School!

This week we went back to school to meet our new students. Tuesday was the first day of a new semester and so far I like my classes, I have more girls (Last semester I had maybe 15 in three classes), I have fewer students on their way to juvenile detention, and even though some of my students are talkative, they seem willing to work hard. So really I don't have any issues with my classes, but there's certainly of other people with drama to keep things interesting - several teachers have nearly 30 students in their classes, one English teacher may not have a job next year because there's no money, and our school district is facing a nearly $5 million shortfall. The irritating thing is that we have ways to cut our budget that the school board isn't even thinking about such as moving the school board office to a vacant elementary school instead of renting space and our illustrious governor thinks it's a good idea to cut funding for schools. Don't get me wrong, I voted for the man, but I didn't think it would go down like this. If he wants to create a better Virginia, cutting education isn't a good thing. And also, why are we opening rest areas when we're facing a $4 billion shortfall? Why can't people just be normal and stop at a McDonalds to pee like the rest of us?

On a lighter note, I'm glad Evan Lysecek (sp?) won the gold in mens figure skating (Evan is an American). That Russian guy kind of reminded me of an evil Russian mobster in a Die Hard movie. And the Russian hasn't been very gracious since he won a silver. Oh no, not a silver! The horror!

Olympic Fever

Yesterday I got to go out with the other English teachers. We decide to get out of our houses and hit the town :-) We went to see Valentines Day (a movie) and then we went to Red Robin to eat. The movie was great! It actually got a tear out of me at the end. We enjoyed ourselves over dinner and returned home rejuvenated, which is good because we might get more snow on Monday!! FYI, that would be four snowstorms in three weeks.

Last night I missed the winter olympics opening ceremonies, but I'm okay with that, I want to acually watch the games. So far today we've watch short track and long track speed skating, moguls, and ski juming. The short track speed skating is riciulously exciting. I'm looking forward to downhill skiing, it looks ridiculously exciting as well, plus I'm rooting for Bodie Miller who totally blew it in the last Olympics. I also would be lying if I said I wasn't looking forward to figure skating :-) Really the only thing I'm not excited about is hockey. Sorry hockey fans!

Colby Pics

Colby has his ducks in a row :-)



Colby is silly!

I have officially become an animal lover. I never used to be - I had an intense dislike for cats when I was growing up and only liked dogs. But now I have two dogs and the other day I made friends with a neighborhood cat. It's an orange fluffy cat that likes being petted. I fed it for two days and gave it water much to Brandon's dismay. Now the cat thinks that it belongs to us and when we had friends come over for dinner last night, the cat snuck in! We chased it back out, but it tried to come in again today when I took Colby to daycare. By the way, I picked the worst day ever to take Colby to daycare. It's not snowing, but the wind is blowing snow across the roads. Where there are trees, the roads aren't so bad, but if there's just open land, the nearby roads are covered. It doesn't matter how much plowing they do, it's just going to blow back. We might have been able to go back to school tomorrow if we hadn't had all this wind, but at this rate, it'll definately be next week before we make it back. That would make it 2 weeks of no school. I don't know what they're going to do to make-up time. Guess I'll find out next week!

Stay at Home Mom

I think I now know what it must feel like to be a stay at home mom. You see I've been off so much because of the snow, I haven't been going to work. I've determined that I don't mind being a stay at home mom during the summer, we can go to the park, go swimming, go outside and play with the dogs, walk around the neighborhood, etc. But in the winter, there's nothing to do except stay inside and get in each other's way.

Today was good though because we had some friends over from church so I was busy cleaning and cooking. Colby even helped clean - he pushed around the swiffer :-) Tomorrow we don't have school again. So far we haven't had a single day of school in February. Maybe we'll got to Christiansburg and do a wee bit of shopping. We'll see.

Bruschetta Adventure

Today I finally got out of the house! Yay! I went to church followed by Walmart. When Colby and I got home we ate lunch and I put him down for his nap. While he napped I made homemade bruschetta. Brandon and I discovered bruschetta a while ago at a Costco. They were giving out free samples and we liked it so much that we bought some. I look around for it from time to time, but I've never found any so I decided to make some. Lets just say...it was delicious! Here's the recipe if you want to try it:

8 Roma tomatos deseeded and chopped
2 cloves of garlic minced (this was a lot of garlic so I thought next time I'd cut it down to 1)
1/3 cup of basil chopped
1/4 cup onion
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

It's super good on store bought italian toast, but probably great on toasted italian bread too. And it tasted pretty good with wheat thins when I was taste testing :-) I felt pretty good about his because Colby can eat it too! And he really enjoyed it!

No school tomorrow...I wonder if we'll have any school in February? I also wonder if we'll be in school until July?

Dorks and Snow

I want everyone to know that I'm a dork. There I said it. This is why - there have been a lot of commercials about things happening around town and I want to go to all of them! There's a production of Cats, Celtic Woman and the Harlem Globe Trotters will be in town and I want to go to all of them...I know...dork.

Anyway, we got a bunch more snow today. Brandon was so concerned about getting to work and back that he took the RAV, which has 4 wheel drive. I probably have said it before, but I'm sick of snow. I'm tired of looking at it, dealing with it, stuck in it, etc., etc. I'm done with snow.