Classroom wishlist

 I am a special education teacher. If you want to support my classroom please check out my Amazon wishlist:

https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/1MGY7L6LDHBA1?ref_=wl_share

Our 14th Day in Pictures

I may not have been good at keeping up with Lucas' baby book.  I may not be great at sending thank you notes.  BUT I am really proud that I have managed to keep "Our Day in Pictures" going for 14 years. 

This is Lucas' last year of middle school.  This is my second year teaching.  I am also in school getting my Masters degree in Special Education.  Curtis is still working for a local glass company.  We still have our cat Squeakie and our dog Jadie.

I proudly present Our 14th Day in Pictures that took place on April 25, 2019.

Our 13th Day in Pictures

Pretty proud of myself for keeping this going for so long.  On April 23, 2018 I took pictures for our 13th day in pictures.  I may not have been good at updating Lucas' baby book, or printing out pictures and filling up photo albums but I have managed to keep this one thing going. 

The above picture pretty much sums up what it is like to live with an almost 8th grader who is almost 13.  Our lives have changed so much this year.  I am officially a teacher.  I love my job as a special education teacher.  My class is a self-contained class for kindergarten students with Autism.  They are mostly nonverbal and we work on giving them ways to communicate.  This year my class has been all boys.  I also switched my major at Armstrong (well now it is Georgia Southern) to Special Education. 

Lucas is still at STEM.  It is such an amazing school that has given him wonderful opportunities like going to New York to study and experiment with DNA.  The stuff he is doing in middle school I don't think I even did in high school, maybe even college.  It is hard to believe that soon he will be in high school.  The days are long but the years are short!

Samantha and Caden are living in Florida with my mother-in-law so it is just our little family of three again. 

Curt is still doing glass work.  He and Lucas have really bonded over their love of sci-fi and super heroes.  We have been married for almost 17 years now.  Wow! The time she has flown by and we have grown up together.  I'm so thankful that I have him by my side as I survive through my first year of teaching.  I can't wait until I am done with school (Dec 2019) so we can spend our money on traveling instead of tuition. 

Jadie and Squeakie are still the best dog and cat that a family could ask for. 

I can't wait to see what the next year has in store for us!

Our 12th Day in Pictures

So much has changed this year.  I am no longer working at the airport.  I am now a substitute teacher and enrolled in Grad school.  If everything keeps falling into place next year I will be a teacher at the school I subbed at today.  This year we have also gone from a family of 3 to a family of 5.  Curt's sister Samantha and her son Caden have been living with us since January.

Here is our 12th day in pictures.

Our 11th Day in Pictures

Lucas is almost done with Elementary school.  We found out he got into the STEM Academy for middle school and he is super excited.  It is going to be weird to leave the place he has been since pre-k.  It's been a good 7 years at Pooler Elementary.  I'm still at the airport but I'm hoping for a career change.  I am studying for the GACE Early childhood certification test.  Hoping that I will get a job as a Pre-K or Kindergarten teacher at the job fair next month.  I may not update this BLOG like I before Lucas started school but I have kept up with this one thing. 

Keeping the tradition going.  Here is our 11th Day in Pictures.

Our 10th Day in Pictures

I love this tradition.  Enjoy our 10th Day in Pictures.

Tybee, Like a Boss

It has been far too long since I have posted here. It's far too easy to just type out a few sentences for a Facebook status update than it is to actually gather my thoughts and sit down and write something. However, sometimes I have these thoughts swirling around in my mind and I have to get them out. Lately if I ignore them long enough they just go away but tonight I felt like I needed to write them out.

I've been thinking a lot lately about how Lucas is almost double digits and our job raising him (at least while he is under our roof) is about half way done, if not more. Time just goes by too fast as cliché as it sounds, it is so very true. Far too fast he will be graduating from high school and one day out on his own.  I'm just trying to enjoy the time we do have now and I am in such awe of the person he is growing into everyday. Friday I woke up and he was sitting at the table already dressed for school and he had his science book out and was writing something. He looked up at me for a second and said, "So I forgot I did have homework after all. Don't worry, I'm almost done. It's about gravity and velocity and things like that. Oh and today is NUT day (No Uniform Today) and I already have a $1 in my pocket. I got it covered." And I just stood there for a moment amazed and wondered who this mature kid was sitting at my kitchen table.

I've been consciously trying to not be attached to devices (at least when Lucas is home) so we can spend quality time together as a family. So when my husband made plans to go deep sea fishing with his Dad and brother today, Lucas and I made beach plans to go to Tybee after church.

The drive to Tybee always brings up so many memories for me. It holds this special place in my heart.  So many firsts have happened there and I've spent time there were so many people I hold near and dear.

It's the first place I felt like a "grown up." My cousin Davia and her family came to visit when I was 15. Davia is one year old and had her license. My parents gave her the car keys and we headed to the beach with my friend Shannon with out any adults. I remember Davia didn't want to go near the water at first because she was used to the Pacific Ocean being cold.

It's the place my Mom took me for my 17th birthday. I was heart broken because the boy I liked came to my birthday party and fell for one of my friends. My Mom and I went to dinner by the Lighthouse, stayed in a hotel, and went for a midnight walk on the beach.

It's where I went after the Junior prom with my best friend Katie before having to go home and then go to the hospital to see my Grandfather who was dying from cancer. It's the place I went with my friend Ashlee the day after senior prom with my hair still up in an updo. We had to fend off seagulls when they tried to steal our sandwiches.

It's the place Curt and I went on our first date.  We had this really bad cup of coffee at the Sugar shack and then walked along the boardwalk. He asked me for permission to kiss me for the first time. It's the place where we went to wish my friend Gretchen Bon voyage before she studied abroad in London.  We had planned to be roommates when she returned. I remember her sending me a picture of Curtis and I on the beach and she told me she knew I would end up emailing her while she was gone telling me plans had changed. She knew more than Curt and I did and we ended up getting married before she came back from London.

It's the first place Lucas ever experienced the beach. He was just 11 months old when I met my friends Candi and Shannon for lunch on Tybee and we took him down to the beach. He instantly loved it. He hated the way grass felt on his skin at the park but he loved the wet sand on his skin. Ever since then the beach has become our thing. He had his PreK graduation there and it's just become a special mother son place.

The two of us venture out there whenever we can. We always try to meet my friend Shannon and her family there when she is in town from Alabama. We still have a blast even if nobody else is free and it just ends up being the two of us.

So back to today.... we practically ran out of church straight to the car. We only made one stop (Chipotle for burritos) and then headed straight to the beach. As soon as we got near Tybee we hit traffic. I was expecting it to be busy because it was a gorgeous day after a pretty bad rainstorm the day before. When we had been sitting in traffic for a while I saw a place we could have turned around and I remember asking him if he was sure he wanted to go to the beach or we could go do something else. He said that he really wanted to go to the beach ( and so did I) So we sat through an hour of traffic. When we got to the beach we spent another hour trying to find a parking place. I was getting a little frustrated, and so was he so he said "if we don't find a parking place after we try one more place, lets just go home and try another day" and I agreed. We tried for another 30 minutes and decided to give up. We headed for home and hit more traffic. This time things were not moving at all. It took us another hour and a half to get home. We basically took a 4 hour scenic route home from church!

At first I was frustrated that we had wasted the whole afternoon in the car but then I thought about it. We might not have made it to the sand and water but we certainly had another memorable trip to the beach. It's not often that we spend four hours together just talking and being together. I'm pretty sure the next time I drive out to Tybee this is going to be another memory that pops up and makes me smile.

I hope I will remember how when he got his burrito he said "whoa, this thing should be on man versus food. This thing is huge! Take a picture so I can show Dad." And after eating on it several times over 4 hours he finally handed it to me to put in the cooler with our drinks. He just had a couple of bites left but he said, "I'm done. The food won THIS time,"

I hope I will remember how he panicked for a moment because he had to pee and we were parked on the highway going nowhere fast on Highway 80. Before I knew what was happening he had used an empty water bottle to alleviate his problem.  He proudly help up the water bottle and asked "where should I put this" while I freaked out and yelled something about the top needing to be on very tightly! And I might have taken a picture of him holding up his bottle and texted it to his uncle and Dad who knew we were stuck in traffic. And when they asked me about the contents of the bottle I might have responded with "well it's NOT water."

I hope I always remember how we talked about the book we are reading at bedtime, TREASURE ISLAND, and how we both want to go to the Pirates House after we finish.

I hope I remember how he kept telling me he had "swag" and kept saying he did things "like a boss" and how I tried not to laugh but couldn't help it.... because he has these hand motions he does when he says "like a boss." And I hope I remember how me laughing made him laugh too when I was worried it might hurt his feelings.

I hope I will remember how we fought over the radio and how I would change the station when any song came on that had a bad word in it or mentioned adult situations. And if I changed it to a country station he would say "Mom!!! Not the Texas music again!"  And if he said something to me I would turn the radio down to here him better and he would instantly say "can you please turn the music back up." So I don't even know if we listened to a whole song the whole four hours because I was constantly changing the station and turning the radio up and down. About 20 minutes from home I was kicking myself for not remembering he had an Adventures of Odyssey CD in the car. We listened to that on the rest of the way home.

It's true what they say that a bad day at the beach is still better than a good day anywhere else.