the summer!  (Today was the first time she used the fan.  She paid Isaac $1.05 to go get it!) 

It's Taylor's birthday on Friday.  She is at Disneyland today, although she's actually in Cali for the national FBLA CONFERENCE.  She worked hard, raised every bit of what she needed for the trip, and hopped on the plane with 22 other kids yesterday. And she sat by a boy. (His name is Elliott.  He is like a son to me, connected to our family by several different threads.  The first and most enduring thread is Taylor.  They have been friends for a long time, and he watches out for her, and I think he likes her, but right now I am just thankful that he is her friend.) Yes.  And today I was remembering some things about Tay when she was small.  I remember her dressing herself in trash bags and making Tay soup.  She created woven placemats from iris leaves and put an old white curtain over her head for a wedding veil.  She was always singing--often songs from the little Mermaid  or Mary Poppins, but almost as often  they were songs s...