Catching Up… It's been a while!

I'm not even sure where to begin… except to say that I wish I'd been blogging more frequently!  Since October, there have been so much to write about!  I took notes at Matthew's parent-teacher conference, planning to write an entry from that, and that never seemed to happen.  I kept thinking it would, so I kept putting off other entries as well.  *sigh* And here we are in MARCH, and I don't know what to write about first!  I think I underestimated the impact having a new job would have… especially with three preps AND floating - and MIDDLE SCHOOL.  I'll just start in October and work my way forward… but knowing me, there'll be lots of circling forward and backward throughout.  Hang on tight!  Maybe after I get my thoughts out, I'll separate them into separate entries….. we'll see.

So, October.  We are all in the early stages of big transitions… Jeff has been in his role as Dean of the HS at Wesleyan for two months, Maddie has been a middle schooler, Matthew has been at Mill Springs doing FABULOUSLY, and I've been keeping my head above water with my new job (albeit barely at times) as a middle school math teacher at Wesleyan.  While my transition has been the hardest (as new jobs often are, and I underestimated the 'difference' of teaching middle school!), we are ALL incredibly thrilled with our new stations in life.  In fact, Matthew's incredibly smooth transition into life at Mill Springs is almost surreal!  At his conference (and when I find my notes that are safely filed… somewhere… I may add more), he attended, as well as all of the Comm Arts teachers.  They asked him to speak first and share how HE thinks things are going.  He went on to explain how much likes it and how well he's doing in classes.  He explained that he's working hard socially, but that he realized some time ago that he's an introvert.  Still, he's working on making friends and getting to know people. (wow!).  They agreed with his assessment and were impressed with how insightful he was (as were we!).  Then the praise fest began.  They couldn't say enough AMAZING things about Matthew.  They agreed that one of his strongest assets is his investment in "getting it right" once he has made a mistake (spoken harshly to a teacher or student, missed the bus, etc).  I can still hear Victoria saying that about him at Lionheart.  It's really awesome the way he has fallen into the rhythm of his new school.

Along about that same time, God put something on Jeff's heart and mine… and SEPARATELY, which I love.  Matthew has been doing so incredibly well at Mill Springs… he's keeping up with the work, doing more work than expected because he loves it so much, taking the initiative to get things signed, give us important reminders and the like, that I found myself thinking this thought more and frequently and seriously:  could he possibly go to Wesleyan now?


Here are some notes of things I need to expand on at some point.....

dude ranch; Tim (and Megan)… honestly instead of making me question W, it makes it seem even more appealing.  It's the environment he's going to be in throughout his life; time to learn to navigate it and have a social arena to challenge him not just round him out by bashing his rough edges in

our walks (the grade talk, the talk about being driven or called with matthew, walking to the bus stop, other talks?)

SNOW and ICE!  Woohoo!  Family time, cyber learning, sledding, snowman, fires all day every day, rainbow looming mania, tripoly

ssat, papers, writing

grateful girls

bye bye birdie… maddie loves it, maddie gets a line, amazing complements from Mrs. shcuerman and the 8th grade girls (clone, going to be a star, hope she sticks with it because if she's this good in 5th grade!, such a leader both in learning moves and being solid and in listening and NOT talking and encouraging others to do the same

PRINCIPAL… and now I'm destined for middle school… forever.  I will be the very best ms teacher I can be