It Started with a Cold...

So last week I was super sick...like so sick I don't even know why I went to work. I had a cold or something and was coughing/sneezing/blowing my nose/trying to breathe for a week straight. My throat was killing me, my head felt like it was in a vice, and I was in a fog. Basically, I was living off Dayquil, Nyquil, and Advil.

As I'm sure you can imagine, everything about teaching was inconvenient. Kids' voices were grating, standing for 50 minutes each class was more than a small feat, and sneezing at the whiteboard meant an embarrassing walk cupping my nose to get a tissue from my desk. Ughh. Enter solution: a fanny pack!

I had been thinking about getting a fanny pack for a while, even before I was sick. It's so bothersome to have to walk back to my desk every time I need a pen, pencil, tissue, bathroom pass, eraser, sticker, stamp...you name it. I would constantly set my things down, then forget where I had put them. And unfortunately, one student had stolen my pretty whiteboard markers a few weeks before (yes, the ones David got me for Christmas - *tear*) ...So I had to keep those at my desk too, except when in use. But getting sick really sealed the deal. I began to daydream about having all of my essentials right at my fingertips. And then last weekend, I made the dream a reality.

Now, it's a funny thing, fanny pack shopping. Where does one go to actually purchase one? I walked into Target and asked myself that very question. I stood there at the door thinking about what section I should head to first. I decided to go to the accessories department, you know...with purses and all that. No luck. I was under a time constraint, so I had to leave without it. :( The next day, Lee and I went to do a little shopping and I asked if we could go to GoodWill. If any place had fanny packs, it was sure to be a second-hand shop, right? Nope. We left with some Chicken Soup books (for my students) and Dr. Seuss stories (for our future children), but no fanny pack. We went back to Target...surely they had to have them! I called Rachel, who knows just about everything there is to know about shopping for anything, and she suggested the travel section. Of course! Why didn't I think of that?! And there we found it...a beautiful, black fanny pack. (Apparently they're now called hip belts? Like that makes it better?) It looked something like this...

On Monday, I introduced it to each class: "Hey guys, you know how I told you I was thinking of getting a fanny pack? Well... [reach behind my desk to grab and put it on] I GOT ONE!!!" they all sounded like a bunch of dying-hyena-cows...kind of a laughing/moaning sound. I got a lot of comments like "NO, MISS!" and "Miss, you seriously can't wear that!" (They're so concerned with my image.) I think I saw the 5 stages of grief happen right in front of me that week. About halfway through, they were like, "You're still wearing that thing?" Uh DUH. Finally, by Friday, I had convinced one class to bring fanny packs back into style with me. Another class suggested that if I was going to keep it, I should at least "bedazzle" it or call it something cooler than a fanny pack.

Well ok then.

Guess what my project was that weekend... I borrowed my 6 year-old cousin's GeMagic kit and set out to bedazzle... Here is the final product, along with a pic of the contents on any given day. And yes, I've been wearing it ever since.


I have since been told that "swagg" should have 2 g's but oh well. It's my own type of swag. I like being the corny teacher, and I think the fanny pack may just be "my" thing for the rest of my teaching career. We'll see how that goes, but for now... I'm in love.

~Hooks

Tug of War

So lately I've been getting annoyed by little things...having to repeat myself 50 million times, telling students to get their notebooks out of the bins/get a pen or pencil/write down the warm-up/read the board/etc./etc./etc. I pray for patience, but for pete's sake....it's MARCH! How many months has the warm-up been on the board? How many months have the materials needed been on the front table when you come in? How many months have we been using the notebooks EVERY DAY?

I finally got wise yesterday and wrote this, instead of my usual "Copy and solve in your notebook on your next page of notes."


And wouldn't you know it...I only had 1 student ask me where to write the warm-up problem. (I guess there's one in every bunch.) Another student exclaimed, "Wow, Miss! You're writing on the board like we're a bunch of special kids." I just told her, "You're all special to me..." [*big smile*] She laughed.

But even despite my occasional annoyances, they do things to brighten my days. Like how they totally got into this one game I had them play. We were learning quadrilaterals and their properties, so I made up this game as a spin off of the "Who Am I?" game you sometimes play at parties, where you have to guess what famous person you are. I knew they weren't going to be cool with putting paper on their foreheads or backs though, so this is what we did...


HAHAHA. I wasn't sure they would actually wear the hats for fear of being ridiculed, but a strange thing happened. The students that refused to wear them were the ones being teased! ("Come on, why don't you just do it? We all have them on... You too afraid?") Soon the whole class was walking around in these birthday hats with pictures of shapes on them, talking to others about their properties. So stinkin cute. I had to take pictures. One girl called over to me, "Miss Hooker! Take a picture of me too!" I turned around and oh boy... THIS is what I saw.


And I knew then that this is why we do it. This is the back-and-forth about being a teacher. You have to take the good with the bad, because if we all quit on the bad days, we'd miss out on so much.

Welcome To the World, Peanut

Oh, I didn't tell you? Yeah, I'm officially an AUNT now. My brother- and sister-in-law added a beautiful baby girl to their family last Sunday. Julia Emmalyn...6 pounds, 15 ounces, 20.5 inches, born at 3:21 pm. Although I haven't met her yet, she looks absolutely precious. See for yourself. :) Here she is just hours old...


And sleeping in her carseat...


And wearing the Texas onesie that Aunt Bethany and Uncle Lee got her. ("Someone in Texas Loves Me")


Julia, I can't wait to meet you! Happy birthday, squirt. :)


~Hooks

...Or Not

I won't keep you in suspense. We didn't win a Porsche. :( We got one of those things in the mail - you know: "You have won one of these exciting prizes! All you have to do is come claim it!" I know what you're thinking...scam. But we had actually entered a drawing at the State Fair in October, and Lee's entry form was included with the flyer. So we decided to take an overnight trip up to Tyler, TX (near Dallas) and find out what we had won.

It turned out as we expected - salesmen pressuring us to buy a timeshare, a tour of a crappy resort, and no Porsche...but we did end up getting a cruise and an "exotic island getaway." The island vacation doesn't include airfare, so we probably won't be able to do that, but we could do the cruise at virtually no cost to us, since they have ships leaving from Galveston (about an hour away). And even if we decide not to do any of that, at least we got a nice weekend together. We stayed at a Courtyard Marriott that was really nice! Thanks, Lee! :)


Of course, my favorite part was the jacuzzi. DUH. So here it is, the saga of the tub...


Yes, indeed.

~Hooks

And We're Off To Get Our New Porsche

I'll update you tomorrow. For now, I'll just keep you wondering...

No New Blogs In Over a Month? WAY Too Long...

I'm sorry! I think about blogging all the time when we do new things or when students say/do funny things, but I just never seem to get to it. I mean, I haven't even blogged about Christmas yet, and that was 2 months ago! What gives?! I finally realized my problem is that I keep thinking I can't blog about new things when I haven't finished the old stuff... but I recently decided to let myself off the hook and blog about new things -large or small. And the old stuff? I'll get to it when I get to it. Hope you don't mind. (Plus, Jackie taught me about Blogger's post-dating feature. Basically, I can lie about when I write things...muah ha ha ha haaaa! What's that you say? Of course I wrote about Christmas on December 26th!)

In addition to my apologies, I thought I'd also use this post to upload these ADORABLE pictures of Ryan helping his daddy wash my car. No, it was not forced child labor - he wanted to do it.


Here's how it happened: A few weekends ago, Becca came over to my house to read. YES, we had a reading date - don't judge. We ordered fajitas for lunch, and talked for a while before we got into our books. She had been telling me about how often Peter cleans their van, and the wheels in my head started turning. You see, remember the post about our move...when I described how our little African violet took a tumble in the car? Yeahhhh. That dirt was still in the center console. I know, I know. We're disgusting. But there's also no Delta Sonic around here (sad face), and plain old Sonic is NOT the same thing. I checked.

So I told her to talk with Pete, and see if he would be willing to clean my car for me if I paid him. They went through the whole, "Oh you don't have to pay us" thing, but I was like... Umm, dirt from 6 months ago? YEAH. I do... And thank goodness they accepted because I was beginning to fear my car would never get clean. Plus, I got the bonus of spending Saturday afternoon outside with my cousin and her family, watching the "show" while sipping coffee. Ahh, that was the life.


See what I mean? So stinkin' cute. His shoes and pants were soaked by the end of it, and I think he sprayed Pete a few times too (hence the "show" lol). And you should have seen him when I gave him a dollar later on as a tip. His little face spread into the biggest smile as he ran to go put it in his bank.

Saturday's like that should be bottled and kept forever... :)

~Hooks