MmmMmm! I love me some Olive Garden! In Denver enjoying one of the luxuries of big city life.

More pics from Mom's trip

Deer in an aspen grove:


A view up high:


More Rocky Mountain National Park pictures:







And a marmot in RMNP - I love these guys!


Horsies!


A columbine in my front garden:


Kaylee and Sheba playing:


And after she left... a rainbow as seen from my back yard:

Eeee! Sitting in a theater wtg 4 Transformers... anticipation building. Hope it's as good as 1st one :)

Back Home

Second day of blogging class completed. I certainly learned a lot... hopefully they did as well. I still have one month of online work and then a one hour webinar in July.

Blogging Class

I'm teaching a 2+ day blogging class for teachers. Today was day 1 and it went pretty well. I was so nervous to start with, but the participants were very kind and I felt at ease fairly quickly.

One more day tomorrow and a one hour webinar next month for wrap-up.

dropped mom off at the airport. raining. traffic jam.

Estes Park Wool Market

As I mentioned before - I did indeed survive my first year of teaching, though the last day held a surprise for me...

Picked mom up at the airport on Friday afternoon and stayed in Denver that night to help her adjust to the altitude.

Saturday morning we headed over to Estes Park to check out their Wool Market. Lots of animals - lots of pretty stuff - good time.

Sunday we went through Rocky Mountain National Park and saw elk, moose, big horn sheep, RM goats, marmots, pika...:

I've seen them several times since moving to Colorado, but this is the first chance I've had to get a picture of a Rocky Mountain Goats... too bad they were so far away:


Elk


Today we went for a drive to the closest Target and mom spotted a moose. I pulled over and as I was getting out to take picture he decided to cross the road.

Fun @ wool market. Pretty day - rain now. Mom and I have reached a new level of tired. Spending 2night here then home 2morrow.

Just picked mom up @ airport and we're sitting at Ruby Tuesday. All done with work (minus blogging class) til August 18th. Ahhhhhhhh.

survived my last day. survived my 1st yr of teaching. went out with a bang though... and now...? SLEEP.

Back to trivia

Today was horrible. I mean it was so bad I hid in my closet during my lunch hour. And it wasn't even the kids... it was the adults. I was snapped at three times by my peers. I know it's the end of the year and everybody is stressed... but really? Don't snap at me!

I've missed the last few weeks of trivia, but tonight I made my return. The usual 2 people were there with one of the floaters. They called me their "lucky charm." I guess they hadn't done well the last few weeks, but we got second place tonight and won a round.

It was just what I needed. When I got home from work I was exhausted, cranky, sad, hot and sweaty (from moving yet more junk) and I was somewhat tempted to just crawl in bed and hide. Instead, I took a quick (but refreshing) shower and headed out to trivia. And I'm SO GLAD I did. It's just what I needed. I laughed until my side hurt. I missed my trivia peeps.

shhh hush crazy brain. yes there's a lot 2 do, but it WILL get done. right now u just really need a good night's sleep. snuggle w/ur babies.

Winding Down = Wound Up

This is the last week of school...

Yesterday I had my kids help me move all the stuff from my new classroom to a storage room. It's a huge room and was FULL of stuff - some of it pretty heavy/bulky. They worked so hard! I even had them disassemble things and move stuff around in the classroom.

I was so proud and impressed with them.

They even helped me move some stuff into my new room today.

All those energetic little people... two hands each... what they did would have taken me SO much time.

Awesome!

It worked out well because they're all done with their assignments and have a major case of Spring Fever/End of Year - itis.

Book club at my place tonight - Christopher Moore's Lamb. I'm not quite done with it, but then nobody else was either - crazy days!

On the super-cute side... one of the ladies brought her dog, Monkey (well deserved name). Monkey and Kaylee are the same size and though it took them a while to get along they love playing together now.

At one point Monkey thought she wanted to play with Sheba, but Sheba didn't want anything to do with Monkey. Sheba and Kaylee play together all the time... so maybe Kaylee was marking Sheba as her territory or maybe it was the squawk that Monkey got out of Kaylee, but Kaylee informed Monkey that she was to "stay away from that cat!"

It was cute. Kaylee was protecting Sheba.

They love each other.

/happy momma

LOL. "Robin Sparkles" hehehehehehe Oh thank you How I Met Your Mother Season 2 =O)

let it snow. let it snow. let it snow. Woot! thunder-snow storm! gotta love it!

Rocky IV = Holy Montage Batman!

Productivity

Yesterday:
*Caught up on my grading
*Cleaned out my new classroom a bit
*Chicken Fajitas for lunch
*Walk by the lake with Kaylee
*Bought Kaylee's food
*Got Kaylee's nails done
*Rearranged my bedroom (only took 3 tries)
*Did laundry
*Read
*Watched Rocky

Today:
*Went to arts and craft festival
*Bought thank you gift for mentoring teacher
*Walked Kaylee
*Bought gardening stuff and hummingbird feeder
*Set up hummingbird feeder
*Aerated and weeded the garden boxes
*Weed-eated the back yard
*Did the dishes
*Spun
*Watched 1st disc of How I Met Your Mother Season 1
*Watched Rocky II and Rocky III
*Started preparing for the Blogging Class I'll be teaching in a couple of weeks

Oh boy-oh boy-oh boy! Just 1 week left and I will have officially survived my 1st yr of teaching. I'm impressed w/myself and I even had fun!

talking 2 my MN peeps helped. taking deep breaths helps. one day at a time.

Oh man... 5 more days

I've got to make it through school tomorrow, concert duty tomorrow night, school Thursday - Wednesday and then next Thursday is our End of the Year Celebration.

So really... just 5 more days, a long night tomorrow and a party next Thursday.

But it is SO the end of the year. The kids are bouncing off the walls and everybody is crazy stressed. All the 8th graders are in a crunch trying to get their end-of-the-year presentations ready (meaning they need lots of technology help) and I'm still trying to run my classes and grade assignments. I've got teachers coming to me with the tech questions and I spent a good part of today signing nearly 300 check-out forms. I also need to fill out comments for 200 students. Oh and the server crashed again during my biggest class. That's always fun!

We're back to the "One Day At A Time" philosophy of life... to keep me sane.

On the plus side - mom will be here in 10 days and we're gonna have a BLAST!

an orchid and a hug. making up 4 a crazy-busy day. think i will actually miss my kids this summer. well, most of them ;)