Spoken like a true 6th grader!

Another story from the classroom.

When a student needs to go to the restroom, they have to write a pass in their agenda and then get the teacher to sign it. I try to not let them go because 9 times out of 10, they're just trying to get out of the classroom. But there are some kids who have a pretty regular pattern where they seem to go at about the same time everyday.

Well, my 3rd period class is a team taught class which means there's another teacher in the room and we teach the class together.

So there's this one kid, we'll call him J, who always seems to go to the bathroom. I started telling him no, so I noticed that he would go to the other teacher and get a pass from her. Sneaky little devil!

This one particular day, I noticed that he went to the bathroom right before I was about to show a short video clip. (Of course, he didn't get the pass from me!) He didn't come back until well after the video was over. The video clip was a little over 5 minutes.

I called him over to my desk and the conversation went like this:

Me: J, where were you?

J: The bathroom.

Me: You were gone entirely too long. You missed the whole video clip.

[He holds up 2 fingers]

Me: NO, you were gone well over 2 minutes.

J: No, number 2. I had to go number 2. I take this medicine that makes me go to the bathroom.

Me: Oh, ok. (I mean, what do you say after that?!!?)

He had no qualms about telling me he went number 2! They really are still babies :)

Birthday Celebration Weekend

My birthday was on Saturday. This was not a monumental birthday...31. No biggie, but you wouldn't know it by all the celebrating that was done. Not just 1 day...3 whole days of partying!

DAY 1
Friday kicked off the weekend with a good old fashioned slumber party! Me and my sisterchicks spent the night at a hotel. We all met at the Hyatt by Perimeter and got dressed up for dinner. We had 8:00 reservations at Goldfish by the mall.




It was yummy! But, of course, you gotta get dessert. So for that, we went to Cafe Intermezzo. (sorry, no pics of that) It was fabuloso! Well, I mean, you can't go wrong with White Chocolate Amarillo cheesecake?! Mmmmm.....

After that, we were all pretty exhausted (yes, we're all old) and just wanted to go back to the hotel and get into our pj's. We ate snacks, opened gifts, and laughed and laughed!



We stayed up late and slept in. Well, some of us did. Kristen had to leave at 5:00 am!! Ugh... I got to sleep in till about 8:00. Hey, that's about 3 hours longer than I normally sleep! since everyone else had to leave, Amanda and I went to eat breakfast at Mimi's Cafe. I had pumpkin pancakes :) Once again....mmmmm!

DAY 2
Saturday night it was off to Medieval Times. It was SO much fun!! Amber, Brandon and I went and weren't quite sure what we were getting into. We got seated in the yellow section which meant we cheered for the yellow knight. He ended up getting killed. Go figure. We had good food, which we had to eat with our hands! Here's some pictures from the night:

You walk into this huge arena filled with fog. We got seated on the first row!



Amber, Brandon and I with our beautiful crowns!


We had to eat with our hands...yes, even soup!



We sat in the yellow section which means that we cheered for the yellow knight. He ended up getting killed.


Our knight threw out flowers in the crowd. Guess who caught one?!


Our waiter brought me some birthday cake. He was kind enough to bring me a fork!





Some shots of the show.

Perhaps one of the "highlights" of the evening was me getting knighted! The king himself dubbed me Lady of the Realm. Just let me know if you need any royal duties performed!!



After the show, we decided to go get dessert at Jillian's. Yummy! We all shared a chocolate fondue plate and hot sugared donut holes! This oughta be a sin!


DAY 3
Sunday was the family celebration. I got choose my favorite meal: mexican! Dinner was prepared by none other than chef, Clint Brown. Quite tasty!

Here's some pictures of the pre-dinner entertainment!

Evan trying to give Bo a hug.







It was an act of congress to get them all together for this crazy shot!


Clint showing off his latest deer and Evan wanted to ride it!


It was a wonderful weekend! Now it's back to reality!

Bling it Forward

Our church started a new series today called "Becoming the Boss of Our Bling", learning how to control your finances and honor God with your money. Definitely something I could use right now! Anyways, the pastor told the story of the parable of talents in Matthew 25:14 - 30. The basic gist of the story is that a wealthy man went on a very long journey and told his servants to look over everything while he was gone, including taking care of his finances. He made a very interesting point. He said that the man who went on the journey did not GIVE them everything. They were just supposed to look over and manage things until he came back. God has given us the same responsibility. HE has given us our "bling"...our stuff: houses, cars, clothes, etc. It does NOT belong to us. We are supposed to manage it in a way that honors HIM until HE returns! HE is like the CEO and we are the CFO. HE has given us the awesome privilege of managing our stuff to bring HIM glory. After a sermon like that, you would expect most pastors to take up an offering and tell everyone that the right thing to do is give money.

OK...here's the really cool part!

They passed the offering baskets out, but this was a reverse offering! The pastor told us that the staff had gone to the bank and withdrawn $10,000 in different amounts and put all those bills in envelopes. There were ones, fives, tens, and twentys and 4 100 dollar bills! We were to take an envelope. The church was giving us money!! Here's the catch: we were not allowed to give it back to the church or spend it on ourself. We had to give it away to someone else and we had tell about our experience on blingitforward.com. How cool!! I was SO excited and couldn't wait to think of how I was going to spend my money. I was so eager when the basket came my way. My sister pulled out $5, my bro-in-law pulled out $5 and I pulled out.......$20!! I was thrilled!

So now...here's the challenge: what do I spend it on?!?! If you have any cool ideas let me know!

But we're not done yet!! The other cool thing was related to tithing. The pastor shared the scripture in Malachi 3:10 that says "Bring all the tithes into the storehouse so there will be enough food in my Temple. If you do,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, “I will open the windows of heaven for you. I will pour out a blessing so great you won’t have enough room to take it in! Try it! Put me to the test!" So, he challenged us to tithe to Mountain Lake for the next 3 months. If, at the end of the 3 months, God had not provided for our needs (not wants!) Mountain Lake would refund 100% of what was tithed! How crazy is that?!

Normally, you might leave a sermon about money feeling depressed at how in debt you are or defeated b/c you know you're not managing your finances the way you should. And even though I, by no means, have a handle on everything, I left feeling confident and hopeful. God has truly blessed in more ways than I could ever say and I just pray that my decisions would bring honor and glory to Him.

Birthday Perks

After about 21, birthdays stop being so much fun. And I would say that after 25, they start becoming depressing. Well, last year I made it through the big 3-0. So, this year, turning 31 is kinda...uh...blah. EXCEPT for the fun stuff you get in the mail! And since October is my birthday month, some of my favorite retail stores are helping me celebrate! DSW Warehouse, Victoria's Secret, GAP, & Build A Bear (ok...not really my favorite, but once you go in there once, they've got ya!)

Goin' to the Fair!

I got to babysit my nephew, Evan, today while Mandi & Pep were off getting a free cruise! (Yes, I did say free cruise.) Seeing as how my house/shoebox is not very kid-friendly AND it was such a gorgeous day today, the only obvious answer was to go to the fair!

It was a lot of fun, except for the fact that it was almost 90 degrees!! It's October people!! I had shorts, a t-shirt, flops, and my hair up and I was dripping sweat like a faucet!

So here's the pics of the day:

Cool stuff!

I heard about this website on the radio and thought it sounded neat. And it didn't disappoint! Check out some of the cool stuff:

Lunch date

So...I had a date today! I had a meeting today, so I wasn't at school. I met him on my lunch break at his place. He was so excited to see me. We laughed and had a really good time.


OK...before you get all excited, let me translate:

I actually had lunch with my nephew, Blake. I went to his school today and had a hamburger (that I'm pretty sure wasn't all the way cooked!). If you have a visitor come eat lunch with you, you get to sit up on the stage and bring a friend with you. So Blake chose to bring Kyle up on stage with him. Kyle was a little more than I bargained for. He was jumping off the stage like a frog. Hmmm.... Anyways, it was fun. I also brought pumpkin shaped sugar cookies for Blake to take back to his class. Yes, I'm a cool aunt :)