William and I are going out of town tomorrow and this is what I am taking along...






Being a teacher is so. much. fun.


Actually, it really is except for the whole planning/preparing/paperwork part.


My goal this weekend is to
1: sort parent paperwork and record what I have and don't have on the checklist.
2: label discipline forms
3: make/label privacy folders
4: make place value foldables
5: read through lessons 1-5 of our new phonics program and memorize the first 20 letters' phonograms
6: review this past weeks math and writing papers to see where everyone is
7: make vocab slides for our two stories next week

I'm thinking if I make my to-do list public, I'll have a greater chance of completing it. Let's hope so.

I Survived!

Well, I survived day one! And overall, I think it went pretty well! No metldowns from any students (or myself, ha!) and no major behavior problems. Today was kind of a "free pass" in the behavior department, but little do they know that tomorrow is when I'm going to crack down and really start enforcing the rules. I've never been much of a disciplinarian, and honestly that's been the most nerve wracking part for me as a teacher, but I know strict structure is the only way we will all survive thrive. Today was a lot of coloring and storying reading, and tomorrow will be some of that mixed with some super fun powerpoints over rules and procedures! Woohoo! I did move some of the "chatty students" desks around this afternoon so that's a start! They are all little sweeties though and so adorable!

P.S. I'm exhausted and my feet hurt! I better have burned about a million calories today because I never stopped moving!

Meet The Teacher

Meet The Teacher was tonight and went pretty well I think! 15 of my 19 students showed up and most remembered to sign in and bring their supplies, haha. A few found out I was a first year teacher (which I did not want to happen) and asked me about it, but I just tried to be really confident and positive about it and they seemed to respond well. We'll see as the year progresses I guess. I think I'm more nervous about the parents than the students! All the kids were super sweet, and I'm really excited about Wednesday! Many of them are ADD/ADHD so I have a feeling I'm going to have a very high energy class, but at least they will keep me on my toes! I think I'm going to buy a soothing cd tomorrow to play in the morning when they come in....I hear it sometimes help bring the craziness down a notch.

I can't believe this is for real! Yikes!

Welcome to 2C!

Here she is! I'm quite proud of my little classroom, and hopefully all my little kiddies will enjoy it!

The bulletin board in the hallway...I made the owl and the tree limb and put their names on the leaves so they know which room they are in.

The sign-in table for meet the teacher night and my "Mrs. Lofland" sign my mom got me. I love it!

I've already shown the outside of my classroom door, but here's the inside that my SIL decorated for me!

This is still my favorite part of the room! I added a second bookshelf and my SIL made the sun. It is so cute!

My desk area. We are the Cougars and I'm going to put our school schedule, lunch menu, etc. on the BB. I'm also going to get some more Baylor decor next weekend for the walls. Maybe a pendant or something, idk.

Word Wall and small group area.

Dinosaur computers! Thankfully the ones in the computer lab are much better!

Centers station. I still need to make cards for all the centers and put them in the pocket chart.

Random wall space you don't know what to do with? String lights!

Our first Science unit is weather! And the blank pocket chart will be our class schedule as soon as it gets finalized.

The next four pictures are a 360 degree view of the room....there's just too many things to post close-ups of them all! Other things I have on my walls are my calendar and classroom jobs bulletin board, my "hoot, hoot, Hooray" bulletin board, an "all about me" section for the kids, "mailboxes" for students' homework, and posters, posters, and more posters!

Now I can get back to decorating our house! I've been working on our moving announcements today and we bought some chalkboard and magnetic paint to jazz up a boring wall!

strike.

I'm on strike tonight and have vowed not to do anything school related. For my own sanity. I took a bath instead and bought a new book. Beach House by Jane Green. It's my last attempt to hang on to summer. Meet The Teacher night is in 3 days! My room is finally (almost) finished. I will post pictures tomorrow (or Sunday) after Will and I go up to the school for one last afternoon of labeling and organizing. I feel pretty good right now. Probably because I had a mini-meltdown last night (thank you, stress), but I got it all out of my system and am starting to replace the feeling of nausea with excitement. Woohoo!

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday we had staff development and Wednesday was our "faculty bonding" day. We all kind of thought it would be a day of group activities requiring us to work together and problem solve either at the school or around town. HA. We did problem solve and work together....at a ropes course! It was an interesting day. I did zipline, and I climbed up a 40 ft. telephone pole, jumped from the telephone pole, and caught a metal ring mid-jump. I was very proud of myself!

I hope blogging about school doesn't contradict my statement about not doing anything school related tonight. Oh well, I had to get that memory down. It was worth it. Sherpa!

Let There Be Light (Fixtures)

We finally got some of our light fixtures installed this past weekend! It definitely feels more homey now that some of the standard light fixtures have been replaced, but it still has a ways to go. We went to Ikea for the THIRD weekend in a row and they did not have the fixture I want for the kitchen again! (We don't drive 45 minutes each way just because; every time we go the employees assure us it will be in by the next weekend, but that has yet to happen.) I think we'll just order it online. Anyways, in a few weeks my mom suggested my family come out for the weekend to help with some major redo's which would be nice! I'm in over my head right now with school stuff to think much about the house to be honest!

We got a fan for our bedroom - it didn't come with one, how weird is that??! Oh well, I probably would have wanted to replace it anyway so I guess it doesn't matter. I like how far it hangs down, I can actually almost reach the cords!

The new dining room fixture. I LOVE the capiz shells, they look really good with the china cabinet and I think the stripes will complete the "look," but I'm haven't completely fallen in the love with the fixture as a whole. I really hate the metal rings around the top that the shells hang from. They are really thin and they look kind of cheap, which I hate to say because it wasn't cheap and Will bought it for me as a housewarming gift. I really wanted it at the time, but I didn't know the top would look like that.....boo....

And last but not least...Will's office! We got an itch to paint Friday night so we went up to Lowe's and picked out a color and went to town! It didn't take long at all since we were only doing one accent wall, and it totally transformed the room! The paint color is Valspar's Kyoto Green. And the light fixture is fun. It's a very Will room.

P.S. My classroom is almost ready for it's debut! This week is super busy because of the all day staff developments we have, but my goal is to have it complete by Friday so I can relax the weekend before school starts. I cannot believe a week from today will be the eve of the first day of school! Yikes!! But don't get too excited, it's not a super fantastic room or anything, I just hope the kids like it. Some teachers who had more time went ALL out and their rooms make my room look pitiful. Luckily, they're in a different hall :)

Idiot.

The person that did this...is. an. idiot.

And not just because they sped through a Stop sign and ran into my poor SIL's car about 100 feet from our house last night. But because they sped through a Stop sign and ran into my poor SIL's car about 100 feet from our house last night AND SPED AWAY!!! Even after she managed to crawl out from her passenger side, attempt to chase them down, and stood in the middle of the street to make them stop! They still chose to turn around and literally almost ran her over trying to get away!! After he or she (aka Idiot) took off, J ran back to our house and Will called the police while I grabbed my camera and ran back to her car with her. About 5 neighbors heard it happen and came out, and the police came as well. J managed to get the first 3 digits of their license plate and she had a good description of the car. Not to mention the extensive damage the front end of their car now has and the headlight that is missing. Unfortunately for the driver, they chose the wrong person to hit and run. Will's dad is a lawyer and was the County Judge for 10 years, and has some pretty good connections in town. I think it's safe to say this person is going to be in a lot of trouble.

This all happened around 10pm last night, and around 11:30 when all the adrenaline began to fade, J started noticing her neck and back were really sore and she started getting blurred vision. Off to the Emergency Room for us. Two hours and one prescription of Vicatin later, we left. A tow truck came and got her car, and basically said it was a total loss.

J was so brave throughout the whole thing...I could not even imagine going through all that and still crawling out of the car and chasing the driver down! It was very Jennifer though, she doesn't take much lightly, ha.

Like I said, IDIOT.

How was your weekend? :)

Casa Lofland!

Here is somewhat of an update on Casa Lofland....we have only made some minor improvements since moving in - we just haven't had time! I have been in my classroom or in in-service everyday this week and part of last week, and Will's commute is a bit longer now so we are just beat when we come home at night! We are purposefully scheduling a "nothing" weekend this weekend so we can try and get a few house projects completed. We're having an electrician come this weekend to install two light fixtures and a ceiling fan in our room, and I'm going to try and talk Will into helping me paint a few things. Slow and steady wins the race, right??!

This is Will's Ikea-clad office. I actually let him pick everything out, and I think he did good! It's not really my taste, but it definitely suits him. We need to get him a desk chair, he wants to paint the back wall an olivey green (I'm thinking it should be a little brighter...we'll see who wins :) ), and then we just need to get him flat panel TV and it will be done(ish)! That Ikea light fixture on the chair is going up this weekend.

I filled up my apothecary jars, ha! It didn't take much effort, but it's something! They make me smile :)

We finally got (most) of our bed in!! It is suppossed to be a canpoy bed, but of course the side railings were conveniently missing from the box. For now it's a four poster bed, and its better than nothing!

AND......

My classroom is NO WHERE near finished, but here's a sneak peak!

My door so far. My mom ordered me a sign from Etsy to hang that says "Mrs. Lofland" and I think it's going to be so cute!

I ♥ Etsy.

My FAVORITE part of my room - the reading corner! It's the only part that's really complete, although imagine this rug as well, I got it tonight at Walmart.

I'm going back up to school all day tomorrow to hopefully finish my room! I'm ready for it to be done!

Aussieland!

My sister-in-law Jennifer got back yesterday from her month long study abroad trip to Australia! We went over to the in-laws tonight for a belated birthday dinner and to see some of her pictures - she took over 800! Australia looks beautiful and she got some really great pics - here are a few!

A baby Wallaroo! (Wallabe/Kangaroo)

Windmill farm

Giant tree in the rainforest with paper bark. She spent the month living in a cabin on stilts in the middle of a rainforest doing field studies work on water, bats, bugs, etc. She's an environmental studies major.

J went snorkeling along the Great Barrier Reef!

A Cassowary - a highly endangered bird. I think he totally looks like Kevin from UP!

A huge Croc!

Basically, she had the best time ever, and it was a really amazing adventure for her!

random transition.....

Anyone else getting up in the middle of the night to watch the meteor shower?? We totally are! Time for bed!

I feel ya.

I was at my classroom for eight hours yesterday and it is still not finished!! (It does look pretty darn cute though, I must say.) I had my first day of New Teacher Orientation today for six hours, and I have two more days to go. It's only Tuesday and I am exhausted!! I guess this is what being an adult is all about, ha!

Graduation Day!

By some miracle Rowdy graduated from Beginner Training Class today! He endured 8 long weeks of classes and passed with somewhat flying colors! He can successfully sit and lay down, and he can "stay" for multiple seconds but not very well at a distance (he has attachment anxiety issues). His "trick" he learned is to spin around multiple times which I hope to put a little clip up of as soon as I find my camera cord. He can also do a pretty decent "army crawl" and "puppy push up." Our trainer was awesome, and I definitely recommend Petsmart for dog training classes!

Here are some pictures from Rowdy's big day...and I did not bring the grad hat, Lynette our trainer has it and puts it on all the dogs, I swear!

Showing off his mad skills!

And for all the haters...a little disclaimer: Rowdy is NOT wearing a muzzle or any form of one...the thing around his nose and mouth is called a Gentle Leader and our trainer actually picked it out for us. It helps keep dogs from pulling when you walk them, but he can still open his mouth to eat, drink, bark, pant, etc. It has made a world of difference for us; I can actually walk Rowdy instead of him walking me!

We're so proud of our big boy!

We also got a magnet that says "Our dog has class." Oh yeah.

Show Us Your Life!

My Wedding Reception!

(via Kelly's Korner)

The Bride and Groom sweetheart table...we sat here one time the entire night for about 20 seconds!

W and L wreaths hung on the doors that led out to the front porch.

First dance! Michael Buble's Everything

The main reception room...there were also tables on the front porch (we went out there a few times), a grandparent's room (never made it there), a side porch area (never made it there), and a food room (made it there once!)

Our beautiful cake!

Cheers!

They got the party started!

Our music was amazing! To add a bit of Baylor tradition, we had a guy nicknamed "Piano Man" play at our wedding - he plays at a local bar in Waco every Thursday night and he's SO entertaining! We still get compliments about him!

Tossing the bouquet!

I made Will promise to dance with me that night and he actually followed through!

A little bit louder now!

last dance :)

favors - green and orange drizzled chocolates from Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory - YUM!

We had "wedding wands" because we couldn't have sparklers, haha. They had our names and wedding date on them.

I would love to post honeymoon pictures, but they are on a different computer and I just don't feel like digging for it! But it was beautiful - we went to PSV - a private island in the Carribean!