Beginning of Summer 2012

So this has been my first official week of summer vacation. Although the last day of school was May 18th, we have been pretty busy ever since!


On Saturday the 19th, we boarded a plane (5:30 a.m. -yuck) for Boston, for a cousin's Bat Mitzvah. It was an AMAZING party. This was the first bar/bat mitzvah I have ever been to, and this was the most fun I have had in FOREVER... the DJ was just incredibly fun and entertaining. I wish I could book him for my wedding day... but anyways, sweet Rachel had the pink and green theme going on, and the decorations were SO CUTE! Before dinner, they lit the candles to the cake. She had a rhyme for each person/ group of people that she invited up to light a candle with her. I was not expecting this AT ALL, but she called all of her cousins up to light candle # 8, and she inlcuded me as one of her cousins, which I felt was SO special, because she is actually Dan's cousin... and Dan and I aren't even married... yet. So that was really cool.

The table name plates were SO CUTE as you can see... sorry it was cropped out .. I couldn't get a good picture for the life of me. I kept redoing them, as they somehow came out with lines all across them.


So that pretty much set the tone for the beginning of summer. It was a great weekend except for the fact that the early flight and long travels gave me some sort of sickness involving sleep deprivation/ dehydration/ caffeine withdraw/ stomach bug/ exhaustion/ something. Pretty sure that sums it all up. Either way. We walked around Quincy Market and downtown Boston on Sunday before our flight. It was a BEAUTIFUL day, and I got to spend Bonus quality time with the soon-to-be-in-laws, which would have been great had I not felt so crummy.

Beautiful, right? Oh how I wish I could go back, *sigh*.... But anyways, our flight came in around midnight on Sunday, and unfortunately, since I NEVER have the ability to sleep on planes, I came home EXHAUSTED and totally NOT ready to go back to work the next day. But I had post-planning and packing to do. Monday and Tuesday were our post-planning days, but I didn't get much done with being sick and retesting my student who Failed the CRCT the first time, so.... It took me part of Wednesday, also to get everything done. But I went back and sneaked a few pictures for ya. I wish I had taken pictures to show what it looked like before, but I will just have to take pictures as I get all set up for next year.

Classroom Tour: Starting from the door, and rotating around to the right

 So here is the view when you walk into the room, facing the opposite corner. We have our TV that is on every morning to broadcast our Dragon News Network (the 5th graders do a pretty good job!!) The blue that you see is covering up my bulletin boards so that they do not get dusty. I pinned the paper up with thumb tacks, so I will take it off in August and voila! My bulletin boards are already set up for the year! One is my reading corner bulletin, and the other is for the postcard exchange.

Here is the back corner of the classroom with my teacher desk and resource bulletins. It's great how much storage I have back there, but I can't stand the PINK! What an awful shade... I had the doors covered up with posters, and word walls, but I am rearranging it for next year.

 We were required to cover anything that would get dusty. So the big stuff that wouldn't fit in my cabinets is all hiding behind the yellow plastic table cloths ($1 from the dollar store~chyeah!) The wooden door in the corner is the bathroom. I love the convenience of having a bathroom in all the K-3 classrooms, but it sure gets nasty in there! Especially with 5 boys! WHEW! Back to what I was saying, on the back of this door, we have letters that said: "Toadally Awesome Work" to display good work. From here you can also see the classroom door, and the wall of bookbag hooks and shelf. This is the wall where I had my independent/ writing center. I had a pretty cool set-up this year, but I still can't wait to reorganize it this year so I can share it with everyone.

On the bulletin board under the flag, is where I do my Daily Calendar Math. The dry erase boards held my picture daily schedules, which I removed because there is a different one for each kid, and of course they will all change next year. The dry erase boards were also home to my standards, essential questions, and behavior management system...  Again, I took it all down because it all needs to be rearranged next year. 

Well, that's it for the tour... We were required to have everything off of the floor, so it took 3 days to get the room all packed up. I hope it doesn't take so long to put it all back, or I'll be in TROUBLE. With the addition of one day for professional learning, and another day to sit around and FINALLY RELAX, that took up all of last week :) Then, we got in the car and went to Atlanta to visit some friends for Memorial Day weekend.

Dan had a business trip in Alabama the day before, so it was my job to pack up the puppies and bring them with me. They did a really good job! We got out half-way at a rest stop to run and get water. And naturally they got back in the car and had to sit in the SAME seat, (no matter that they had the ENTIRE back seat to spread out), as always... lol they look so sad, but really they were having fun... I promise.. they love car rides...


So we went to the pool on Saturday and Sunday, and had a GINORMOUS barbeque. Our friend smoked brisket and a boston butt (i think?) on the grill. He has one of those amazing GREEN EGG grills (I want one!!) and the food turned out phenomenal... We also duplicated our favorite appetizer from our favorite BBQ restaurant.. (If you're ever in Atlanta, you NEED to try Foxx Brother's BBQ... owned by twin brothers, and it is AMAZING)... anyways. They have this appetizer called THE TOMINATOR: Tator tots, cheese, brunswick stew, more cheese, and IT IS AMAZING. so we recreated it, OF COURSE! and guess what, it was AMAZING (duh).

We had a lot of other food.... I made fresh zucchini boats from a recipe on Pinterest.. I never got a final picture of it, but check this out: This is a picture of all the FRESH vegetables we picked from our garden. Yup! We got some cucumber, jalapenos, and zucchini. We stuffed the jalapenos with cream cheese and bacon (a favorite) and I put bread crumbs, cheese, and grape tomatoes on the zucchini. We popped both on the grill and they. were. delicious. All of them. And then I made a chocolate cake with a little help from my friend. You need to try this recipe. I found it on Pinterest! Click the picture or the captions to get the recipes.
   
Zucchini Boats  
 
 Black Magic Cake Recipe


But on Monday, we had to go home. As much fun as we had, we needed to get home so my Dad could come and install our shutters. He's made some awesome shutters for our house, and he works on two rooms each time. This time he came to install shutters in the front of our house, and that was amazing.


I'm pretty sure that's enough posting for one day, so I'll have to add pictures of the shutters at a later time. He has to come back next weekend anyways because one of our windows is crooked (~yeah. Seriously.) and he has to trim the shutter so that it will fit. Hope you enjoy reading about my summer so far... I have had SO MUCH fun spending time with family, dogs, and friends, eating, and laying out in the sun. Hope you look into the delicious recipes that I had found. I would love to know what and how you cooked out on Memorial Day weekend! Please post a comment and share!


Thanks
~Sarah