LEO's and Marriage

Last Sunday at our First Responder Married's Group one of our leaders read this article talking about what the male LEO (law enforcement officer) needs from his wife and vice versa. I so wish I had the link so you could look at it. The list of what the wife needs from the LEO was pretty decent - stuff like communicating with the wife, acknowledging her contributions to the family, not taking out your job stress on her, etc. The other list, the one concerning what the LEO needs from the wife, was sheer ridiculousness. It included things like waiting up for your LEO to get home from work, meeting him at the door wearing a nice dress, baking him cookies to take to work with him (no I'm not kidding), and other cheesy things. I decided that whoever wrote the blog was either a stay at home mom or a man. So I decided to write a new list.

What an LEO needs from his/her significant other

1. Hold down the fort while the LEO is working - I know for a fact that Brandon couldn't do his job well if I wasn't taking care of things at home. I do homework with Colby, I run the kids around to their activities, I clean (please don't think the house is spotless-it's not!), I cook, I take care of things like bills, grocery shopping and social/activity planning.

2. To not be crazy - LEOs need their significant others to be calm and respectful. They don't need their significant others flying off the handle about stupid things or have crazy expectations about things. They get enough crazy at work and they don't need it at home.

3. To show you care about them and support them and their job - now this can be accomplished in many ways and are not limited to waiting up for them to get home, meeting them at the door wearing a nice dress or baking them cookies. It really just depends on your LEO. For me, I like to make dinner most nights that he has to work. I think it shows a certain amount of caring that I make a hot meal for him before he leaves. When he comes home I always ask him about his night/day and I listen attentively while he tells me what's up. But what works for us, may not work for others. But lets be real, unless you're married with no kids, waiting up for them to get home is craziness. With two kids, I know a better use of my time would be sleeping so that I'm not cranky/crazy while awake. And I love baking cookies and would certainly be okay with making cookies and letting him take some of them to work (I mean I want to eat some too!), but I'm not specifically going to make him cookies like I'm some 1950s wife.

What a significant other needs from his/her LEO

1. Contribute to the household - your significant other is not the only one responsible for the house and family. Do some chores on your day off - anything would be helpful! What's that saying...oh...a man is one clean house away from the night of his dreams ;-)

2. Be thoughtful toward your significant other - buy her flowers, cook him dinner, stop at Cookout on the way home and buy a couple milkshakes. Anything unexpected and delightful will be appreciated.

3. Communicate - if something is bothering you at work or at home, then it needs to be brought up in a loving/respectful way. Trust you significant other to be a good listener and things will be easier.

So here's make take on things and hopefully it's not as cheesy as the other one. I'll post the link if I can find it!

Having a Student Teacher

So one of the biggest things affecting my work life right now is having a student teacher. I've never had a student teacher before so I was pretty nervous about it. I've seen pretty good student teachers come through our department over the years, but I've also seen some downright awful student teachers and the stories told about them are quite horrendous. Well, I'm glad to say my student teacher is amazing! She works really hard and has a lot of good ideas. I think the process of explaining to her how and why I do things has made me a much more thoughtful teacher. When you are trying to defend why you do a certain thing in the classroom, but you can't think of a very good reason, then it makes you think about improving what you do or eliminating it altogether. I've always known I needed to be harder on my honors students and she's helping me improve in that area. Also having all this time of doing nothing except supervising her (which is a piece of cake) has given me time to really revamp my nonfiction unit. I think the nonfiction unit is going to be pretty awesome when November rolls around! Watch out students, logical fallacies are coming your way! If I can always get an awesome student teacher, sign me up to be a cooperating teacher every time! And hears a weird upshot of having a student teacher...my students LOVE me...they think she's mean (she's not) and can't wait for me be back in the classroom. Maybe they'll be better behaved when I get back in there? Or if their not I can threaten to get another student teacher next semester...ha! Here's to all the student teachers out there!

I'm Back!

Earlier this year we discovered that the screen on our computer was going bad. Being the procrastinators we are, we spent a couple of months wiggling it around until it worked, I mean I didn't really NEED to type anything and could surf the web on my Nook. When the computer did work, I did a few things that were more convenient on it (like typing blog posts), but no worries right? Well, as things always do, things with the computer got worse and we couldn't wiggle it enough to make it work. Obviously we either needed a new computer or a new screen. Well, screens are less expensive (I'm getting cheap in my old age!), but again I procrastinated. But then I got to missing my blog and all the other things I could do on my computer and not on my Nook (like looking at PDF files) and finally bought a new screen. It probably wouldn't surprise you to hear that the box sat in the living room for about three days, but now Brandon has replaced the screen and now I'm back in business!

And I'm sure you're asking yourself what has changed since my last blog post in August and I'm happy to say not a lot has changed. Colby goes to school, Carter goes to daycare, Brandon goes to work, I go to work, the dogs bark, the house is messy, our extended families are doing fine (my parents are in Hawaii - lucky dogs!) and...oh yeah...I turned 32 last week :-) There's some other things going on in my life, but I just wanted to do a quick "I'm back" blog! So, I'm back!!