Happy Halloween!

It seemed like such a long day today.... the energy in Kindergarten was high, and the weather was foggy and cold which meant being outside was unpleasant. We did end up spending most of the day outside, though. I am longing to curl up in bed with the heating blanket on and a bowl of chocolate to munch on. But I am trying to resist. Have not worked out since Sunday... possibly the cause of the malaise. Will be back tomorrow with more energy, I promise!

Love, Nancy

Our House

So for the past year we have been living in this great house. It is the first brand new house we have ever had. It is roomy. It has 4 bedrooms. It has granite counter tops and 10 foot high ceilings. It has arches in the living room and beautiful windows. It would be a great house to entertain in. I have always had dreams of hosting raucous barbeques and cozy family dinners and elegant cocktail parties in this house. It has never happened. The only party we have ever had here was in October of 2006 when Mark turned 40. It was nice, but you can't have too much fun on a Sunday night! Today we found out that we might be forced to move. The owners of the house are disenchanted with 15 months (and counting) of waiting for our house to sell. Kyla has been crying most of the night. I feel sick down deep in my stomach. Mark is showing definite signs of stress. But tonight God sent us a message. Mark's sweet sister Ann and her husband Dennis brought over dinner and we hung out and talked and laughed and ate and drank wine. This is just the kind of life I pictured in our beautiful house. Friends and family... company here. Enjoying each other and listening to each other. It was perfect. And if God has this house in His plan for our lives, we will be here. And if not, He will show us where He wants us to go. Wishing you love on this foggy night, Nancy

It's Monday!

Hooray! OK, so that wasn't really my first reaction to "It's Monday!" My first reaction is almost always, ICK! I hate getting up to the alarm and I feel blah and out of the routine.... But I am trying to look at Monday as a blessing... Hooray! A whole new week is here in front of me... full of possibilities and the promise of learning and wonder and love. And so far it feels pretty good. But, to backtrack... I had a busy weekend. On Friday I drove to Ferndale and back 3 times (for work, the carnival, and M's homecoming rally). On Saturday I drove to Ferndale and back 3 times (for the football game, to take M to the dance at 9:00pm, and to pick him up at midnight). On Sunday Cheryl and I walked 8 miles. It felt really far.... almost worse than the 13 last weekend. I brought Pepper and he got tired and we had to carry his fat little self about the last mile. Even throughout this busy-ness I felt pretty good. I actually scrapbooked 6 pages! That's huge for me.... I haven't done that many pages in months. It felt really good to write and pick papers from my big stack and glue stuff and look at my old pages. It felt really good to create. The Halloween anticipation is getting pretty serious in my little world of Kindergarten. Today we predicted whether or not we would weigh more than, less than or equal to a BIG pumpkin I bought over the weekend. Almost everyone thought they would weigh less than the pumpkin even though they could pick it up. Then we took turns standing on a board with a fulcrum in the middle and the pumpkin on the other end to see what happened. There was actually one little girl who weighed less than the pumpkin. Tomorrow when our 8th grade buddies come, we'll be doing some geometry estimation with candy corn. I can't wait! See, it will be a week full of learning and wonder and love! Hugs and Halloween candy for all! Nancy

I *heart* my job

This is a picture of my October bulletin board. It is a floor to ceiling bulletin board, and I have sacraficed an important wall to create this space. Last year I had a smaller board up high, and it just wasn't right, so this year I rearranged my room to free up this wall. Some of the art shown here is:

1. Fingerpainted leaves with the student's names on them

2. Fingerpainted pumpkins (made by mixing red and yellow paint)

3. crows with googly eyes I designed from an old tole painted crow I have

4. A large scarecrow made by me... modeled after "The Little Scarcrow Boy" (sometimes I add sentence strips with the words "I see a yellow hat." "I see blue overalls." etc, but this year I didn't have room.

5. Sunflowers with real seed centers (because the pumpkin patch we take a field trip to has sunflowers planted in it)

6. An interactive chart with the life cycle of the pumpkin on it where the students have written some of the words

On the far right you can see the edge of my barn. This year I had Mark remove the whitboard (Thanks, honey!) from the middle of the barn, and I put all my calendar stuff in there. Overall, I am really loving my room arrangement this year.

I am also feeling like I have a better handle on teaching all day K. I have changed my schedule so that it fits me and my style, and things are going great.

My students this year are really hard working and efficient and learning things soooo quickly!

In the next couple of weeks, we are going to be welcoming some fish into our room and studying them for science.

I am having a blast.

TGIF, everyone!

Love, Nancy

Happy Birthday!

Yesterday my wonderful, sweet and generous husband turned 41! We had a nice family dinner out with lots of laughter and pleasant conversation and cheesecake at the end.

I can't even come close to expressing how thankful I am to be married to this man. It is truly the most extraordinary blessing of my life.

Love you honey!

Nancy

Clink!

Here is a funny shot of me and my wonderful sister, Cheryl, enjoying a glass of champagne after walking 13 miles yesterday.

It has been such a blessing to spend Sunday mornings walking and chatting and laughing and catching up with each other.

And hopefully my heart and body are in better shape after all the exercise.

Wishing you a wonderful Monday night.... I'm off to watch The Bachelor.

Love, Nancy

I can't talk!

So today was the half marathon, and my sister and I walked our 13 miles in about 2 hours and 20 minutes. When we got back we drank some water and then celebrated with a glass of champagne. M took some pictures of our shoes and our sausage hands and also a couple of us sitting on the deck with our sweaty backs and champagne glasses enjoying the beautiful day.

Later I took a little rest, and when I woke up I sounded like a frog. I definitely have laryngitis. I hope it is gone by the morning because whispering all day at a crowd of 4-6 year olds is very exhausting!

Happy Sunday!

Love, Nancy

A List

I woke up pretty early today (8:00.... very early for a Saturday) and felt super productive. But, after grocery shopping and mapping out a route for my sister's and my 13 mile walk/run tomorrow, I have lost all my energy. I actually just spent about 2 hours on amazon.com browsing around for stuff to buy. It is weird when I am in a shopping mood, but just can't seem to put anything into that shopping cart. I guess I was just in a window shopping mood. With the window being my monitor. I did actually manage to buy a patriotic song CD for my class (why I was online at all), a set of new dishcloths and dish towels (desperately needed) and a Hot Dog with ketchup costume for Pepper (for Halloween).

But the reason why I am here is to make a list of things I like to say... some of my non-words and weird sayings (inspired by cindyanna) :)

1. wonky
2. gi-normous
3. fantabulous
4. superindeliblenevercomeofftillyourdeadandmaybeevenlatercolouringmarkers (Robert Munsch)
5. pritinear (this is Okie speak for close or soon)
6. hi-yun-dee (how my Grandma pronounced Hyundai)
7. Pot-i-pur-uh (how she pronounced potpourri)
8. Blasted

Well, that's all I can come up with right now..... if you remember one I have forgotten... or have a favorite of your own... There's always my empty comment section! Hee Hee!

Love, Nancy

High Hopes...

Today I was snappy and cranky with my class. I felt dizzy and headach-y and tired... like a fog was floating through my brain. And my patience just wasn't there.

I guess I am coming down with the sickness everyone else has had, and I thought I would avoid. Ha! Silly me!

But in spite of all this, I have high hopes. I spent about an hour after school planning next week, and I am so excited about all the engaging and fun activities there are to do. My big problem is fitting them all in! It is very hard for me not to fill up every moment of the day. It seems that every week after I plan, I remember something I NEED to do then have to erase and rearrange and simplify.

Also, I am working really hard on giving lots of opportunities for children to respond and interact with each other and me. I am trying to think about the purpose and goal for each activity and make it meaningful (and not just do it because I always have or it's cute). I am trying to make sure I think about what they need and break down the process of getting them there with activities that help them to learn while playing and laughing and feeling successful.

So, even though it's only 6:37, I am making cocoa and getting my lesson plan book, and climbing into bed to rest.

Because tomorrow I don't want to come home feeling like I was cranky again.

Love, Nancy

Autumn Splendor...

The weather has been entirely too unpredictable around here lately. We'll have rain, winds, fog. clouds and sun all in the space of about 3 hours. I never know what to wear, and last Friday I was especially stressed out over whether we would have to cancel our field trip to the pumpkin patch or not.

Fortunately, we decided to risk it, and it turned out to be a very pleasant day. Right after we arrived, we were herded from the bus to an area surrounded by pumpkins where our wonderful guide proceded to tell us all about pumpkins and how they grow with the help of a glass case full of dead bees and two pumpkin flowers. As we were being pelted by increasingly large raindrops she was explaining the difference between male and female flowers. You see, the female flower has a bulge at the base which turns into a pumpkin, whereas the male does not. She asks, "What do you think the male flower does?" And one of my students promptly says, "It helps get the baby out." Hmmmmm..... obviously, not quite following the conversation. Anyway, we all tramped around in the fields and picked out pumpkins to bring to school. We even had a nice snack and saw some peacocks while we were there.

Today we gave our pumpkins a bath and predicted how many unifix cubes it would take to get to the top of the stem then made a unifix cube tower and counted it.

On another topic, I have been trying to take a roll of pictures (24) each week in an effort to document our day to day life more. I took a few pictures of myself last Monday after everyone else had left for school using the timer. A problem I often have with the timer is that it focuses the camera on the background instead of on the spot where I am going. I even put a tall chair right behind where I was going to be to try to fix this, but it didn't work. So I had 3 blurry pictures of me and 2 blurry pictures of me with Pepper. I was really bummed,but I fiddled around with it to make it interesting and here it is.... Guess I'll have to keep trying!

Have a great week!

Love, Nancy

October 13

is the day of my sweet mother's birth, so I just wanted to say I hope you have a great day and I love you!!

P.S. Isn't she beautiful

photo taken shortly before my entrance into the world.

Pouring down

The rain started drizzling at about 3:00 today, and now it is simply pouring down. All internet access and cell phone service was out in our WHOLE county today due to some weather issue (I am guessing high winds, but who knows).

Was supposed to do 6 miles on the treadmill today, but instead I read my book, then made dinner, then cuddled up on the couch and watched "Blood Diamond". It is a good story and made my heart ache for the suffering and terror and loss of hope that so many people in Africa face each day. It makes me feel so helpless. I mean, how in the world could I ever verify that these beautiful diamond earrings Mark got me for my birthday were not pulled from the earth in a war zone. After fussing around in the kitchen for a while, I decided the only thing I can do is to pray. So, I am off to snuggle up in bed and have a talk with my God and hope that as I listen to the rain pouring down, I will also feel his love pouring down and showing me my path here on earth.

Early goodnight to all.

Love, Nancy

I LOVE....

ANITA ARCHER!!!

Today and tomorrow I am spending the day away from my class at a conference. The presenter is Anita Archer, and she is FABULOUS! When I signed up for this conference I remembered that I had loved the conference I went to where she presented about 8 or so years ago, but going back again has been terrific. She is funny, dynamic, practical and most of all OH SO knowledgable about everything teacher related. It was a great day, and I look forward to learning even more tomorrow.

It will be delightful....

Bye! N

Update on weekend list

1. check
2. check
3. check
4. 2 loads done
5. check
6. check... and I also got my haircut!
7. K refused to go to the mall with me
8. check
9. check
10. Not yet
11. tonight, if the football schedule allows
12. didn't buy, but also didn't scrap
13. Not yet
14. Nope
15. check

And here are some silly pictures of me and the cupcakes I made for my class when they all had memorized their birthdays.

And for Michelle.... a long overdue picture of my house.... Look! It's sunny!!

Love, Nancy

Adding that survey (again)

In April, I put up this survey where you go and choose adjectives to describe me. I am putting here again in the hopes that a few more people will participate....


Please!


http://kevan.org/johari?name=nberg

It's really fast, I promise!!
Thanks! Nancy

TGI... the weekend!

This week seemed to drag on and on. It felt like I was ready for a day off by Tuesday! I am just NOT A MORNING PERSON. I just love (more than almost anything) sleeping in. So today I lounged around snoozing until about 9:00. That is just perfection for me. If only school started at 10:30.... what a wonderful idea.

So, since I am adequately rested it's time to make plans for my weekend..... Let's see,

1. Clean (horribly dirty) bathroom.
2. Walk 4 miles with dog Sat.
3. Walk/run 10 miles without dog or giggly/wiggly/fighting girls in stroller Sun.
4. Laundry.... 6 or so loads.
5. Grocery shopping.
6. Buy a set of workout clothes with pocket for i-pod that I am not embarrassed to wear in public.
7. Buy Kyla that shirt she wants from Wet Seal.
8. Check on all the blogs I like to visit.
9. Call or email Gina.
10. Call Aunt Roni and Grandma Millie.
11. Watch episode 8 from season 1 of Sopranos.
12. Try not to buy any new scrapbook supplies, but actually make some pages for scrapbooks.
13. Start Christmas list.
14. Dust (or pay Kyla to do it)
15. Call Kristen about Kindergarten conference.

Looks like I'd better get going.... Have to brush my teeth and get started on #2 although #8 is calling my name!

Love, Nancy

I actually scrapbooked yesterday!

Shocking, I know!! It's not a fancy page, but it was fun for me to do, and I used my new Journaler's Notebook and Narratives papers. It was fun to look at my friends and remember our giggly, fun, wine drinking times.... Miss you guys!!

Love, Nancy