The Work Week
This week Kaylee and I got to spend a little extra time with Tim.  Last Sunday he started feeling sick and had a sore throat.  It was bad enough Monday and Tuesday that he stayed home from work.  By Tuesday evening his throat was still really sore even though he felt well otherwise.  He was worried he might have strep throat, so he took Wednesday off as well in order to go down to the clinic and spare possibly exposing his students to strep.  His strep test came back negative so he was able to go back to work on Thursday.  It’s no fun being sick, but it sure was fun having Tim home with us. 

On the flip side, we didn’t get to see Tim much this weekend because there was Saturday school.  Before Christmas break we had a school cancellation due to drifted and blocked roads.  Unlike some other, wiser school districts, we do not have any extra days built into our calendar.  Any time school is cancelled we have to make it up.  The attendance was pretty bleak.  Girls and boys basketball teams for middle school and high school were out of town for a basketball trip.  That took out a good percentage of the kids.  Since it was Saturday a good percentage that were left just simply didn’t show up.  It sounds like there were about 15 students in the middle school and 15 in the high school that day.  Classes of one or two were pretty common.

This week I have finally felt like I’m living “real life”.  Tim went to work.  I stayed home and took care of Kaylee.  I did some household chores and I also squeezed in some time to back a loaf of bread, mend some of Tim’s shirts, and do some recreational sewing.  When Tim came home I had dinner made for him.  I know that to many people this doesn’t sound very exciting. Perhaps it sounds like I had a few days filled with mundane chores, but I have long wished for my life to be filled with these chores and I am thoroughly enjoying it!  I like this new job.

I was so relieved not to have to go to school on Saturday, but it’s amazing how much it affected me too.  I didn’t realize until now what a break it gives me to have Tim home on the weekend to help out with Kaylee and to give me a chance to catch up on sleep.  I find myself balking at how quickly our Saturday afternoon – Sunday evening weekend has gone. 

Our Short Yet Fun Weekend
Tim and I tried to pack all our weekend fun into one evening.  On Saturday, Heather came home from work with Tim and hung out with us all evening.  I loved having her.  It’s crazy how much I miss seeing her each day, even though it was only for a few minutes at work.  I find myself wishing she could come over nearly every evening.  I told her that I’d make dinner: twice-baked potatoes, ham, cabbage salad, and fruit salad.  As long as I was going to the work to make so much food we decided we should invite the Crabtree family over as well.  It was a full house: 5 adults and 2 kids.  Hannah, the 7-year-old came over armed with some new games, but opted to ask if we could try out some of our games instead.  We taught her how to play Spot-It it was a hit.  I wasn’t around to witness it, but I think she soundly beat Heather more than once.

After dinner on Saturday evening I excused myself from the party at our house to go downstairs to Mike’s house for our book club.  One of the teachers at the school started a book club earlier this school year.  There are just 6 of us involved, but it’s kind of nice to have something to look forward to each month.  I’ve never been part of a book club before but I’m enjoying it.  I was a bit torn about going since I didn’t want to miss out of the fun at my own house, but I did go and did enjoy myself. 

An Update on Kaylee
Kaylee is growing so fast.  This Wednesday (7 weeks old) she weighed in at 11 pounds 10 ounces.  She also started following things with her eyes.  She is now paying attention to her mobile toys and at times her flailing arms are lucky enough to actually bat them.  She has been smiling quite a bit and Tim and I are debating on whether or not they are due to “good gas” or if they are “real smiles”.  I don’t know what the technical definition of newborn is, but it hit me this week that this little baby is no longer a newborn.  I can’t believe how fast she is growing.

    This past week was my (Tim) first full week back at work with students.  Consequently, it was Kaitlyn’s first full week at home watching Kaylee.  For me, school was difficult.  The normal problems occurred (things not happening when they were suppose to, extra duty for testing, etc.), however, it was hard because it meant I had to leave the rest of his family at home.  I’ve been spoiled.  I had the opportunity to stay home with Kaitlyn and Kaylee for the first entire month of Kaylee’s life.  I had nothing more important (for the most part) than being with them.  It was hard, because I wanted to stay home still.  Sometimes a job is a real downer.  

     This week at school was the mid-year district writing assessment.  It is a mandatory writing test that all students 6-12 must take.  They are given two days to write a story.  The first day is a first draft day, followed by a the final draft day.  Each day students are given 60-90 minutes to write their stories.  As you might imagine, it’s not very well liked by students.  Our students don’t love to write. For whatever reason, it’s a real challenge for them.  This year, I gave my exam to middle school students.  The students in my class took it pretty well, only a few complainers.  However, students who miss either days have to make it up the following days.  So, in reality, our two day assessment was really four days.  During the makeup days my room was used for students who completed their writing assessment in the time allotted.  This meant that I had some students for two periods straight, and some students not at all.  It was stressful trying to figure out was to do in class.  I tried to hold class as normal (or at least somewhat normal) and teach with both classes present.  We’re learning about the history of the Hebrews in my Ancient World History class, so we were making foldables with facts about the various Hebrew leaders with construction paper.  This worked for a while, but kids will be kids and their attention span only lasted so long.  Luckily, they all have computers and were ecstatic to have some “free” time to play games.  I was just happy for peace and quite! :)  

     Kaitlyn would like it be publicly known and listed on the internet that she has ran or walked on our treadmill 5 days this past week.  Now that she is at home more, she feels that there is more time for her to do that.  Kaitlyn is also heavily invested in a book called Boys Life, written by Robert McCammon.  It’s essentially about transitioning from boyhood to adulthood.  It’s the book that her book club decided to read.  Kaitlyn says that it’s, “very well written and I love it!”.  

     This week I start up classes for my Spring 2013 semester at Boise State University Masters program.  I am taking two classes that are a little nerdier than last semester.  I’m taking Intro to Network Administration and Managing Technology Integration in Schools.  Both are classes that are in an area that I am not super familiar.  At the end of the semester, however, I will be certified in Network Administration, which will be helpful when I apply for jobs. 

Tim and I have been pretty fortunate recently.  We pretty much both the last entire month off of work.  We were still responsible for our sub plans in December, so we weren't worry free, but we got to spend the first month's of Kaylee's life together at home as a family.  This is my first time being a parent, but I'm pretty sure that doesn't usually happen.

Our constant family time came to an end this week when work started up again.  We had inservice on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday and then the students returned to school on Thursday.  I actually went to work Mon-Wed.  Part of the agreement I made with my school district was that I would work a few days with the long term substitute and with the science committee, but I would have the entire second semester off of teaching.  I think it is a glorious arrangement.  On Monday, Tim and I took Kaylee to the Crabtree's house and Annie babysat her for us.  I totally trust Annie, but I did miss my baby.  So on Tuesday and Wednesday I brought Kaylee to work with me (with prior approval of course).  Luckily the weather warmed up (mid 30s) so I felt okay with taking Kaylee on the 4-wheeler to get to work.  We bundle her up in several layers and but her in the front pack.  There probably aren't many 5-week-olds out there that have been on a 4-wheeler 10 times.  Everyone at work was thrilled to see her and baffled that I hadn't brought her with me on Monday.  She is still sleeping a lot, so it worked out pretty well.  I would put her in her little chair and do what I needed to do until she was hungry.  Since a lot of my job involved listening and speaking in meetings, it was pretty doable even when I was feeding Kaylee.

I must admit, I quite enjoyed working at the beginning of the week without the stress of lesson plans hanging over my head.  I was busy all day long but the stress was gone.  I felt like I was accomplishing things, good things, but there was no hopeless eternity to my workload or gut wrenching feeling that I wouldn't be ready in time.  My primary jobs consisted of tying up lose ends, debriefing my substitute, and participating in discussions with the science committee about second semester content and pacing.  It was tiring to come home and realize the day-to-day house keeping items were not finished, but it wasn't too bad, since I knew I could tend to those starting on Thursday.

Thursday morning Tim got up and went to work without me.  It was kind of weird for both of us.  For the past 6 years we have usually gone to work together.  The only time we haven't worked together was the 2 school years I worked at North Fremont.  Other than that we have always had the same employer.  I think Tim was mostly upset by the thought of having lunch without me.  Maybe when the weathers warmer Kaylee and I can take a walk down to the school and eat with him from time to time.

Friday I stayed home all day and Tim went to work all day.  I kind of feel like that hyper active squirrel on the movie Open Range.  There are so many things in my head and on my to do lists that I want to do now that I'm not working every day and I just didn't know where to begin or what order to attack them in. It was hard to pick a single task and focus.  It was almost overwhelming.  Over time I'll get this thing figured out though.
Friday night we had Heather and Kim over for fajitas and a game of Killer Bunnies.  Tim and I got the red expansion deck for Christmas so we've been kind of anxious to try it out.  I love having game nights.  I think it will forever be my favorite weekend activity.

An update on Kaylee: She is growing so fast!  On Wednesday she was 5 weeks old, so we weighed her as we've done every Wednesday since we've gotten home.  She weighed 10 pounds 14 ounces.  She gained more than a pound in one week.  She is such a sweet baby and we LOVE being her parents.

Kaylee made it to her official due date this week.  Her original due date was scheduled for January 2, 2013, but was born one month earlier on December 5, 2012.  

This week has been pretty sleep-deprived for us.  Kaylee has learned to unlearn her sleeping through the night habit.  She has decided that during the night is the time she wants to be awake and held.  This has led to many late nights and many sleep-ins in the morning.  By the end of the week we started to get her on a better sleeping schedule, which made our lives much nicer.  

We’ve been away from our classrooms for three weeks now.  This past week we both went back and started working on school.  Kaitlyn was busy cleaning up her room and getting it ready for the long-term substitute, and I spent my time catching up on grading and getting material ready for the next semester.  Each day we travelled to school by putting Kaylee in a front pack, all bundled up, and the three of us would ride down to the school together on our little 4-wheeler (our big one needs a little maintenance).  Kaylee went to school five days this week and handled it like a pro.

On News Year’s Eve we invited the assistant principal at the school, Nate Crabtree, and his family over to our house for pizzas.  He’s married with  two kids, 7 and 3.  We weren’t sure what the kids would like to eat or do at our house, so we decided to make “create your own pizzas” to entertain them.  We each made a little pizza and cooked it on our stone, then made a few grown-up pizzas for us.  The kids were really into Kaylee and couldn’t wait for her to wake up from her nap so they could play.  Eventually, Kaylee woke up and Annie, Nate’s wife, couldn’t get enough of holding her.  We finished off the night by playing Jenga and Uno with the kids.  

On New Year’s Day we invited the middle school science teacher, Michael Lee, and his family over for dinner.  Since we already had tons of fixings from the night before, we had pizzas again.  This was just fine, because they love our pizzas.  They have two teenage sons, 17 and 14, so we made tons of dough, expecting the boys to chow down.  They didn’t, so we ended up with enough dough to make three full size pizzas leftover.  Kaitlyn was a good enough sport to make the leftover dough into frozen pizzas for another day.  

Friday, the first teachers started rolling back into town.  Our good friend Heather Jeffers came to visit the three of us at the school as soon as she got back.  We spent an hour or so talking with her about her Christmas vacation then went to the Lee’s for dinner.  Heather tagged along with us and we had a great little party.  The Lee’s really like Kaylee.  They all love to hold her.  It’s actually really fun to see people’s reactions to her.  There’s just something about a new baby!