Cutest Little Cougar EVER

He's our child. He is the cutest little Cougar EVER. Win or lose, he's still freaking adorable.

You're jealous, you know it. :)

What a beautiful family - at least I think so

Like I've said before, we had pictures taken on the 13th, hoping to capture some great shots of our family. Of course, Eli wasn't very interested in the idea of pictures that morning, but we did end up with a few good ones. At the time of the pictures he was just shy of being 1 year, 9 months (21 month for those of you counting that way).

Here we are.
One of us isn't very excited to be taking a picture.
Guess who.

My wonderful family

Me and my little guy
who happens to be not so little anymore

I love this picture.
Eli and Daddy

I love that face very, VERY much.

This is what he really wanted to do.
Run and play.

Me, Eli, Dusti, and Liam

One of our favorite past times: reading a good book

Hey look! It's the Disney airplane!
Really, it was flying overhead.

He sure can fool you!
He was not very pleased to take pictures.

Deena did a great job capturing the few smiles we had during our session.

And here we are with our fabulous neighbors. I'm behind Eli! haha
Jess, Me, Eli, Dusti, Liam, and Gordon

Publish Post

Oh and on a side note, the chances of Naples are slowly dwindling. They are still insisting no families. Sad. Still, time will tell.

Hmmm...

Well, as of right now, it doesn't look like we're going to be venturing on with this job opportunity. The possibility is still there though. The uppity-ups keep insisting they will not pay for families, however his immediate boss still thinks they'll offer him something. And as he (his boss) put it, everything is negotiable. At this point, it would be an incredible experience, but if it truly happens will come to play. If it is meant to be, then someday in the not so far off future we would have the biggest move of our lives in store. As for right now, we'll just play it out and see where the road leads.

And just because I know you are totally curious and are dying to know, here's a hint:

*****EDIT******
The large mountain (also known for its volcanic episodes) directly across the bay just happens to be Mt. Vesuvius.

Today's the day

We find out more information today about an incredible possible job opportunity. We'll see what happens. Cross your fingers. Jess is probably just sitting down with them right now!

GO JESS!!!!

High Times and High Spirits

I am really enjoying my class!!!!

....thought you might like to know....


Tomorrow is Curriculum Night, I have to talk about our curriculum when I really don't know very much about it. Thankfully my principal is extremely understanding and she said to keep things short and sweet. Get the parents in and out and be done. I actually have an eleven slide Powe.r Point presentation on various aspects of things. Now, I just have to copy the handouts for parents and tidy things up in my classroom in order to finish prepping. Good thing I have lots of time on my hands tomorrow: library, music, math unit 1 test (already! wow).

Side news, we had pictures taken on Saturday, hopefully they'll turn out. They were outside at Seattle University, of course, it being a new environment for Eli, all he wanted to do was run and explore. Oh, and the photographer? Forget about it. He wanted nothing, nothing, to do with her. She was great, but he didn't know her and really did not appreciate having her aim that big, black box at him in any way, shape, or form. Hopefully we get some good shots out of it.

More about possible job opportunities to come.........................


Ok, I just realized how BORING my posts are. I need to come up with something more exciting to post about...or at least post it in a more exciting manner. Maybe if I come up with an exciting title for it, it would seem more exciting. There's an idea. My "Work, Pics, Update" needs to have a little spice. There I came up with something different but still not quite what I'm looking for. Some day I'll get there....maybe I just don't blog enough. Hmmmmm, another thought....

My Boy Shares!

Unfortunately, he has shared what I would have preferred disappear after he was finished with it. I spent the day at home, in bed - except when I would go running for the bathroom. My boy shared his flu with me. I crawled out of bed at 1:00, ventured to the couch, and tried to have something to eat. I thought all was well, but I was wrong. I made my way back to bed at 3:30 when my snack came back to visit. We don't have much in terms of flu food, so I had some water and a few bites of applesauce. Yeah, not so good.

I'm contemplating staying home tomorrow, too. Depends on how the next 12 hours go and whether or not I can eat.

A New Parenting Experience

First of all, yes I really am posting TWO DAYS IN A ROW! It really is a miracle, I know....


Anyway, last night we experienced a whole new parenting adventure. Our poor guy woke up screaming. I snuck into his room to cover him again which is what his problem generally is in the middle of the night. He manages to wiggle out from under his blankets but hasn't quite figured out how to pull them back up. This time when I went in and was feeling for his little body, I instead reached right into a very wet and nasty mess. Poor Eli had thrown up in his bed!

I retreated from his room, with the "Honey, I'm going to need your help with this one" response. I grabbed Eli and headed for the bathroom. While I washed his hair and changed his clothes, Jess changed his sheets and got some water for our bug. It wasn't long before he was at it again, but this time we at least aimed him toward the bathtub. We cleaned everything up and decided to hang out watching tv for a little bit. We sat on our bed for a bit. About 20 minutes later, our third adventure had begun. This time I took Eli straight to a bath (yes, the tub had been thoroughly cleaned) and new clothes for all while someone else changed another set of sheets. After a complete bath, a few sips of water, and a third set of jammies Eli went back to bed. He managed to make it through the night and has been in a great mood today. He is taking quite the nap right now though, making up for that hour and a half we were up last night while he didn't feel good. Poor munchkin!

At any rate, it's pretty amazing that we've made it 20 1/2 months without this happening. There was one minor occurrence when he was still in his crib, but it was NOTHING compared to last night. I am not someone who can generally take the odor or sight of vomit, however, it didn't phase me at all. There's something about your own child not feeling well that takes over all natural reflexes. Today has been filled with laundry though. Sheets, comforters, jammies, towels, you name it! Thank goodness he's feeling better!

Four Days Completed

I really am not a complete slacker when it comes to updating. I had a huge entry typed up, but accidentally closed the browser window and thought I lost it. I decided I did not feel like retyping it all, so said "forget it." I just realized that it it was saved automatically through Blogger, but it was so long, I think I'll try to condense what I had to say (ramble on and on about) and add some other stuff instead.

School has been going wonderfully. I really enjoy my class, even my two "behavior" kids. Honestly, these two kids are no worse than the typical kid in my last position. The only difference is that rowdy behavior is not acceptable here, and is dealt with immediately, not looked over or deemed the problem of the teacher. 98% of the kids are actually attending to their learning and pay attention and participate! It's amazing. All of my kids are extremely fun and I am so excited to be their teacher.

I did have my first "oh my gosh" moment on day two, however. One of my students, bless her little heart, tripped (on her foot? there was nothing on the floor) and split her lip open on the corner of one of the supply carts - which is pushed up against the wall, out of the way - and ended up getting 4 stitches! The poor thing didn't want to go to the nurse, but I made her, who called home immediately, and she was rushed off to the ER by Mom and Dad. I felt horrible when I found out. I know I couldn't have done anything to prevent it, but what an awful way to start a new school year. So, she hasn't been at school since Wednesday but will probably be back at school either Monday or Tuesday, depending on the swelling, and if the stitches were removed this weekend. Poor thing.

Oh, I did say I would post some pictures of my classroom and of course haven't done that yet. I have a few that were taken 'pre-students' but things have changed a little since then. At any rate, it gives you a basic idea of what I'm working with. I have a great room. Tons of storage and cabinets - something I did not have in my old classroom.
Other than school starting, we went to the Cougar game last weekend. It was supposed to be Eli's first game, but he ended up with some sort of viral infection and was covered from head to toe in spots, so instead we went to the game and Eli spent the day with Grandma and Grandpa. I'm sure he had more fun there anyway, playing outside, getting a nap, playing and reading books with Grandpa and Grandma, and playing with the 3 beagles. :) After the game, Jonalee, Kyla, the Berglaps, and Elsbeth all came over and we watched the Husky game and played some Wii. Jeff was by far the funniest ski jumper I've seen, so had to take pictures of that special event.

Me, Kim, and Elsbeth just before Kickoff.

The boys: Adam, Jess, and Jeff
Touchdown Cougs!
Jeff and his "special" ski jumping action.

And just because he was so stinkin' cute, here's our boy in his Cougar gear. It's even cuter with his new "big boy jeans." If you look close enough, you can see his poor little spots.

The Beginning

Ok, so I was looking around in my blog pages and ran across this post that the never actually did post. I wrote this the beginning September, just after school started. It's funny to read about the transition to my new school. :) I wasn't going to post it, but thought to anyway.
~me~


I started at my new school this week and OH MY GOODNESS, I love it. I have great kids, the staff has been so welcoming, and I feel like I must be dreaming. Don't take that the wrong way, I really did enjoy my previous school, and I absolutely loved the people I worked with. Bridg and Weeeeebecka were such a great team. I really miss working with them, we just had that connection that takes a while to build. I really like my new team, we have lunch together every day, Friday's we go out to lunch (there's a miracle for anyone in education, we LEAVE school for lunch on Fridays), the craziest part is the transition from a team of 3, to a team of 7.

School is going wonderfully. I love my class. I have two behavior kids, but these "behaviors" are things that were looked over and not seen as "important" or "big enough" to deal with at said previous school. I have a full time translator for my sweet student with a hearing impairment, and oh my gosh! Talk about a fabulous woman. I'll be honest, I was a little apprehensive because aids I've had in the past have not been very effective in the classroom, but I am so impressed with her. I love her! She is so nice, friendly, and helps everyone (even me!). It's helping make the transition to LW even easier.

I felt horrible yesterday for one of my girls. I'm not sure how it happened, but she tripped and hit her lip on the edge of one of the supply carts in my room (I have two, one with drawers and one that holds my math manipulatives). I was working with a couple other students, but happened to look up with her running out of the room down the hall. I popped out and asked her where she was going (I had no idea anything was wrong at this point). She said she needed to go to the bathroom, and I said, ok, but she still can't leave wthout permission, that I needed to know where she was. Then I really noticed the tissue wasn't really there for her nose, but her mouth. She finally showed me what happened and told her the restroom wasn't an option, that she needed to go see the nurse. She kept insisting she was

OMG, so another random new school story: one of my super good friend from middle school teaches kindergarten here! We lost touch when we hit high school, but on the first day of trainings and what not, there she was! Talk about small world...