Bye Bye Fall :-(

Well, the fall weather was nice while it lasted, but now it's just plain cold.  Yesterday wasn't too bad actually.  It got up to the lower 50's.  But we're staying in the 40's most of the time now and it has been raining a lot, and there is lots of snow on the mountains which means it's coming our way, so yesterday I got winter tires put on my car.

And congratulations to Mitzi for correctly answering my riddle (the second time).  For those of you who missed it (shame on you for not reading my posts! J/K!!), the question was, "Before Mt. Everest was discovered, what was the world's tallest mountain?"  And of course, the answer is Mt. Everest.  It was still the tallest before it was discovered. :-)  

I turned on my heat for the first time last night, and a few minutes after it kicked in, the vent that runs along the bottom of two of my walls where the air comes out sounded like there was a rushing river in my apartment.  I'm not exactly sure what was happening, but Tim says his does that too, so I guess it's normal.  I was half asleep, and it was really loud and I was very confused and thought my apartment was being flooded or was about to be...yet I just laid there and went back to sleep.

I have been working on editing the video tape Tim and I took on our road trip from Texas to Anchorage this summer, and finally got it done and now I'm having trouble burning it to a DVD. It keeps telling me there's not enough disk space to encode something but I don't know if it's talking about my computer or the DVD.  I'm going to check out some other DVD-R's and see if there are some with more space, but I'm also going to see if I can hook my computer to the TV and just play it that way.  Don't you love technology?  And I found some tapes of family vacations and different things from several years ago that I want to put on a DVD as well.

This is my last week of freedom, as my Cultural and Ethnic Awareness class starts on October 5th.  Please pray that I don't stress myself out and take it out on Tim. :-)  This is my second class for my masters in Marriage and Family Therapy and it's 10 weeks long and will end just as Christmas break is beginning so that will be really nice. :-)

Ok, time to figure out my computer issues and get a nap in before church tonight!

Good Weekend

Well, the dance classes were a success! Tim actually had fun and said we could go out every once in a while to the different dances there are around town. :-) We ended up not going to the dance on Saturday night because the instructors were going to be there, watching and helping and we really just wanted to do it for fun and not be critiqued, so we're going to practice together and then go out some other time to just a normal dance. It was good to learn the basics and a couple variations. Tim enjoyed getting to lead and decide what he was going to have me do (spin, not spin, left side turn, right side turn, etc...)

Well, it's time for P.E., so I guess I better skedaddle. :-) Did anyone read my riddle or is it just too difficult to figure out?? :-) I'll give it one more day, and then give the answer.

Have a marvelous Monday!

Food and Dancing (Not the baby-making kind)

Today we had a potluck at work for all the September birthdays. There were four this week and one more in a couple of weeks. I made taco soup because it's really easy: just cook some meat and dump everything in a crockpot. It was a big hit and it was just about gone by the time I got to eat. I decided points (Weight Watcher's) don't count on your birthday (or on the day before your birthday :-) ).
Tonight Tim and I are going to the first session of our dance workshop this weekend. It's West Coast Swing Styling for all levels, which should be interesting...not sure what that entails but it should be fun. Tomorrow morning we have a West Coast Swing class for novices and then a novice Country Western 2-step class. After lunch there are intermediate swing and 2-stepping classes, and maybe I can convince Tim to sign up for those. We'll see how the beginning classes go before we decide if we're really ready for intermediate. Tomorrow evening is a dance to practice all the moves we learned. This will be Tim's first dance class experience so it should be lots of fun. I discovered swing dancing a few years ago when I went with a group from church and liked it a lot. It's pretty simple and just a lot of fun to twirl and none of that bumping and grinding stuff that makes babies (Church of Christ folks will know what I'm talking about :-p).

It's been a pretty interesting week. One particular student who didn't like me last week for enforcing the rules with her has liked me this week....another kid had a perfect day on Tuesday, but has had a few melt downs since then. Every day is just unpredictable and you never know what's going to happen. And now it's time to get back to work!!

Riddle Me This!

Before Mount Everest was discovered, what was the world's tallest mountain?  

The first person to answer will be the winner!  (Not that there's a prize, but I thought it would be fun.)

Work is going pretty well.  I've been doing a lot of coloring.  We made some posters to brighten up the room and then today I started on a poster for the math room: Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally to help the kids remember the order of operations.

Well, Tim is bugging me and we need to go to the gym so I'm signing off now!

Fall Colors

The leaves on the trees are beautiful, so I just wanted to share them with everyone.  Goodnight!

Well, it stopped raining just enough for us to take our engagement photos yesterday afternoon. We went to the "park strip" across the street from the church where there was a cool train engine and lots of flowers. A funny story about the train: I walked up the railing to get in the front of the train, and as I turned, I noticed a pair of legs and realized a homeless man was sleeping there! He had a heavy coat on with the hood over his face and I quickly turned around and we took our picture on the ground and on the very front of the outside of the train. The pictures came out really nice, and I've put them on Flickr. You can see them by going to http://flicker.com/photos/amy_thompson.
I weighed this morning and I have lost another pound! So that's a total of 13 pounds for me! :-) Tim has lost about 20, so we're doing really well! We're just doing Weight Watchers and going to the gym about 3 days a week. Our schedules are pretty full so it's hard to get it in every day.
As far as wedding plans, my flowers are ordered and should be arrive in 3-4 weeks and I got some thank-you notes yesterday. I have picked out the bridesmaid shoes, so I need to relay that info. to the girls, and I still need to find beverage napkins, and we're going to order disposable cameras for our guests to use during the reception so we get lots of fun pictures.
Yay for the Cowboys winning their season opener! I am actually happy for football season to be starting. I guess it's from all the Cowboy games I watched with my family last year, it kind of got me into it. But the game wasn't on TV up here. Hopefully I'll be able to watch next week.
It's getting colder! The highs this week are in the mid to upper 50's with lots of rain. I should probably get my snow tires soon.
I hope everyone has a good week!

Happy 9-9-09!

Joke of the day: Today's date, 9-9-09 in German would be translated, "No, no, oh no." :-)

This weekend Tim and I are getting our engagement pictures taken! There are a couple of places I have in mind. There is a park strip across from the church that would have several neat places to take pictures, and there is a botanical garden that I want to check out too. Hopefully it doesn't rain. Summer is definitely over. It's been in the upper 50's and lower 60's the last couple of weeks. This week the highs are about 60. It's nice sweater weather if the wind's not blowing, which is great!

We were at the bookstore on Monday and I found a DVD to teach sign language! It comes with a book to help you learn the signs and I watched part of it that night and learned lots of signs for different family members, rooms of the house, and basic question words like who, what, when, where, why, and which, and different prepositions, some of which I already knew. I really like signing and one of the TA's at work is fluent in ASL because both of her parents are deaf. I don't have anyone else to sign with, but I just like it and think it would be neat to know.

I'm practicing my piano every day and am getting better at the exercise Larissa taught me. She also gave me a book of simple solos and I learned the theme to The Munster's among others.

There are so many things I want to do. I also have lots of books on my bookshelf that I want to read. I really need to start reading my book for my class that starts in less than a month. My goal was to read it before the class starts so I'll already be familiar with it. One of the intervention coaches is really good at drawing, and that made me want to start drawing again. There's just so much I like to do, but I never take the time to do it. Plus there are the things I NEED to do, like laundry, and call my dental insurance, and plan a wedding (although I'm finding that most of what's left can wait until I'm home in November and December). I got the flowers done so that makes me feel better!

Well, I should get back to work. Just wanted to update since I hadn't written in a couple of days. Oh, and our Save the Dates should be going out by the end of this week, so that is exciting!

Good News and Bad News

I like giving bad news first, so then the good stuff is that much better.  My week is not getting any better...there were several incidents at school today.  One student got mad and pushed, kicked, and punched our intervention coaches and was arrested and suspended till Tuesday.  Another student scratched up his teacher's hand really bad and she had to get it bandaged, and one of our students didn't get his way and blew up and had to be carried out of the room by three intervention coaches.  Lucky for me, I was not involved with any of the incidents but it makes me sad to see our kids act like that.

Now for the good, exciting part...I'm starting piano lessons tomorrow!!! :-)  Larissa, our piano player at church, who is from Russia and is an AMAZING piano player gives private lessons and I asked if she had room for a new student and she did!  My lessons will be Fridays at 4:15.  I'm really excited because I have been wanting to improve my playing for a long time!

More good news is we get a long weekend this weekend which gives me lots of time to do wedding stuff!  So hopefully the kids will be nice tomorrow and will start the weekend off well!

I've Been Working on the Railroad...er...wait...

This week has been a little harder than last week. The kids have been having more melt downs and there is one particular student who is capable of doing her work and behaving well, but is afraid of getting older and having responsibility, so she chooses to act out and can manipulate the system to get her own way. I can see through her and don't like letting her (or anyone) get away with breaking the rules, so I have been trying to calmly enforce the rules with her which makes her mad and she was really rude to me all day yesterday and the day before, not wanting me to help her, walk with her, sit with her, etc. And because she has an attitude with me it make it difficult for me to be positive with her. And because I'm frustrated at work all day, but can't take it out on the kids, I take it out on Tim afterwards. I become more argumentative than normal and just makes Tim frustrated and he's too nice to say anything to me about it. He really is wonderful and I feel bad for taking out my anger on him. So, my goal from now on is to be nice to Tim because he's not the one who made me frustrated.
One cool thing about yesterday was a family of moose walked by the front of the school on the front porch in the morning. One of the other TA's came in and told me they were walking by and I went to the window just in time to see the back end of the last one. It was pretty cool.
This morning I didn't set my alarm correctly and I slept until 7:30, which is the time I'm supposed to be at work! I called the front desk to let them know I would be late, and I made it by 7:53. I also get to leave early today, at 12:30 to go to the New Employee Orientation at the district's administration building from 1 to 4:30. Not that I'm excited about the orientation, but it will be nice to miss the worst part of the day, and get paid for working an extra hour and a half. :-)
I think I'm going to use this weekend to get a lot of wedding stuff done. I made a list of everything that needs to get done, but just haven't had much time to do it.
Well, back to work for me! Thanks for reading!