Moving

I HATE MOVING! I think anyone that knows me knows the truth of this statement.  I think I would live in a place I hated just to avoid the chaos and pain of packing, trying to get people to help me, and getting settled into a new place.  With that said, I am moving into a new, bigger place since Cara and Tony are moving back to Spokane and back in with us.  We found a great house on top of the South Hill that will be a great location for me to commute to work (only 15 minutes on a bad day)! It has 5 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, and a giant backyard for the dogs.  I can't wait.

Sadly (maybe), the timing couldn't be worse.  I leave for a 20 day trip on Monday, and we are set to move on the 14th.  So, I will miss all of that, and I'll have a boxed up room to come home to upon my return with one week to pull it together before I head to camp for a week and journalism camp for another week.  CRAZY!  But don't you worry, I've contributed to the cause.  I think I have 3-4 students lined up to help (who I'm paying), and my trainer Silka volunteered her time (maybe she's the crazy one actually).

So, as of today, I am officially packed up and ready to go.  My room is packed, my bags for my trip are packed, my boxes are labeled.  I even got my address changed at my bank, got a new bed set for delivery, and got a phone upgrade (went with the Droid 4 instead of the iPhone-hopefully, not a mistake).  Life is good!

London or bust

Today I booked two tickets for Katie and I with them:

So that we could travel with mom for Christmas here:

Enough. Said.

10 days and counting

It always seems funny to me how at Christmas Break, it seems like the end of the school year is never going to get here, and then it feels like you blink, and it's time to close up the classroom for three-ish months.

My year has been crazy, challenging, and at times I wanted to walk out of my classroom and just keep going.  And yet, I have loved this year and my students.  Even 4th period.  But don't tell them that.  In 10 more days, I will never again teach most of my sophomores (except for the brave ones-or the unlucky ones- who take journalism as upperclassmen).  There's always a small part of me that is overjoyed to have them walk out my door never to return as a student.  BUT, there's also this bigger part of me that is going to miss those young men and women so much it's ridiculous.

We spent two years, 360 days together learning the ins and outs of English, studying Bradbury to Shakespeare, vocabulary to sentence structures, and of course, how to pass their HSPE tests to how to research using something other then Google.  And in the process, they claimed a piece of my heart with their antics and heartbreaks and their abilities to annoy me and everyone else in the classroom.  And I live for those tiny moments when they take me utterly by surprise, when something just clicks or they are suddenly so childlike, it can't help but be endearing, or they just pop by my room in the morning to say hi or to hang out.

In ten days, my sophomores will be juniors and I will miss them...and I might even tell them that as they head out my door.