The Newest Second Grade Class... a.k.a Miss Waters' class

May I begin by saying, HOORAY for the weekend! Monday started my first week back to school with students and it has been an exhausting week. Just getting up early and then standing on my feet for 8 hours on a concrete floor, it was all I could do to put my feet on the floor the next morning. It has been a very productive first week and I've got a great bunch of students, who are very eager to learn. I also have some "rounders" who like to try my patience every minute of the day. Everyday I remind myself they are just over grown 1st graders and they just want my love. This is my largest group of 2nd graders, 22 students. I am also having to get use to all of the students calling Mrs. Turner. Most of them knew me as Miss Waters, so I'm called both, mostly by former students. I must admit though, after six years of being Miss Waters, I think I like the sound of Mrs. Turner! So here is a run down of the week:

Monday - after about 4 hours of sleep, simply because I never can sleep before the first day of school I was up and off to work by 6:45. Hall duty, meet the kids, deal with a hystical child, teach procedures, lunch, P.E. math, MUSIC (on what a relief to have an enrichment on Monday afternoons), snack, science, social studies, and THEN sending the children home. I finally make it home around 5:30, get dinner prepared, go for a run, and then relax while I eat. Aaron was recording after work so he came home late. Tuesday was much of the same, by Wednesday I was starting to get use to the pain and throbbing in my legs and feet. After teaching all day on Wednesday it was off to church, which was fantastic, but by the time I made it home, it was all I could do to walk in the door. Thursday and Friday went very smoothly. The majority of the kids have the procedures down and they will help each other if someone forgets.

However, I have 5 students who really try me each and every day. For example: the students must have a bus sticker on to get on the bus. This is just another way we can make sure the kids are getting on the correct bus. Well I send my Gill 1 students out, all have bus stickers. In a minute we have an announcement, "TEACHERS PLEASE MAKE SURE THAT YOUR STUDENTS HAVE BUS STICKERS ON, WE WILL NOT PUT THEM ON THE BUS WITHOUT A STICKER" I give it no thought because all of mine had a sticker. My door opens and a teacher is bringing me one of my kids (with no bus sticker) back in my room. He decided to just remove his sticker and throw it away because he didn't need it. I gave him another sticker and he had a private escort to the bus. He did the same thing on Friday, before he made it to my room as well. The students get their stickers as they get off the bus, he just decided he didn't want to wear his. For him, it will make my life a little easier when we no longer wear bus stickers. Only one more week to go with those.

Now yesterday I was able to leave earlier, ran some errands and headed home. I just decided to lay down for a minute and when I woke up it was 6:15. YIKES!!! I quickly threw the ingredients for our pizza dough in the breadmachine, and went about gathering the materials to make our homemade pizza. It was delicious and even better this afternoon for lunch. We had pepperoni and Mediterranean Alfredo Pizza.






Mediterranean Alfredo Pizza

1 Pizza Crust (I used homemade)
1/3 cup Alfredo sauce (leftovers can be used to dip the crust in)
8 to 10 fresh spinach leaves
1 cup fresh mushrooms
1 small tomato chopped
4 canned artichoke hearts
1 ½ teaspoons oregano
Shredded Mozzarella Cheese
1 cup cooked chicken

Make Pizza Crust, place items on top of pizza crust and bake according to the directions.


Saturday - so Aaron (who has today off) and I decided we were going to sleep in and just enjoy the day. Needless to say I guess our bodies are just use to getting up early and we were both up by 6:30. He's done his training for his Triathlon, put together a bed, and cut the grass. I've cleaned the house and I'm working on laundry. Aaron is watching something on T.V. with his eyes closed, which sounds like a great idea. I think I hear the Temperpedic calling my name...yep it is. An afternoon nap, sounds like an awesome plan.

New Do, New Lawn Mower, and New School Year... a whole lot of newness!

Let me begin by saying that I start school tomorrow and orginally set out to type up my procedure list for tomorrow (which I had hand written during church today - horrible I know but I can listen and write at the same time) but decided that the hand written version would do just fine, so here I am blogging instead.

Last weekend Aaron and I took a little road trip to Panama City for the Baldwin Baptist Back to School Retreat. No we didn't take our youth, Aaron, Brad, and Matt (part of Seraph) led worship and I tagged along. I must say it was a lot of fun to be a "groupie" and Haley (Matt's wife) and I enjoyed chatting while the guys were practicing. Needless to say we had a lot of fun, ate some great food, spent quality time with wonderful friends, never made it to the beach because it was too HOT, and got to get away one last time before the summmer ended. Now before we left, Aaron and I both had haircut appointments. We were both still sporting our wedding haircuts and well looking a little shaggy. So I made the appointments and off we went. Aaron was going for his cool band look and I decided that I wanted a new look as well... I mean I am a new person, name wise. So I googled some pictures and found one that I thought I could pull off. Here are our new dos:



I'm still getting use to the fact that I have something on my forehead and at times I find some bobby pins and pin those bangs back. I haven't had bangs since the 7th grade. I've gotten many compliments on the new style and teachers at school at first glance didn't recognize me. So here is the new me.

Moving on to today, where we made yet another large purchase. We bought a new stove two weeks ago in exchange for a rent. It is amazing! So I decided that I would cut the grass yesterday morning before heading to a wedding shower for LeeAnn and Willie. I get everything ready and I'm cutting away. After about five passes, the lawn mower dies. Now it had done this to me before but we changed the starter and it worked perfectly. After several attempts I finally gave up. Today we bought a beautiful red Troybuilt lawn mower with a mulcher bag. After my amazing husband put it together of course he had to go and try it out. Here he is cutting the front yard:




So the front yard is nice and neat and parts of the backyard are, we had to go and run so the rest of the yard can wait until later.

And the last new thing on our list is the NEW SCHOOL YEAR!!! While I started back to work last Monday, the children will arrive tomorrow. As always I'm excited, nervous, hopeful, tired, and many other emotions as the new year begins. I met a lot of my students on Friday for "Meet the Teacher" and I must say I've got some precious students this year. As always it is fun to see past students, who were completely confused and didn't know what to call me (since my name has changed). I mean I'm still getting use to people calling me Mrs. Turner, so I'll just answer to both names, for a while at least.

Well I'm looking at the clock and the time to head to bed is quickly coming and morning will be here before I know it. Until next time...