Bring your mother

Yesterday when I got home from school, there was an invitation to a bridesmaids' luncheon sitting on the counter. It was written in typical old lady shaky handwriting and had a lot of gold leaf on it. I read it rather excitedly as the last bridesmaids' luncheon I think I went to was the one before my wedding. My family is Old South. Not hardly. At the bottom was a note that read "bring your mother and a swimsuit." Bring my mother? "Why in the world would I bring my mom?" I wondered. MY MOM? Then I looked at the envelope, saw it was addressed to Maggie and realized that she was the one who was supposed to be bringing her mother.  Unfortunately, we will be in New York that weekend so we will not be in attendance at the bridesmaids' luncheon.  I'm kind of disappointed, partially because it's in a neighborhood with its own private AIRSTRIP.  The houses are probably pretty small in a neighborhood like that, right?

I have had kind of a junky week at school.  I have been in a very crabby mood all week and when I talked to the kids about it today, they were all, "You haven't been in a bad mood!  We haven't noticed!"  Hmph.  Well, I have noticed and I got tired of going home in a bad mood.  So today I decided to change things up.  I am bored with EOG review, I am bored with their vocabulary warmups and while I like the whole class novel we are currently reading, I am tired of reading it three times a day.  I stopped at the Teeter this morning and bought a ton of candy.  The cashier asked me if I was having a party.  Not exactly, I'm just a teacher trying to get through the last 15 days of the school year.  The kids had a puzzle to do for their warmup, which they complained mightily about because, "It's too hard!  We don't get this!  This doesn't make sense!"  But when I explained it, the planets aligned and it all made sense.  I read aloud to the kids every single day before class starts.  Don't ask me why.  I started doing it my first year of teaching and it has become habit.  What I have decided to do for the end of the year is to pick my favorite middle school books and read the first chapter of each one aloud and then if they are interested, they can read it over the summer.  I heard some mumbling and scoffing when I said that but I ignored the haters.  Then we finished our whole class novel, So Far from the Bamboo Grove, which is SO GOOD.  If you have not read it and you are a middle school literature aficionado, you should read it.  Then the kids divided into 2 teams (boys and girls, oddly enough--their choice) and we played Pictionary on the whiteboard with scenes from the novel.  Very fun.  I also asked them review questions from the book and they competed against one another to write the correct answer on the board the fastest.  I think we all had a good time and I came home in a much better mood than the previous days this week.  I bet you really wanted to hear a rundown of my day, huh?

I think Maggie might be growing suddenly.  Some of her clothes are starting not to fit quite right.  A lot of her dresses are much shorter than they were when I bought them.  I make her wear shorts under her dresses anyway since she doesn't really know how to sit like a lady.  According to Maggie, she got put in timeout again today!  She said she scratched Austin but he scratched her too.  Hmm.  Every time I ask her why she got put in time out, she says, "Um.  People."  Okay.  That means nothing to me.  Tonight while she was in the bathtub, she was trying to fill a block with a hole in it full of water using a sieve.  I told her that was a job to be done in hell.

I guess that's all for now.  I am very impressed with my updating this week.  I am not impressed with my picture taking skills because I couldn't find the camera for the longest time and then tonight I discovered it on the desk upstairs.  I'll work on better pictures this weekend.  Here's one from last weekend.