Potpie is one of the best foods EVER. It has stew inside, so it’s good like stew. But it’s stew wrapped in *bread*. Meat, potatoes, and bread, all in one beautiful package. Plus the stew has veggies in it (meat flavored veggies — the best kind!) so you can almost feel virtuous about eating potpie 🙂
Mom visited this weekend, so I made this potpie with leftover chicken stew. It was the first chicken stew I’d ever made, so I was excited to show it off. Mom said it was pretty good too 🙂
Haley is having a good year in soccer! Her coach is great. Lots of positive reinforcement, as well as corrections. Having listened to some of the other coaches screaming at their teams this year, we’re feeling pretty lucky.
Haley’s ball skills are getting better and better, and she’s learning to steal the ball rather than just let her opponents have the shot. Her team is really starting to pull together on the field, which is neat to watch 🙂
Today my new Prius hit 10,000 miles on the odometer 🙂
Haley was all ready for school 🙂
Her new teacher is Ms. Weir, and so far Haley *loves* her. All the other teachers I’ve talked to have good things to say about her, so it’s shaping up to be a great school year 🙂
I promised Haley that if she got her room clean,we would go to the river. Yay bribery — she got it clean! We went with some friends. Here are Haley, Sierra, Julie, and Sierra’s little sister. The girls spent the day catching crawdads and frogs.
Unfortunately, there were also snakes at the river. Huge vicious snakes! They must have been this big:
Although I promised a river trip, I am anti sun. It was too hot to wear my sweatshirt, so I hid as much of myself as possible under light towels for most of the time 🙂
Finally we got to — er — had to leave for soccer practice. While the girls practiced, Cynthia and I walked a couple of blocks to the pier. It’s so beautiful here!
The pier is a great place to walk. On nice days there’s usually at least one amateur crab pot dangling off the end of the pier.
The view is great. This part of the sea wall is pretty neat looking 🙂
Cynthia took my photo for me — proof I didn’t just download these photos from a National Geographic or something 🙂
Haley was a trooper last night — we were at my classroom till 7:30 last night. But I’m done getting ready for the first day — we won’t have to go back this weekend to finish up! I have all my photocopies done and organized. (We have these crazy packets to hand out — about 8 pages that parents need to sign and return — permission slips, picture forms, and more!)
I got a deck of cards and took out one of each rank. I taped one card down on each desk. The other three of that rank went into a deck — when the kids come in, I’ll hand them a warmup quiz and they’ll draw a card, and they’ll go sit at the table with the matching rank 🙂 It’s a good way to randomly divvy them up and seat them three to a table.
Anyhow, my classroom is looking pretty good! I even have, get this, POSTERS on my walls! I know, crazy, huh? I guess it is about on schedule though — it generally takes me a few years to decorate *grin*
Here’s a video I made of my classroom 🙂
Today began with a 4 hour staff meeting. Blah. Unfortunately, most of what was covered really needed to be discussed, so I can’t even complain that much. Then I had a lunch meeting with Cindy M. Then I had a 45 minute AVID meeting, and then a partnership meeting. Yup… A whole day of meetings. But… the meetings were mostly productive. For example, during our lunch meeting Cindy & I went to the library and covered our new class sets of books with snazzy new covers and then hauled them back to our classrooms. Jeff gave me one of his old computers, so now my classroom has a Strawberry iMac as a student computer 🙂 He might even end up giving me another, so then I’d have two student computers 🙂
Haley and I joined the gym today. We’re going to try working out in the morning before school. We’ll see how that works out… But Haley really enjoys running, so I thought that the treadmill would be great for her. We have so much miserable weather (for weeks at a time!) that we can’t count on outdoor exercise.
On the way home we went grocery shopping, and we bought this funny thing that looked like a giant string bean. It turns out that it’s a fava bean. Tonight’s dinner was fish sticks, guacamole and chips, and a few raw fava beans each. They taste a lot like giant peas 🙂
So today was my first official day back at school. Of course, most of the teachers came back last week to start putting things back together, but now we’re getting paid for it! *grin* We had the big welcome back thing in the auditorium, where every teacher in the entire district crams in. It was hot. I admit, I snuck out to drop Haley off at the babysitter’s, and then came back and kinda drifted in and out around the back door. I did do the welcome for the new employees, but other than that…
Then there was a big meeting for all the math teachers, on how to use our new textbooks. Unfortunately, it was focused mainly on the technology, directed by a sales lady who wasn’t that strong in technology. I had played around with the software some on Friday, so I’d pretty much picked up the stuff she spent 3 hours covering. *sigh* I still think we picked the wrong company, but oh well. Suck it up and move on already, right?
Then I picked up Haley and we changed clothes and played tennis with Cynthia and Julie. A friend of Cynthia’s, Teira, joined us with her daughter, Sierra. So we had three girls with tennis rackets. Haley suddenly got a lot more motivated to play (all the sudden it was cool!) She did a pretty good job swiping at the ball 🙂
Then we went home and showered, and then drove out to Cindy M’s house so she and I could work on math teacher stuff. Dang. Let me say that again: DANG. Her house is beautiful. It’s about 10 miles inland, on the river. She helped design it, and WOW. We were very impressed. We had dinner and then worked on math stuff. Did you know that pizza hut makes chicken parmesan??? I sure didn’t. It was good, too! Garlicy (sorry Mom) but I *like* garlic! Cindy made a salad with lots of avocado, which made a great pairing.
I brought a bottle of wine: 2006 Coppola Rosso. Cindy and I both liked it quite a lot. I’m not good at tasting notes, but I found some online. Winemaker notes: “Rosso 2006 has smooth, rich layers of sweet dark fruits, cloves, a touch of vanilla and mildly toasted oak. Its mild tannins make it incredibly food-friendly, so it’s easy to pair with anything from braised short ribs to grilled salmon or a sausage and pepperoni pizza.” Yum.
Haley went to a slumber party last night. How did I spend my exciting night of freedom? Err, well… I went to work and fiddled around with my classroom till 11. Um, exciting. No hope for me, I’m afraid 🙂
I french braided Haley’s hair before the party. I’ve only french braided a few times, and Haley’s hair is *really* tangly, so this was a 20 minute, sobbing ordeal. But it looked pretty good afterwards. Moreover, when I picked her up today, after lying on it at least part of the night (although apparently not sleeping) and going to the river and swimming, it *still* looks pretty good!!! Yay me, and yay french braids!
Of course, Haley crashed on the way home. She had a headache, she was going to puke, etc. She got home and headed for the bathroom, to hang out by the toilet. No, she didn’t puke. She fell asleep on the bathroom floor, and didn’t wake up for more than an hour. Finally I went in and told her that she could either get up and have dinner, or she could get up and go to bed.
Too bad; tonight’s dinner was potpie 🙂
We’re really happy with Haley’s soccer team this year. Not only is her friend, Julie, on the team, but the coach, John Murphy, is awesome. He’s a teacher, so he’s got the management/rapport thing down 🙂 The team has 18 kids, so each kid gets to play half a game — plenty of subs in case of sickness or whatever 🙂 Here are the kids who managed to show up on time for the jamboree (opening ceremony) today:
Haley got to throw the ball in at least 3 times this game — she’s good at throwing it far and to her teammates. Her coach is standing next to her 🙂
She did a really good job of running hard and staying on the ball 🙂
Ok, yes, they did win. 3 to 0 🙂
