Birthday Girl!!

Thank you to everyone for the birthday messages, cards, and gifts! And a great, big, SPECIAL thank you to Lizzy for my birthday poem! Everyone, please amuse me and go read it now at The Journey to the Hot Tub! However, it is unfortunate that after sharing a VERY traumatic intimate detail with her, that she chose to torment me with my own name, but it's ok, because on her birthday, I will write her a poem and i'm sure i'll have some good rhyming words to use...like fever, believer...ha ha ha...but anyway, it was an awesome poem and I thank you Lizzy!

I collect some of the Willow Tree figurines, well, the ones that have some meaning to me, and the one in the picture above is my favorite one because that IS me!! I love being the birthday girl and I always milk it for all it's worth!!! Birthdays do have some downsides, besides the obvious getting older aspect, like your drivers license expiring. Blah. Walter's expires next month, so we will go on his next Friday off and get them renewed.

I am one of those people who will dig in the closet to see what i'm getting for my birthday or Christmas, so imagine my surprise when I went to my wishlist on Amazon.com to get the name of the crock pot I wanted and was going to see if I could order it with other gift certificates that I got, and it says the item has been PURCHASED!! WOOOHOOO!!! That's my sneaky little mom, I'm sure. She gave me a $50 Land's End gift certificate via email the other day, but apparently that was to trick me and give me the Crock pot too on Sunday when we go to lunch at ALBASHA!! Michelle asked what type of food is served at Albasha - it is Lebanese and SOOOO good! So anyway, yay for my crock pot! It is a really cool one that you can use the inner part to sautee onions on the stove, you can freeze stuff in it, microwave in it, etc.

So, anyway, we went to dinner tonight with Cathy & Brent at Hilltop and not only did I get a delicious steak dinner, but a free ice cream dessert that Cathy & I shared. It was a wonderful birthday!!

Work was great today! I love those days that fly by so fast that it's time to go home before you know it. And I get off work at 2:30, so really, the day flies by really fast sometimes. I met the little boy who is only coming to school for an hour each day this week, then we'll try to get him to come longer next week. He has tons of support at school and had a great day (or hour) today and said he really wants to be able to come to school. I just hope that lasts!! We met with him first thing this morning and did the most important thing - broke the classroom rules down one by one to be sure he understood. Instead of just saying "be respectful," we explained to him what behaviors are considered respectful, etc. Sometimes we don't think about the fact that due to parenting or cultural differences, some kids don't know what the rules actually mean. After we got 1 hour boy (let's call him 1H) off to class, I took my co-worker to another of my old schools to show her around, and now i'm done with that. Everyone at my schools should be able to handle things on their own now, and that is cool. Afterwards, I went to a meeting with the special education teachers at "Elementary School 2" (ES2) and was glad to be invited and involved with their staff. The biggest stress in my job, to me, is making sure I have office space in every school on the day i'm there. I am so excited and relieved that i've already got that worked out. I really like the west side schools so far, so everything is working out really well.

Questions & Comments:

Kim and I talked about insurance on my new car - the car salesman was totally wrong and my insurance did go up! It was only about $20/month, but still, she told me that story about the Honda being a theft risk and the insurance being higher!

Kim & Lesley both mentioned not knowing that you could buy/sell books on Half.com. I would think that renting the books is the best idea, but buying and selling them on Half.com is good too. I knew you could get college books, but wouldn't have thought about high school books being on there.

Lesley left me a comment how I enjoy my job & care about the kids I work with and I just have to say that it's really true. I take my job very seriously and really do care about the kids I work with. I get frustrated with teachers who are mean or don't take time to help kids who need something. My big mouth is finally good for something, because I am speaking up for kids who are falling through the cracks! So, thank you for those kind words, Lesley!