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...

Calzones and New Running Shoes

To help my our lives be a bit easier I have tried to come up with a menu for two weeks, do the grocery shopping, and then try to stick to that plan, hoping to save time and headache. So far it has worked quite well and we have eaten like kings and queens. Well tonight we tried a new recipe: Spinach/Chicken Calzones. Now the neat thing about this recipe is that I found it on someone's blog when I googled for this recipe. So anyway the calzones were a success and we very much enjoyed them. We had extra filling so we are going to put it over pasta and make another meal completely. Since we found this to be such a tasty treat we thought we would share the recipe with you. Enjoy!

Three Cheese, Chicken, and Spinach Calzones
1 package pizza dough mix (or make your own, which is what I did)
1 tbsp olive oil
1 large garlic clove minced
1 bag of fresh spinach
1 1/2 medium boneless skinless chicken breasts (you can use leftovers or simly cook this chicken)
15 ounces ricotta cheese, drained of excess moisture
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese (I actually just sliced and chopped a ball of mozzarella cheese)
1/2 cup grated Romano cheese
1 egg
Egg wash * 1 egg beaten with 1 tbsp milk

Preheat over to 400F and lightly greased a baking sheet, set aside.

Heat the oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add the minced garlic and saute until fragrant. Add the spinach by handful and cook until wilted (about 5 minutes). Remove from heat and drain spinach of excess liquid in a colander.

In a large mixing bowl, combine all three cheeses and the egg. Mix the wilted spinach. Tear the cooked chicken into small pieces and mix into filling.

Prepare dough according to package directions. On a lightly floured surface roll the dough out into roughly a 12 inch round, cut in half (I cut it into four pieces). Spoon filling onto one side of each dough section and fold the dough over to enclose the filling. Pinch the edges tightly to seal in filling. Cut a few slashes in the top of each calzones to release steam during baking. Repeat with remaining calzone and trasfer both onto prepared baking sheet. Brush the calzones with egg wash and bake for 25-30 minutes. Remove fromover and allow to cool for 10 minutes before cutting. We had marinara sauce with our calzones. Here a picture of our dinner.




I also got some new running shoes, which I tried out this evening. They are fantastic and super bright and cute.



So these are the adventures of the day! Can't wait to share more of the adventures of the Turner Home!!!

Cleaning and Organizing - What a Sense of Accomplishment

Let me begin by saying that this has been an usually busy summer, wedding preparations, wedding, honeymoon, week at home, youth camp, and now I'm actually at home, just HANGIN! So Monday after cutting the grass and doing laundry, I watched T.V. for the first time all summer. Like I just sat and watched reruns of shows for about 3 hours. I know completely crazy, so I decided right then and there that I needed another project and wasn't ready to tackle my classroom just yet. Now for the past year I've been telling Aaron that I was going to clean his office and redecorate it. Well that finally took place yesterday. I took everything out, painted an accent wall, and then put only those things that needed to be in his office back in, everything else either found a new home and went in the trash. I finally left church around 6 yesterday evening but I had accomplished my goal (minus the pictures being hung and curtains) I do enjoy cleaning and organizing!

The BLOB

Here is one of the activities that the students could participate in during their free time. Two of our guys were the top "Blobbers" and everyone wanted them to "blob" them. Check out this video to see what I'm talking about. Needless to say most of our girls looked like had been beated but they loved it regardless.

Global Youth Camp

Pictured above is our group, with the beautiful mountains in the background. This year we attended Global Youth Camp in Chatsworth, GA. Our scenery was absolutely breath taking, right outside our rooms we could see the Smokey Mountains. The temperature was cool in the morning and evening and quite pleasant during the day.

The theme for the week was Warrior- Call to Destiny -the scripture was based on 1 and 2 Samuel and the story of David. The students were challenged to get rid of their Deadly Pets (sins), being chosen for God, Trophies, Chosing our Friends Wisely, Average to Awesome, and What difference can I make? The messages each day were challenging and enlightening. What we discussed is that the students are begging to learn more and grow spiritually but simply don't know now. We also discovered that we have a lot of students that carry a great deal of hurt.

Here's how the day went: woke up and breakfast at 7:45, then morning rally (which included morning exercises and the challenge for the day). The students were divided into shires and they had to collect scruples (points) for their team. This could be done in several ways such as: competing in team games, reciting scripture, and bible drills. By 9:00 the students were sent out for morning rec and small group time, while the adults headed downstairs to have a special session with Roger (our speaker), 10:30 worship, 12 - Lunch, 12:50 FREE TIME FOR ADULTS, this was track time for the students. The students were allowed to pick a track (something they might be interested in) 2-5 Free Time for the students (the students could participate in many different activities) 5:10 - Dinner, 6:30 Evening Rally, followed by church time, then the students were sent out for Roll Call and MY FAVORITE PART - the adults stayed in the auditorium and prayed over every chair and then spent time praying as a group. 8:00 Evening worship, 10:00 Church time, 11:00 In Rooms, 11:30 - Lights Out.

Many of our students expected to get that same warm fuzzy feeling that they got last year (just feeling the Holy Spirit come into their lives). This year however the students felt more of a burden and a tug on their hearts, whether it was conviction or just a hurt that they were continuing to hang on to. We had several students who stepped up as leaders. Now the real challenge comes, we as a group must continue to encourage each other and actually act on the suggestions that we made at camp.

Please pray for our students, adult leaders, and Aaron, as we continue to strive to listen to God's will on our lives and group.

Expectancy

Expecations- we all have them. In the past month I have had many expectations. Expectations for what our wedding would look like, sound like, how the food from the reception would taste, how people would react when they heard "How He Loves" sung by Aaron or would they even recognize his voice. Expectations of the honeymoon, plane ride, car ride to the resort, food there, and married life in general. The reality of it all is so much more than I could have ever expected.

Tomorrow Aaron and I (along with two other brave chaperones) will take 24 students to Global Camp in Chatsworth, GA. Let me back up just a bit and give a quick recap of our fabulous group of students. Last year we took 11 students to the same camp (in Panama City). It was during this time where we really saw God take a hold of these students and grow them like we had never seen before. We watched God grow our group of students, watched the students rally around each other in times of need, spend time together outside of youth activities, and generally realized that they enjoyed hanging out together. The past year has been amazing to watch. Which brings me back to the title "Expectancy"... What are each one of us expecting from the "camp experience"? Wednesday night Aaron talked about this and asked the students to go to camp expecting something. Now I ask myself the same question: What am I expecting?

Please pray for us. We begin our journey bright and early in the morning (it is a 7 hour drive, with a time change, and breakfast and lunch pit stop along the way). We will head back home Saturday. Pray that the students and adults eyes and hearts are open to what God has to say to us during the week and we will actually listen and take action.

My Expectations: To watch our group unify even more, truly hear from God, and then take what we have learned home and share with those we come in contact with. We love you all and can't wait to share the updates!