But, then tonight Michael and I had a horrible fight. I really lost it. I used words that I try really hard not to use when fighting, especially when the kids are around. I hate the way the fight happened. I don't think I've been that angry in a very long time. I have never used language like that in a fight with him before. I think we have the air cleared now. I hope so.
After work I rushed over to the district office. We're adopting a new math series next year. The one we have most teachers hate, including me. It's just awful. Anyway, we are allowed to go and preview four math series and vote on the one we want. I'm not sure how much of a say we actually get, but when we did this for our reading series it turned out pretty good. The four series they had for us to preview were McGraw-Hill Math Connects, Houghton-Mifflin Math (this is the company we bought our reading series from), Everyday Math, and the newer version of Investigations (we are currently using the original version of this).
Math Connects looked kinda of cool and this is what I put down for my second choice. It had a lot of support material, technology components and decent assessment pieces. It is something I think I could live with. I put it down as my second choice.
I had my hopes up actually about the newer version of Investigations because I'd heard it's greatly improved. Well, it's improved, but it's still not what I would call a good series. It got my lowest score. From what I heard from the people who were running the show yesterday, it's not gotten any good votes from teachers yet.
Houghton-Mifflin I LOVE the way it looks. It has the same teaching format as our reading series and that REALLY works. I am very much sold on this company and their products. They make it really easy for the teacher, they give you TONS of support materials, their technology components are great, their assessment pieces are complete and they align with state and federal grade level expectations. This got my highest score. I really hope this is what we end up with.
Then, the last one was Everyday Math. Michaela's school uses this so I was curious to look at it. It looks a lot like Investigations, but seems more complete. However, I was not really impressed with the assessment pieces and it really has no technology component. I was a little disappointed because I expected more from it. It was ranked #3 with me.
After that I was really pushing it to get to Michaela's school on time to pick her and Anikca up from choir rehearsal. But, I managed to even have time to have a short conversation with the principal at her school. I like talking to her.
After we dropped Anikca off at home we went and got Caleb. I needed to go get something for a shower gift for a co-worker and needed to get a family movie that I promised to donate to Caleb's school so we went to Walgreen's. When we were finished there it was already 5:30 so we went through the drive through at Taco Bell.
After supper, I went downstairs to make a mini photo album to include in my shower gift. I love doing this. I watched some of Heroes online until it was time for Survivor to come on. Then, all four of us watched Survivor together. I love it that the kids are old enough to enjoy that with us.
When they went to bed, Michael decided to do some work for work. So, I went to the bedroom to watch LOST and talk online with my friend in MN. It's so much fun to be online with her when LOST is on. We get to be shocked and awed and drool over Sayid and Desmond together.
Then, the kids helped Michael and I sort cookies until they had to go to bed. We managed to get through all the orders I had to bring to work today before they went to bed. It was nice all four of us working together. Michael and I finished up the rest of the orders after the kids went to bed.
Today I rushed around and delivered most of the cookies to my co-workers at school. I have a lot of people who did not order either because they didn't know I had the order form or because they were not around and I just did not get to ask them order some now. I think next year I'm just going to make up a bunch of single form orders and leave them in the teacher's lounges with a note saying to fill out what they want and leave it in my mailbox. That way I may be able to get everyone.
We had frozen pizza for supper tonight because I was just too lazy to fix something else. No one seemed to complain, though. Michael and the kids went over to MIL and FIL's house to give them their cookies and they were gone until after 8:00 pm. I sat and watched Wife Swap. I'm not proud, but hey, we're all entitled to our "guilty pleasures." Although, don't you have to at least feel a little guilt for it to actually be a guilty pleasure?
Tonight will be mainly getting all those Girl Scout cookies sorted and into bags for each person who bought cookies. I really hate this part of being a mom of a Girl Scout. Honestly, I'm not even looking forward to eating any of them this year. Every year "Michaela" ends up selling around 250 boxes of cookies. Do you have any idea what 250 boxes of cookies looks like sitting in a family room??? She ended up being top seller in her troupe this year. I don't think that means anything except she gets to say, "I am top seller."
Michael made "tags" that lists all the cookies each person bought and what they owe so we can staple them to the bag for each person. We did this last year and it just made things so easy. I'm lucky that my husband does things like that to be involved, too. It makes life easier for me. And, the kids get to develop a great relationship with him.
One of us needs to go do grocery shopping tonight, too. I wonder if I can talk him into taking two turns since I did. I might tell him that he has a choice. He can either put the cookies into bags or go grocery shopping. We'll see what happens. Right now, really, all I can think about is bedtime.
That’s pretty much it for today. Work, tutoring, home to fix supper, gymnastics (pick up cookies while Michaela is at gymnastics), pick up Michaela, home, kids to bed, run to store for milk, ready for bed.
But, daily routine is not what I wanted to blog about tonight anyway. I’m in a funk right now. I hate feeling like this. Everything is irritating me. Things that should not be irritating me are and it just drives me nuts. It’s like being stuck in someone else’s skin. Yes, it is about PMS time, but it’s not just that. That actually has been MUCH better since last August.
It’s this time of year. I am a person who generally loves all four seasons. I feel amazingly blessed that I was born in a place that gets all four seasons. I love the heat and freedom of summer. I love the bright colors and brisk temperatures of fall. I love snow and bundling up next to a fire in winter. I love the freshness and newness of spring.
However, I do suffer from seasonal depression and I hate it. It’s basically caused by limited sunlight. It doesn’t help that there are no windows in my classroom, either. Fluorescent lighting is not a good substitute for natural sunlight.
Add to that, this part of the school year is just stressful. On one hand, it just feels so long. Third quarter just always seems to feel a lot longer than the other three quarters. But, on the other hand it’s going too fast and I always start to panic that I’m not going to get my students through everything I need to get them through.
Anyway, it just makes me want to either hide from everyone and hurt someone. I can’t stand feeling this way. I haven’t even really been talking to my friends lately because I don’t know how to say things without my irritation and nastiness showing. I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings or be unduly mean. If I had a cabin somewhere in a secluded forest, I’d go there and just hide under the covers by myself for a while. Maybe a punching bag would help.
We went to church and the sermon was actually pretty good today. I enjoyed church this morning. The lady who lost her husband was there and she thanked me for the sympathy card. She said it was beautiful and asked if I make cards a lot. I’m glad she liked it. That made me feel good to know it meant a lot to her.
After church a big group of us went to O’Charley’s together. There were four families that all went together. There were 17 of us. This included two toddlers, three grade school kids, and four teenagers. I love it when we go out to eat with this group of people. They are just fun to be around.
Then, we went home and changed clothes. I took Michaela over to play with Lauren for the afternoon. I finally remembered to take the pictures I had for Stacey with me. I also left Melissa’s pictures there, too forgetting that I would see her later on.
Back at home, I finished up laundry and worked on scrapbooking some more. I also watched some more of the television show I started on Netflix yesterday. It’s Heroes. I can’t believe I’ve given into that. I’m not into super hero stuff at all. But, my mom has been talking about it and I thought I’d try it.
It’s better than I thought it would be and of course now that I’ve started watching it I have to see what happens. I’ve watched about 12 episodes so far of the first season. I’m glad they have all the episodes from both seasons on Netflix. The only problem is that now I’ll get into it and once I get caught up I’ll have to wait for each new episode. But, I’m not going to worry about watching it when it’s on. I’ll just watch it on Neflix. I love technology. Well, most of the time anyway.
We went back to church for supper tonight. They were having a chili cook off fundraiser for the high school kids. They use the money from these fund raisers to take kids to CIY camp in the summer time. It was fun. We got to see all the people that we like at church plus some extras. Most of the chili was really good.
When we came back home, I played Wii with the kids some and they went to bed. So, I went downstairs to clean up my scrapbooking mess. If it doesn’t get cleaned up regularly, then I can’t find anything. While I was doing that I watched some more Heroes.
Things I accomplished today:
· Did three loads of laundry
· Paid bills and updated bank book
· Shopped for necessities at Wal-mart
· Made a great supper of roast beef, mashed potatoes, peas, raw carrots and applesauce
Fun stuff I did today:
· Completed two scrap book pages
· Played Wii with my kids
· Watched a movie on Netflix
· Began watching a television show I’ve never seen on Netflix
Ok, so I'm someone who usually likes winter, but seriously, it's the end of February and I'm ready for it to be over. The kids are driving me nuts because it's too cold for me to let them go outside. I'm tired of wearing coats. And, I'm really tired of cold wind. Yes, the wind has bothered me more than anything this winter. I guess I've realized there is a type of weather I don't like. I don't like wind, especially cold wind.
Anyway, I managed to get laundry started today. I also cleaned and mopped the kitchen. And, I took some stain remover to the kitchen chairs. We have very light beige fabric on our kitchen chairs. Yes, I know, not ideal when you have kids. Anyway, they all needed some stain removal and I really worked hard on that today. They don't look like new, but they do look a whole lot better. Especially considering Caleb had chocolate doughnut ground into his chair.
Tonight, the kids and I played on the Wii. We had two games from Gamefly and they have been playing one, but I wanted to try out the other one, too. They've been playing EA Playground a lot. They seem to really like it, so I tried that one first. It's a cute game and great for kids. It has things like shooting baskets, dodge ball, slot cars (which is a lot of fun), this soccar/volley ball game, etc. You collect marbles and stickers to unlock other games. I think this is one we are putting on our "to buy" list.
We also had a game called Game Party. I played around with it for about 30 minutes. It's going back and we will not be buying it. It's very difficult to manuver things in that game. It has you aim like the games in carnival games does, but then when you throw a dart or toss a ball it doesn't go where you aimed. I could not figure out how to get my character to move right for air hockey either. It was very frustrating. We will not be buying that game.
I went downstairs for a while to go through my latest batch of pictures. There are quite a few that I need to give to other people. I've not given the ones I took at The Boar's Head festival to my SIL and BIL yet. I also put some frm Christmas aside for them. And, I have a couple of a friend from church where she's sitting with the man that recently passed away that I know she wants. I also managed to get one scrapbook page done today.
Well, this morning was fun! NOT! It started sleeting and freezing rain early this morning. As soon as I turned on the news this morning (5:00 a.m.) they were already saying the roads were icy and slippery. By a little after 6:00 a.m. all the districts in my county had called off school, but none of the districts in St. Louis County had called off. I waited as long as I could and then headed to work. Both kids went to daycare.
Not a whole lot going on here the last few days. I'm still tired and cranky. Not quite as bad. I still would love to have a couple days just to myself, but it's just not going to happen. 
