Kaitlyn's crocheted mukluks
This week was a pretty good one. It was mellow, which is never bad. Tim and I worked as usual Monday through Thursday. Friday we were blessed with teacher inservice. Inservice is still a workday (it’s not a day off for teachers), but it is such a nice change of pace. We still have to be at the school for our regular work hours, but since we don’t have students, we don’t have to spend hours the day before preparing lessons. It’s also nice because it takes less energy to work when you’re not interacting with the students all day. We always have some sort of assignment or meetings dictated by our school or the district. This particular inservice was set aside for grading writing assessments that the students had taken previously. Each essay had to be graded by two teachers and every student in the school (K-12) had participated in some way or another. Tim and I partnered up and graded 20 essays between the two of us. It actually wasn’t as time consuming or as painful as we were imagined. (Although, Tim and I were the slowest pair of graders . . . I like to think that was because we were doing the most thorough job J) The really nice thing about inservice, is that if you finish the school or district planned activities early, you get to spend the rest of the day lesson planning. I love having the opportunity to lesson plan between 8:00 am and 4:00 pm on a weekday. That means I don’t have to spend as much time lesson planning in the early morning, evening, or on the weekend.
Ivory Crochet Hooks
Last week, I ran out of yarn for the current project I have been working on. Instead of just waiting to get more ordered in, I decided to make Tim some slippers. However, when I was searching for a pattern on the internet I came across a pattern for crocheted mukluks. I was pretty excited, since I’ve been trying to find someone to make me mukluks for months. I know crocheted mukluks are nothing like real, fur mukluks, but it would be a fun project anyway. I thought it appropriate to use my ivory crochet hook to make a native item like mukluks. (Thank you Tim) As requested by Cynthia, I have included a picture of those crochet hooks. The mukluks were pretty easy and quick to make. I don’t think they have a lot of functionality, but I can at least wear them around the house. If I really wanted to, I could put leather on the bottom, but I didn’t really feel like taking it that far.
I have now regularly exercised for 3 whole weeks. Thank goodness for Gala for asking me to be her workout partner. I don’t think I have the motivation to actually workout without a little bit of peer pressure. It has been fun. We work out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday after school, and I usually try to grab whoever else is in the hallway and convince them to come join us. We now have 2 or 3 other people who show up each time. If anyone is interested in working out “together” long distance, we are doing Jillian Michael’s 30-day shred. It really isn’t that bad and it only takes 25 minutes of your day. Just be prepared to be tired and sweaty at the end of the 25 minutes.
This weekend was pretty low key (other than, I almost killed Tim . . . read on), but very nice. Friday evening, Tim and I stayed home. I tried a new recipe from the Lee Family Recipe Book: Mexican casserole. I was bracing myself for Tim not to like it and was pleasantly surprised that he did really like it. (I love it when he loves easy meals.) Saturday, we both worked for several hours. I got my lesson plans done for next week. I got my lesson plans done for next week!! I GOT MY LESSON PLANS DONE FOR NEXT WEEK!!!! Okay, so I may be a little excited about that. It has been my goal for two years to get planned for the week (instead of just the next day) and it finally happened. This makes the future week seem so doable and I am greatly looking forward to at least one week of a more balanced lifestyle.
I have now regularly exercised for 3 whole weeks. Thank goodness for Gala for asking me to be her workout partner. I don’t think I have the motivation to actually workout without a little bit of peer pressure. It has been fun. We work out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday after school, and I usually try to grab whoever else is in the hallway and convince them to come join us. We now have 2 or 3 other people who show up each time. If anyone is interested in working out “together” long distance, we are doing Jillian Michael’s 30-day shred. It really isn’t that bad and it only takes 25 minutes of your day. Just be prepared to be tired and sweaty at the end of the 25 minutes.
This weekend was pretty low key (other than, I almost killed Tim . . . read on), but very nice. Friday evening, Tim and I stayed home. I tried a new recipe from the Lee Family Recipe Book: Mexican casserole. I was bracing myself for Tim not to like it and was pleasantly surprised that he did really like it. (I love it when he loves easy meals.) Saturday, we both worked for several hours. I got my lesson plans done for next week. I got my lesson plans done for next week!! I GOT MY LESSON PLANS DONE FOR NEXT WEEK!!!! Okay, so I may be a little excited about that. It has been my goal for two years to get planned for the week (instead of just the next day) and it finally happened. This makes the future week seem so doable and I am greatly looking forward to at least one week of a more balanced lifestyle.
Our broken blender lid
Okay, so about almost killing Tim . . . that might be an exaggeration. I few years ago, I dropped a glass jar of pickles in our kitchen. Tim and I didn’t want the whole jar of pickles to go to waste, so we salvaged what we could and found a different, plastic jar to put the pickles in. Weeks later, I made us tuna fish sandwiches for lunch, complete with cheese and pickles. As Tim bit into this delicious sandwich, there was a hard crunch. Something wasn’t right. From his mouth, he pulled a shard of glass. We were both horrified. If he had accidently eaten that it could have caused a lot of damage. Needless to say, we threw out the rest of the pickles to avoid any other undetected glass bits. What does this story have to do with this weekend? Not much, except that this memory was brought to me when I was making smoothies. Tim had this great idea that we should make strawberry smoothies. We were so happy that we actually had ingredients to make a good strawberry smoothie and I personally had been looking forward to it for days. Tim was in the other room while I was blending everything up. Unfortunately, as I was blending, the center plastic piece of the blender lid fell into the blender. Before I could shut the blender off, I heard the crunch between it and the blades. I had a sick feeling, first, because I was worried I had ruined, not only the blender lid, but the blender motor, and two, I really, really wanted to eat that smoothie. I decided to strain through the smoothie and find the plastic piece to the lid. If I found the piece, than we would know that the smoothie was safe to eat. Luckily, I found the piece. Unluckily, it was only about two-thirds of the piece. Memories of the glass-strewn tuna sandwich flooded my mind, but I wanted to eat the smoothie so badly. I finally confessed to Tim what had happened and asked him what we should do. We both agreed that shards of plastic are not nearly has deadly as shards of glass and it was worth the risk. So we carefully ate our smoothies, thinking every seed was a piece of plastic. Unfortunately for Tim, he had more pieces of plastic than seeds in his cup, and he gave up before finishing. Our smoothies just weren’t nearly as satisfying with the plastic mixed in. My advice: never make smoothies with plastic or glass.
P.S. It’s 15 degrees above 0 today! It hasn’t been that warm since before Christmas.
P.S. It’s 15 degrees above 0 today! It hasn’t been that warm since before Christmas.
