Teacher Appreciation

This week at work is teacher appreciation. Every year, the doors around the school get decorated with fun themes and pictures.
I can't remember how the office door was decorated last year, but this week, this is what you see:

It's our principal, myself, the head secretary, and the assistant secretary.
I always wondered how I would look as a cheerleader... LOL

Here's a view of the whole thing. Very creative and very fun :)

Dear Mother Nature:

I don't want to seem unappreciative of what you do for us, but there are some things I need to say to you.

First: Is there a purpose in having a little of all seasons today? I feel like you are indecisive about if you want sun, rain, snow, sleet, hail... If I may be so bold as to say that I wish you would pick one season and go with it. Since I work outside, then it makes my job hard. With the weather changing every 5 or 10 minutes, the kids can't decide if they are going to be nice or naughty.

Second: I am ready for the snow to be gone. It's March; Spring-time. Does there NEED to be more snow? I would like to petition with you to get rain... instead of snow.

Third: Why do we need such cold wind? It really would help a lot if there were no wind - especially on an already cold day. If it's summer time, a wind is awesome; but if you insist to bring us snow, can you leave the wind out?

Fourth: I wonder if our 'snow season' could be only during our winter break? Perhaps the week before Christmas, the week of Christmas, and the week after Christmas? It can snow 12ft if you'd like, but if we can keep the snow to a limited time, that would be awesome!

I have been asked to let you know of other peoples' concerns as well:
One of my friends is "tired of sitting in the snow and wind watching freezing cold ball games".
Another person agrees with my suggestion of snow around the Christmas season.
The kids here would sure love nice weather.
All the people who plant flowers are stressing because the flowers are going to die - please ditch the cold and snow.
Warm weather would really be awesome... Please. It would help get rid of all the sicknesses going around.

Thanks for listening. I hope I didn't make you mad, but I just wanted you to know how I felt about things.

Thank You, I Appreciate It

I know parents are doing a good job teaching their kids when I hear what I heard today.

While I was waiting for one of the Kindergarten classes to be picked up, two boys started kicking another boy. I pulled those two boys aside and they came with me to the office. We talked about what had happened and why they were in the office. I had them write apology notes to the boy they kicked and they drew pictures of them playing together nicely (I found this works pretty well with Kindergartners). We walked back to their classroom and I pulled aside the boy who was kicked.
The two boys said sorry and gave him their notes. The boy looked at the notes and heard their apologies, then said, "Thank you. I appreciate it." So precious. He then patted each of the other boys on the shoulder in a 'it's ok, we're still friends' way, then they all went off to do their work.

Totally made my day!

Thank you to any who have voted for my sister in law's photo at www.babygizmo.com/vote (photo with the boy leaning his head on her tummy). I have found out that you can vote once every 24 hours until April 2, so if you can, vote once a day between now and then!



Random sidenote:

Last week, after the morning Kindergarten classes came in from recess, one of the teachers commented to me that the weather could be classified as a lamb (the kids are keeping track of the weather each day... lion or lamb - essentially good weather or bad). I raised my eyebrows and said, "Well, it looks nice but the wind makes it really cold. So it's more like... a wolf in sheep's clothing" She laughed and said that was a good way to put it.
The weather today was definitely a 'wolf in sheep's clothing' kind of day.

Helping Out

My sister in law, Jess, entered a picture of her baby belly to win a stroller. She has made the finals, and so needs as many votes as she can get to win! Any of you who can vote would be awesome! Click the link below... her photo is the only one with a boy in the picture - about half way down the page. SO CUTE!!!

(this is copied from Jess' blog)
It would be such a blessing to be able to win this. We are in need of a stroller especially since this baby is a spring baby, we will need it all summer!

My picture was chosen as part of the final 10 in a "belly bump contest" I almost didn't send in the picture, but did last minute kind of as a "what the heck, might as well" thing. Well to my surprise I had an email this morning telling me all the details. I need all my friends and family to go to http://www.babygizmo.com/vote/ and vote for me. It's the picture of Jarren resting his head on my stomach. Only one vote from each computer, they track the IP addresses. But hey, if you have more than one computer in the house, feel free to vote on each of them ;)

I'm so excited and nervous. I'm happy to just be in the final 10! The voting ends on April 2nd, so please send this info onto your friends and family, or even if you would like to post this on your blog to all your readers, I would be ok with that :)

Careful What You Text

Anyone who enjoys the convenience of text messaging is also, sometimes painfully, aware that if you don't proofread your messages, you can say things you don't intend to say (especially if you use a 'predictive text' setting.
A few common words you gotta look out for: home/good, me/of, he/if.
If you are not paying attention, your text: "call me when you get home" could read 'call of when you get good'.
"He told me he was home" could be 'if told of if was good'
"Get your home work done" could be 'get your good work done'
You get the point...
So yesterday I received a text message from one of my friends who was asking me to find her son on the playground "... He you get this can you send ______ to the office." I chuckled at the 'he' instead of 'if' and responded "Sure. I see him now"
She sends me another message saying 'thanks and you make me laugh', then referenced the message I had just sent to her. I re-read what I'd sent her and about fell over from laughing so hard. What was it I said? "Sure. I pee him now"
SO FUNNY!!!
It's not often I don't check my messages before I send them - sometimes I purposely text the wrong things - but when I do send them wrong it is pretty funny.


As a side note with just as much laughter involved:

I was invited to dinner last night at Jamie's house and after we ate she was telling me about the things she was selling on Ebay. She had received an email from a lady asking something about the items she was selling. It went something like this: "Is the color burgundy or maroon? Do you have more. Am willing to buy all?"
We got a good laugh about that for the rest of the night. Questions in the form of statements and statements in the form of questions. If that were a test, she would have gotten 1/3. I think we will have a fun time making jokes about that for a long while yet :) We did discover, however, that questions in the form of statements aren't nearly as funny as statements as questions; but you never know when one will be just too funny.
It made me think of the whole texting thing too... how sometimes you get the wrong punctuation mark. "I love you?" instead of "I love you!" and vice versa. "when do you get back!" as opposed to "when do you get back?"

It's all funny and makes me laugh.