securing the bottle while the tea brews-there's no getting away now

i just saw an ad on t.v for these special sunglasses...is it just me, or are these new 'hd aviator sungalsses' the same as the old blu-blockers? i remember my brother got a pair when they came out back in the day (80's) and they were really comfortable on the eyes-i need to get a pair-they made the grass look greener on the other side. i remember that they did make everything seem much brighter, but..don't we already see in high definition?

today i decided that i would make some sun-tea (without sun..north side), so actually it's just heat tea...we'll see how it goes. i didn't have a large olive jar like mom used to use. i am in fact using a 2 liter bottle and i had to roll up the tea bags like...a tampon (sorry). i may have to pour the tea into another container to get it out without breaking the bags.

 as you can see, i had to strap it in because it was a leaner.

and after a few hours, here i am, the tea is safe. i repeat, the tea is safe. it's a nice amber, but i think next time i will add 1 more bag of tea as well as add in the sweetener ahead of time.

my lemon juice-from a fake lemon because i forgot to purchase some at the store!

and whenever i think about sweet tea, it reminds me of my friend laura pegg (who is now married and i don't feel like looking up her last name right now). whenever we went to a restaurant, she would ask if they had sweetened tea (even if she knew they didn't) and then they'd say no, but they had sweetener she could add, and she would shake her head adamantly and let the server know it just wasn't the same. when they walked away-she explained that maybe if she asked enough times, they'd get the clue that sweet tea was the 'in thing' and they needed to get it. smile.

i went to the store because i also had a craving for salsa-homemade as well...i need to keep working on that concoction-the taste is ok, but like the pancakes earlier, not a masterpiece. in fact it does not look appetizing at all. bruno shook his head no when i offered him some, and he never does that. and when i turned to chaco, he pretended that he couldn't hear me. rude.

 may your tea be sweet and your salsa spicy...just like all ladies-a little sweet and a little spice!
julie

eating marker bottoms causes rough nights

last night  early this morning, i awoke to the noise of my dog chaco vomiting. he did this yesterday morning as well (or was it the day before?) and the first thought that came to mind was that i was going to have to clean it up...good thing he was down on his pad, so i feigned pity and after a few hackings, he finally went back to sleep. and at that point i made a note that if it got worse, i would take him to the vet.

when i finally got up, i went to check out the damage, and there was something white in the spot where he had vomited. gross. so i grabbed a ziploc baggie and picked it up (everything else had dried away-don't worry, i'm not going to show it to you).and i asked him,"chaco, what's this?" he just looked up at me with his guilty eyes and said, "i don't know."  it just hit me a few minutes ago what it was. i found him doing this a few days ago:

well, i took it away from him, but i didn't realize the round disk capping the very tip was missing, i just thought it was all chewed up. nope. apparently it has been in chaco's tummy for a couple of days-thank goodness he coughed it up this morning because i know it could've gotten caught in his digestive tract and caused an obstruction (which many small dogs die from). i try not to leave small objects laying about-besides their toys, but he has this bad habit of going through my bag. 'mama, whatcha got in here?' (i totally understand the curiosity because i used to go through my mom's purse during church pocket by pocket to see what all she had hiding in there under the guise of looking for gum...but i stopped doing that last year). so i guess i'll just have to be more cautious when i have my bag out (i still haven't gotten a new one-i'll put it on my to-do list this week).

last night before i went to bed, i saw something on www.recipegirl.com and this morning i was craving the cinnamon roll pancake because it looked so good! after i made them, bruno looked at it and said, "well, at least they smell good, because they look nothing like the recipe girl's masterpiece."

and he's correct, they don't look nearly as good as hers did, but that's ok because they sure did taste good! although, next time i will do without the glaze.

randomly noticed something on a friend's fb page. i haven't been bothered by mosquitoes in ages (thank goodness and knock on wood!), but the other day, we were discussing mosquitoes. personally, i don't think there are any in tx with the heat, or perhaps they're just hanging out inside their little mosquito house with a/c..don't know, but the point is the post on the page was about using listerine as a repellent. so i looked it up and it does work (the original yellow), but only for a couple of days. it has the ingredients that some plants have that repel them. just thought it was interesting.

if you notice your kids going through your purse, be careful because you never know what they'll get into!
julie

dog food for the dogs, peanut brittle for the people!

so i forgot to mention it yesterday, but we did a pretty cool exercise yesterday at the library. we 'wrote' a story by telling a sentence at a time, students completing each others' stories. so the first few were pretty good...a one toothed hamster, race car driver, etc.

then came the grand finale.
boy : once upon a time there was a man with a flamethrower.
boy : he could throw flames over a 10 story building.
girl: one day he threw a flame to the 7th story and hit an old lady.
boy: then he created a new invention to throw fire. (at this point the lady asked what he was talking about and he said 'like a beer bottle' and the adults all looked at each other and were like 'a molotov cocktail?' so an adult volunteer went next to get back on track).
adult: then he got a cute little koala.
boy: and the koala got a girlfriend, but she cheated on him.
          (what is going on with our students???)
boy: so the koala got a new girlfriend and they lived happily ever after.

note to self: before trying this with my students, i must set up appropriate parameters.

today was a lazy sleep in day and we loved it!! then this afternoon i had to take bruno in to check on his teeth (or where his teeth had been to make sure it was healing. when chaco realized that we were leaving without him, he was ridiculous! he made such a racket that i'm surprised doggie cps didn't come to check up on us! 

and unfortunately every time i go to my vet (which is in petsmart), i end up purchasing something extra that i had not intended! boo. my dogs are a little spoiled. because of their recent lack of appetite, i've had to mix in dog food to get them to eat it. grr...so i'm going to try something new and see how it goes once more and i'm going to wean them off of it.

then bruno got the royal treatment from the apt. managers because we had to stop in to renew our lease. they even pulled up a chair for him to sit on! pet friendly is the understatement around here. 

and now i am hungry for something sweet, but not for just anything. for whatever reason, i am craving peanut brittle. my grandma smith used to make an excellent peanut brittle (along with the rest of the spread of holiday candies and breads) i loved going up to visit!

ok, so mine is not nearly as pretty as my grandma's but it will hit the spot for now!

 i feel so bad for adam and eve because they never tasted peanut brittle. although i'm sure if they were looking at us right now, they'd feel sorry for us, saying 'poor them, they never tasted fruit from the tree of life!

good night and may you never meet a flame thrower with a koala bear!
julie
  

melt: theme song for ice cream and crayons and young children made of wax

(quick update! i had to put the fish up for a few days because they're the coolest! please feel free to feed them by left clicking!)
ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh (that is a sigh of relief-had it been frustration, it would have been capitalized). last call for summer camp! aaaaand DONE!

i did score some great extras to use in my classroom, though! i LOVE posterboard and chart paper!! i am pretty certain that my car is exponentially heavier because of all the paper! of course, when i got home, my hands were full bringing things into my apartment because i had some perishables (heat advisory until 8pm-boo).

i only need one melted crayon art-piece for my simile example-this is why i brought up all crayons and markers (i probably ought to look through and see if there is anything else

not only was today our last day of summer camp, but we had a field trip to top it off! we went to the library downtown and we had an illustrator and a student author speak to our group. the illustrator was interesting! if you've ever read the book esperanza rising or gracias the thanksgiving turkey, joe cepeda is the author, and he was phenomenal! he has illustrated many children's books and he actually wrote and illustrated the book swing, which he read to us-EXCELLENT book to read to your students!!

i picked up some great drawing/writing tips for our students! they don't know it yet, but they should be very excited! i'm gonna' make authors of them yet!!

SWING

as you may have noticed, i did not include the other author's name because i was not impressed (so instead of wasting time and space on her, i'm wasting space explaining why i did not write about her...hmm).

and we got back later than usual. i still had to get all of my stuff together and ready to go-i was SO hoping to get out before 4:45 so that i wouldn't have to play 'parking-lot-chicken' with parents picking up their "car kids." well...i didn't have any parking lot problems because i didn't get everything cleaned up and packed up until 5:05. ugh. (i went the extra mile and clorox wiped all of the desks...better than i found them).

it just crossed my mind that if i have to change out my car for another, i'm going to have to unload all of that junk...i need to look at the cut-off date again and pray that i have until the beginning of school so that i can unload it there and not have to carry it up and down these 3 flights!!!

here's hoping that your summer gets cooler and you don't feel like a melted crayon screaming to get out of the car!
julie

rigorous coloring with willie nelson's wanna be

i agree with john stossel that if people don't know what the debt ceiling is and what the current issues are, nor understand where our country is fiscally, then they should not vote.

well today we culminated and our event reached its peak, now we have two days to do...hmm..rigorous coloring? perhaps create some amazing spinners? oh, don't worry, we'll keep it rigorous whatever we do! (actually we do have some probability and writing left).

as i went around the school and looked around at some of the displays, this one particularly caught my eye. it was about cultures:

russia-wine? i thought it was vodka...and last i knew, that is NOT a wine glass sweetie, it's a martini glass...the teacher might want to clear that up for the first grade student...? and i might add this little fact, when it's a martini glass, there is a huge difference between half full and half empty...

then we went upstairs and the students were performing their 'wax museum' in which they had created backdrops of texas 'heroes'...or perhaps we should have named it 'texas heroes and some other losers who were born here'. one of the little girls said, "i am like willie nelson because i like country music and i have long hair." and i thought to myself, 'honey, you are NOTHING like willie...you don't have a bandana.'

interestingly enough, i was asked if i was bilingual and wanted to interview for a position at the school where i was doing summer school today by a lady who was in my AVID training. bahaha-i like the school i'm at, the leadership and the journey we're on as a school too much to make any kind of switch no matter how pretty their school is!

goodnight, and may you glass be more than half full!
julie

they must've coined the phrase 'melting pot' in dallas during a similar heat streak

speaking of heat streak, it's so hot i almost feel like streaking. ok dallas! really? 105? c'mon, 24 days in a row over 100 and counting? whose idea was it to try to beat a heat record? dummies. sara haze must've lived in dallas when she wrote her song 'melt into you'.
well, today was the last day for my students to work on their backdrop for their culminating event-which will be tomorrow. so this morning we discussed what the word culminating means for about 10 minutes. i'm such a vocabulary person, i think my kids hate it. (but wow, do they ever sound smart!) now remember, i said they are finished-i did NOT say they were amazing.

as for the nfl lockout- my opinion of sports players goes down every time they do something like this. i remember when they had the baseball strike back in 94-95, i was frustrated because as it is they make so much money...i didn't watch again for about 15 yrs (last year when the rangers were in it). it will take a lot to win me over-they are so spoiled and act like sports divas.

don't really care much about amy winehouse, but she was born in 1983, which is a year i remember well-great michael jackson year and the year we moved to costa rica! so i know that was really random, it was on the news just now.

so chaco has this thing he does when he gets excited about something (mainly when it's playing fetch with his squeaky toy). i'm including a video because it's ridiculous. watch his little lower lip while he's trying to maintain composure:

the part you are missing that you cannot see from this view is his little tail wagging 50 hundred mph (i realize that 50 hundred is merely 5000, but since it's an exaggeration, that's still awfully fast).

oh, and if you haven't heard, the chilean miners' ordeal is going to become a film. hmm. spoiler alert: they live. as if we hadn't seen enough of it on t.v. weird things- during that time, i randomly mentioned to a friend that one of my coworkers was from chile. and the response was: oh, does she know any of the miners? (??? really?)

 dear dallas, you're a hot mess...stop this ridiculous insanity with the heat. no one likes it. no one.
sincerely,
julie

monday tuesday wednesday thursday saturday saturday sunday

alrighty then...i love it when friday feels like a saturday and then i realize that it really is friday and i get another saturday tomorrow! truly exhilerating! so, dallas isd, if you are listening, i would be all in for 4 day work weeks if that would help (not that it's even on the table, but if it were, you'd have my vote!)

today has been a lazy day for us. not that we're complaining! i mean, i got first place in a word game (and that's a big deal!)

ok, it was low-scoring, but in all fairness, there were only 215 possible combinations!

i've also been getting some of my summer reading done. if you are a teacher this book is a must read!!

excellent book-easy read, but it changes the way i look at my teaching

so...next week is our last week of summer school and the designers of the program planned a field trip for to go to a library on the last day. and the teachers are required to go chaperons. the last thing i want to do on our last day is take a bunch of students to a library where they are supposed to be quiet and somewhat respectful, but the worst part is that it's at the end of the day, so we cannot work on things we need to do to finish up. bad idea. boo. but summer school is over!! then meetings start back up on the 9th-ugh. too bad the weather is so hot! it really makes it unfun (new word) to even step outside.

we talked about doing another 4th grade lunch, so i might fix something (that way i know i'll enjoy it). perhaps a crockpot dish so that it stays warm and delicious. pulled pork? meat loaf? chicken?

not much of consequence today-have a great weekend!
julie

yes, you CAN be patriotic in the bathroom

i'm sure students like it when their day is interrupted by strange happenings, so today was a blast because the dental people came in to show them how to brush their teeth! for me, interruptions are my nemesis. i despise them because we never finish the projects we started! boo.
then we had a clown who spoke more spanish than english and his wife translated half of the show...played a couple of silly games and he only really looked like a clown bc he painted his hair blue and had some face makeup. he felt the need to yell and play loud music and i think he was trying to act like don francisco from sabados gigantes. and thank GOD my class did not win the snow cones because i was so ready to get out!

he's not the bozo i grew up with with the silly voice

today was also our 'friday,' so we had our 4th grade meal, and one of the gals brought enchiladas. well, i will be honest, i never really thought i was picky about food. maybe i am a little picky. i like food that tastes good. i brought the salsa (which is the marketside-i've mentioned it before, it is so good!) and that made it somewhat palatable. they were red, red (paprika or chili powder, and too much of it-i was going to take a pic, but it might have been too obvious). but the store bought german chaocolate cake? now THAT was money!

probably the highlight of my day was again in the teacher's bathroom-i looked up and saw the toilet paper rolls and it made me proud to be an american and pictures of a couple of very patriotic friends floated through my mind and i knew they would be proud.

look closer-it's washington crossing the delaware..only it didn't look like washington, it looked a little like van halen with a hat on (made in the u.s.a., new york)

  i guess that's a good segue to the simple solution. i mentioned that bruno was peeing in all the wrong places. well, i got tired of having to spray with enzyme cleaner and scrub-so...i thought about doggy diapers, but then i remembered what gigi, my coworker at school had said about one of her boys, and i found the 'simple solution.'

i put it on him yesterday afternoon for the first time and he was kinda' stumbling around-i'm not sure if his peepee helps him keep balance or what, but i felt a little bad for him, and so i took it off.

i mean, i can imagine it would be uncomfortable-on the package it said to 'cover his masculinity.' i suppose that's more academic sounding than 'cover his peepee.' (i've never had to refer to that before, so i'm on a learning curve). i did put it back on before we went to bed because he wouldn't go potty before bed and i didn't want to risk it (i could tell he wasn't super comfortable because he would get up and move around and change positions all night long). it worked because this morning when we got up, he went potty when i put him on his pad. it's going to be a long couple of weeks!

but on the up-side, he has been a bit more spunky and not as melancholy and eeyore-ish (from winnie the pooh), so that makes me feel a little better.

life is a circus-just keep an eye on the loud, spanish-speaking clowns (and all other clowns as well!)
jules

don't forget your baby suit!

ok, not gonna' lie, i think summer school is draining me more this year than last year. it's the kids, the program and i really think it's things here at home as well-which i didn't realize until today. today i was looking at some texas brochures (made by kids) and i thought it would be great to share them with you!

i picked this one because i thought it might be a relevation (yet perhaps not quite accurate) i liked the 2nd largest state EVER?!?! (it was the ever that makes it inaccurate in case you weren't certain).

don't forget your baby suit when you go to the beach! (i'm sure she's been wondering for most of her life why this thing is called a baby suit, i need to enlighten her and do a little 'splainin')

the kids are great with me- i believe in instilling the fear of God (and ms. robinson). well, i've had issues in the afternoon because when i leave another person comes into my classroom and teaches dance babysits. and when i come in every morning the desks are not in place and there are chairs spread all over the room. i think it bothers me a little bit because i learned that you should always leave things better than you found them! (thank you k2!)

apparently my kids aren't in my room in the afternoon this week- a different grade is, and from what my kids said, they are rowdy (which was confirmed by our office manager)...so today i stayed in my room a little bit later than normal because one of my very responsible girls said that she told one of the boys not to go in a certain area yesterday (because i had told them so) and the boy said, "well, your teacher isn't here right now, is she?" oh no he didn't... today i may or may not have introduced them to 'the rude child's worst nightmare.' they had zero respect for the man in charge. yes, i butted in a few times to get them in line. when i walked back in, the guy was trying to teach them the dance and there were 5 or 6 kids sitting around talking, drawing, etc and one of them was sitting in the chair behind my desk-if you are a teacher, you understand that the desk is a sacred, private piece of furniture, and what's on that desk is of a confidential manner. i'm pretty sure my eyes must have held the look because he was up and dancing before i even had to say anything. 

i was a little embarrassed in the bathroom because after i went in, i heard the all too familiar voice, "in 15 minutes or less, you can save..." and i looked over in the corner, and there he was-thinks he's so cute.

but he was an imposter-it wasn't even a real good accent-he sounded more indian/baliwood.

and i'm back to trying to retrain bruno on the potty issue. it's a little different than when my parents potty trained me (not that i remember, but i'm guessing they didn't offer me a twinkie or a chocolate chip cookie every time i went to the kiddie-toilet...although i noticed on a friend's fb that she has been giving special treats to her kiddo)...and i'm pretty sure that when i accidentally had an accident (redundant..not changing it) my mom didn't throw a hanger across the room to get me to stop mid-stream. that may or may not have happened yesterday (bad mama...but it's because i was in the bathroom and when i yelled his name, he just kinda' looked at me as if to say,'whaaaaat?')

and tonight i made a difficult decision. my dad called and i had to let him know that i wasn't going to be able to make it up to branson (i have been looking forward to this since oh..march-ish, if you'll remember i wanted to go to silver dollar city with david, hollie and the kids and mom and dad, and i may have invited shea to come play since she was going to be in the area anyway!) i just think the boys have been stressed and with bruno on meds and just getting his molars out...i cringe at the idea of driving them up and then making them stay in a kennel (visions of them cowering in a corner while the other dogs bang on the jail cell bars and yell mean things about the shower..)

anyhoo, that was my big adventure for the summer. boo.

and i was informed that tomorrow someone from the program is coming in to evaluate me. guess what no pdas, so guess what...big. deal.

if the baby suit fits, wear it...(because bathing suits cost a lot these days)
julie

interrupting the nap-my turn!

today the boys were not happy with me because of the soccer game. they were trying to take a nap and i kept interrupting them with claps, shouts, etc. (at one point chaco was shuddering because we usually don't get that much excitement in our home).paybacks for all the times i try to take a nap and chaco somehow finds his hidden squeaky toy right as i doze off.

i was very proud of the USA WOMENS TEAM! they played an amazing game and they should be proud of their dominance in the game-there were just some small details and opportunities that were missed. it's ok, the olympics are coming!

on another note, today i realized that it is super difficult to give both dogs a bath at the same time-it's not so much during the bath, it's the after-trying to get them dry before they trounce around the house! chaco is scared to  death of the hair dryer, and bruno just wants to run around and roll around.

he looks a bit pathetic sitting there-he had been hiding under his towel

after they are mostly dry, as soon as i turn of the hair dryer, the boys have a routine...it makes me laugh, so i let them run and jump on the bed-they get giddy and start giggling, "look at me! look at what i can do!"

it's hard to catch the action, but there's rolling and tumbling and trying to tunnel under the folds.

well before the game came on, i decided to try something new to see if it would help (the boys have been trained to use their potty pad, i've mentioned this before, but recently they have been  behaving badly, so i decided to try something). check out the video to see how chaco responded (disclaimer, their food and water is out in the living room because i put up the child gates so i could keep an eye on them to make sure they aren't doing things they aren't supposed to):

forgive me, i took the video sideways. but perhaps i can find another use for the spray... a trick or something, because it's pretty obvious that it doesn't work for training him to pee on his pad...or maybe it does, but my dog just likes to roll around in filth.

i'm trying to figure out exactly what to do with the boys this weekend because i'm going to branson to see my parents and my brother, hollie and their family; and the place my parents stay doesn't allow animals. grr. so i've looked at a couple of different options, but i'm not sure exactly what we're going to do.

alright, hope everyone is able to shake off the gloom and despair of losing the world cup-mean girls cheered me right up!
julie

p.s. just saw a commercial on abc family for cyberbu//y-a family original about 'standing up to digital drama'
pss. if you haven't checked lately, hollie has some really cute summer fun creations! click here

if the fat angel doesn't get off my shoulder, we're gonna have problems!

today was my day to sleep in!! only i didn't get to sleep in¡ (that's an inverted exclamation point at the end of the sentence, expressing negative excitement-well, it made sense in my mind).
nope, i had to get up at 7 to get the boys ready to go to the vet. bruno was going in for a routine teeth cleaning (included in his plan) and i asked them to do a urinalysis to see if bladder infection might be why he's peeing in random spots (like the arm of the couch where he usually sleeps...yuck, that took awhile to clean. poor guy. and chaco was going in for the bordatella (and i had them clip his nails-puppy pedi...b/c i can't get him to sit still long enough and i gave them permission to tranq him if necessary).  
when i left, i had these two on my shoulder:

recognize them?

 and....the cinnabon was delicious. oops. 
i went straight from there to aldi's because they were supposed to have beanbags on sale-i got there and they informed me that they ran out the first day-i gave my most disgusted look because i have had a difficult time finding a new beanbag for the boys(they absolutely love plowing into them-the run and jump into the soft, squishy goodness. and it tickles me to watch them). so i went to walmart to check and they didn't carry any either, so i got a dog bed and a cat tunnel to try to get them doing some tricky agility type stuff. then i came home and took advantage of being alone and i got to steam the carpets and clean up a little. and as i was cleaning, i got a call from the vet saying that yes, bruno possibly had slight infection, but more importantly his molars were loose. so under the advisement of the experts, i gave them the ok to pull his molars so they wouldn't continue to get worse. after talking to the vet, we're not sure why he's having such problems with his teeth-he's much too young for that, so we're going to get better at brushing the teeth (which is really bruno licking the chicken-flavored paste and then chewing on the bristles...). 
so after picking them up and bringing them home, bruno has been sleeping and i tried to get him to sleep on the ice pack for a bit. but he's been up/down/up/down because chaco was playing in the tunnel-ok, actually i threw his treat in and he was timidly trying to figure out how to get it, and i had to get down and coax him through. 

brought home pain meds for him, which we might use tonight before bed, but i want to make sure he doesn't get addicted, because he saw where i keep my meds-the caps are child proof, but not puppy proof...

chaco finally chilled out after about 10 leaps into the beanbag chasing his toy-oh, back up, i forgot to mention that i came home looking for how to make a beanbag. it didn't look too difficult, but in a last ditch effort, i checked target, and they had lavender beanbags with girlie-frilly stuff, and i thought i could come up with something clever to convince them it was a boy color, but i didn't have to because there was actually a plain red one! and fortunately target is right by my vet!  and when i got to my vet i saw carol, one of my co-teachers with the cutest little puppy! (it was her daughter's, but she was a cutie!); we caught up a bit and it just reminded me of how short my summer really is this year! boo. 
anyhoo, like i was saying, chaco finally chilled on the little bed i bought today and i guess i need to teach him how to sleep in a bed, because he didn't do a very good job even though it has a lip to keep him in.

 well, i guess at this point, i will let you go because i know you're captivated and having difficulty pulling yourselves away!
so..tomorrow i will sleep in!
julie


 

handlebars belong on a bike. period.

i know, it's been a few days. this week has been an un-interesting week and i've had writer's block and nothing has seemed incredibly inspiring or deserving of being written about. i think it's a mixture of feeling a little let-down by the summer school thriving minds program this year and trying to figure out what's up with bruno.

the best part of today was going to north park for lunch at the food court and seeing this man with his handlebar mustache...see it off the left cheek (sorry i didn't get a better pic) it was pretty creepy.

the worst part was waiting for panda express to get my chicken egg roll done. (obviously it didn't phase them that i was standing there in front of the straws handing them out to every customer because my tray was in the way and i must not have had my best 'i'm annoyed' face on because the promised 3 minutes turned into about 7. jerks). shoulda' gotten the fajitas.

ok, i never win anything, so you can imagine my surprise when my name was drawn today at the training and i got to choose my prize. hmm. it was between a math book and a reading book-guess which one the reading teacher chose. it figures that i would win a boring prize (it's just a comparison of elps and elar-if you're confused, it's ok, join the crowd)

they're good at trying to fool you by creating an intriguing, fun cover

this is a legit sampling of the book-every page is comparison-boo. boring.

i wouldn't have won anything, but 2/3 of the class did not return to our session today, so they called about 10 people who weren't there and finally my name. lucky me. if i get a chance i may look for some little nuggets of goodness and see if there are any gems hidden in the rough, but i have a lot of summer reading which will take priority.

right now chaco is trotting back and forth all over the house looking for a place to cache his rawhide...he just yelled at me, "momma! stop watching!" as if i was planning to dig his rawhide out of the folds of the beanbag to chew on it while he's off at the vet or something... he's a puppy on a mission.

well, if you meet up with a man who has handlebar mustache, don't try to grab it and drive away-that would be considered assault.

julie

it may be a green bag, but at least it's an honest bag!

while i was in oklahoma, kb mentioned how dogs curled their tongues to bring the water up under their tongues when they lap water...so i had to find a video! check it out here on a discovery video-very cool (and short). no wonder bruno hates it when i force drink (force feed...) the water with the syringe-so unnatural to him! so every time he drinks from the glass bowl, i watch and blink my eyes really fast (to make it look like slow motion frames-try it, but be careful, because it could be addictive...and no one wants to be known as the 'lady-who-cannot-stop-blinking,' it's almost as bad as the professor who spits when he lectures).

today my goal was to get dog food (that's right, set your goals high...that's what i always tell the kiddos!), i also went to get a new shoulder-bag because chaco has ruined the strap and i can only cut off so many of the fraying strands before the strap no longer holds the bag up. i've put up with the tape and frayed strands for about 3 months now, it was time.

my biggest grievance was that when i got to rei, they didn't have the exact same bag-in black. so i opted for the green one. who cares-i've never been a fashionista anyway. while i was at there, i decided to look around the camping section and i was so thankful for the nonstop chatter-girl who was talking to the associate, that way i didn't have to talk to him. (too much customer service is a bad thing). anyway, she had her big dog with her and was talking about a 14 mile hike and then sleeping in her car. and how her dog was great because he doesn't drink stagnate water, but he will drink from running water. (fyi lady, if your dog is thirsty enough, i'll bet money he'll drink stagnate water). then i saw the store associate try to break away toward me, but she kept talking to him about the next thing she saw and i was able to slip to a different section of the store.

once i found the bags i was looking for, they didn't have an identical to mine, so i settled. it basically looks the same. just that it's green (as i mentioned before).

the tag says 'simply honest bags'...i guess that's a good thing-i wonder what a dishonest bag looks like.

there was another lady standing beside me and she was looking for a bag because she had one in europe, but it just didn't work for her. she told me she 'found the perfect one at marshalls of all places' and for 17 bucks, i thought that should be a no brainer-if she liked it, she should've gotten it then. (or maybe she was just a marshall's spy/advertiser sent to other stores to lure customers to the marshalls around the corner).

my last stop was the dog food and as i was leaving, i saw this car and i'm pretty sure it is not a mary kay rep car...perhaps a pepto bismol door-to-door sales person.

i remember when we were in honduras the last couple of years, my parents got a celebrity and it was powerful and really comfortable! but it wasn't pink. thank goodness!

and that's a wrap-time to check on my homemade fruit rollups and prepare tomorrow's lesson!

remember go green-it's the new black!
julie

..and i called the dessert 'better than dirt'.. when i first came to this land..

not gonna lie, today i may have gotten a little huffy when i walked into my classroom and saw chairs askew, none of the desks lined back up in order and the other teacher's books pulled out and laying around.

maybe it's just me, but i learned a long time ago to leave things better than you found them. this would be a non-example of that.

i'm pretty sure that i won't have a problem with that tomorrow. (i've taken measures to ensure that). 

when the music man came to our class today, i was trying to hang with them and pay attention to what was going on, and i recognized the song and book he was singing about the poor immigrant who came to america (when i first came to this land, i was not a wealthy man so i bought myself a farm, i did what i could and i called my farm muscle in my arm ...who names a farm like that? dummy. and he called his horse 'i'm the boss'...that doesn't rhyme with horse. helloooo. and he called his son 'lots of fun' -which reminded me of a joke: if his daddy's name was winchester, he'd be a son of a gun!) ba-da--ch(the ch is like a cymbol). once he started playing music for them, i almost fell asleep-i know i was in a daze.

i don't know what's wrong with me, but i forgot the binder at home again! worst teacher ever! actually, no, there are worse, and at least i'm amazing at using my resources and improvising...in fact, i think my idea is better than the original was anyway! and the kids had fun!

and tomorrow the other 4th grade teachers decided that they wanted to have 'potluck dinners' at the end of each week. i was volunteered to bring something sweet, so i made this truffle type cookie bar, only...i didn't have pecans. but wait! i do have mixed nuts! so i decided to chop those up and see how that worked...and just an fyi, the off brand chocolate chips...they don't spread very well even when melted. boo.
ok, so i tried the bars and it might've been good choice to go purchase the pecans! oh well! 


just remember that if your recipe calls for pecans...go get the pecans!
julie

what do tiny bubbles have to do with lawrence welk?

today we had another wave of kiddos show up to the classroom. a couple of mishaps yesterday-one of the busdrivers never showed up so our principal had to call them, and one of the buses that was supposed to show up took kids to the wrong school.

i know, it may seem strange that dallas is offering summer school/enrichment camp in july. the reason that we are doing this is so that the the timing is closer to the beginning of the school year so that the kids don't lose everything that we go over. and it's mixed in with the integrated arts program so that the students are doing arts and having fun learning.

so, before i left yesterday afternoon, the afternoon arts guy asked if i had books for them to read. (this was a strange question to me because they are supposed to be doing dance, theater, cooking, visual arts, music, etc) when i came in this morning, i asked the kids what they did and they said they read the thesaurus for awhile, then they stretched and danced a little, then they read the thesaurus some more and he read something to them. hmm. then i noticed my mentor book for writing that talks about different childrens' story authors over on the table. that must have been what he read to them. strange.

during the day, our music man came in again and this time he played some different arrangements of popular songs for them, and after playing a jazzy/blues song, he asked the kids which genre of music the song was and one of the boys said: bartender! bet you didn't know that was a musical genre..i didn't!

so this afternoon as i was leaving, i said now comes the fun part of the day! (and one of the boys shook his head no and muttered under his breath,  'no.') they'd better have more fun today than they did yesterday or i'm going to be  very frustrated.

when i got home today, i asked bruno what part of the trip to oklahoma he liked best and he said he kinda liked a lot of it, especially when shea and griz were playing with the see-through balls that disappeared in mid-air. i cocked my head and asked what he was talking about, then i remembered the bubbles! so i found some wedding bubbles i bought for my class to celebrate with and pulled them out to let him play a little and guess what, he did! he tried to eat some of them.

this reminded me of a song i used to hear in my parents old car (you know, the one with the 8track!)...please click here to see tiny bubbles on the lawrence welk show! and the funny thing is she has such a twang that i used to think she was saying tiny bubbles in the water (but the lyrics are tiny bubbles in the wine although tiny bubbles in a jet tub or in the ocean spray is what i was thinking-wine was taboo in our home). and of course as i was looking for that song, i came across one of my all time favorites from SNL of the lawrence welk show-check it out! thank you kristin!

alrighty, hope the tiny bubbles make you feel fine!
julie
p.s. hopefully there aren't too many mistakes because i do not feel like proofing tonight!

binder, if i didn't know better, i might think you stayed home on purpose!

well, today was the first day of summer school/camp. it was a pretty good, until i got to school and realized that i had left my binder sitting on the couch in my front room and brought the binder from my AVID training. hmm.

good thing i read through the lesson last night and had a good idea of what i was going to do!

when we left on thursday, we were under the impression that we would be getting about 38 students each (in 4th grade), but when all was said and done, today only 7 of my students showed up...either they forgot, or umm..i don't know. hopefully several show up tomorrow so that everyone can keep their summer jobs!

my favorite part of today was when the music man came to our room (not like the musical). he brought his clarinet and sang and played games about texas with the students-yea!

when we took the kids out to play for about 10 minutes, there were 2 benches. one bench had three of my coteachers on it, and the other had no one. which one do you think i went to? and as i was passing by, they were trying to make space on their bench. i said, "no, it's not that i don't like ya'all, but i need space." in other words, i really don't want to be crowded in hundred degree weather stuffed between you.

how fun would it be to be a food judge on chopped or iron chef? (yes, the boys made me watch food network with them tonight)


it's getting late and i have an early morning wake up call, so i'm out!
julie

oklahoma weekend with friends

it's the 4th of july!! as i was slipping off to sleep last night, the thought going through my head was that it sounds an awful lot like the 4th of you lie (when some people say it); somehow there is a movie script in there with an evil witch casting a spell on someone as a baby and on the 4th of every month the child/adult cannot help but lie all day long. like i said, that was the thought as i was falling asleep-as you can tell..

i took this weekend to go up to oklahoma to hang out with some great friends i haven't seen in awhile- too long to be exact. i had been debating with myself all last week whether or not i was going to actually go because my back was still not feeling great, and bruno has still not been himself. but i knew that i had to go because if not, i would've regretted the opportunity to play because as of right now, summer is not really going to be much vacationing.

so i packed the boys up and we drove up to edmond, met up with shea and bmayes and then we drove on up to spring valley ranch in spavinaw hills. we had the directions, nonetheless, we weren't sure we were going the right way until we crossed the creek on the small concrete bridge and took the right fork. when we drove up to the lodge, it was huge. so we met up with kb (another friend from kamp who i haven't seen in ages), then went in and cooked up some spaghetti and made some salad-we corralled the boys and reagan, chaco's sister, into the kitchen so they wouldn't sneak out the door into the night and get eaten by owls or bobcats or the huge dogs.

after dinner we chatted and played a fun celebrity game (new to me, but fun), and midnight sneaked  up on us really quickly. not sure why, but i kept getting justin timberlake, and there was only one thing that kept coming to mind to try to get shea to guess (i just don't know enough about him or his music i guess). of course it probably wasn't fair that john adams and samuel adams were thrown in there. it's a little difficult to act them out or think of one word to describe them.

saturday we woke up late and after breakfast, we went riding on the 4wheelers and kb showed us around the property. it is beautiful! and as we were going up hills, down hills, around bends by the lake, scenes from i shouldn't be alive were replaying in my head of rolled atv's. i'm glad it wasn't just me because shea said she kept thinking about what if's too.

two of my awesome friends-kb and shea (kb's parents own the ranch and they have retreats and rent out the lodges and it's such a beautiful area!!

4wheeling is great, but the entire time i was wondering how this would fare on my back-but it really didn't matter-it was good for the soul. it was so warm by the time we finished that we decided to jump into the creek and float for awhile. when we finished, it was time to go.

once we got back to shea's, i was in bed, ready to sleep when i felt a pinch between my toes and it really caught me by surprise, so i reached down and i immediately knew what it was, so i went into the bathroom and sure enough, it was a little tick! gross!! glad i found it right away! that of course caused shea to get out of her bed and check herself as well (it's like the lice thing i mentioned before, when every time your head itches, you feel like you have lice too).

well, the next day we played on paddle boards and kayaks! woo hoo! i'm so glad i got to come up and enjoy the fun!

on the way home, the boys were tuckered out and i think they were just happy to be going home. they were fine the first half of the trip, then chaco decided that this would be a good idea

which i did not encourage. it was ok until he fell down behind my back as i was trying to grab him-which makes me look like a terrible driver. so for the rest of the trip i had to strap him into his seat. the worst part was the: are we almost there yet? from both of them.

and when we finally reached home, fireworks were going off..not so much for our arrival as for celebrating independence. although i really hope there are fireworks tonight as today is actually independence day.  we had brats to celebrate and i watched how the states got their shapes- i thought that was pretty patriotic.

happy 4th of july (4th of you lie?)
julie