it's done! (well, almost still :) (8.18.07)
You can see the before and after shots of the classroom above. All of that stuff in the middle of the room had to be sorted and cleaned within about three days! Now we all know why Leslie's been at school from dawn until waaay past dusk all week! She had back to school night Thursday night, and it was a huge success!
If you can believe it (I know you can), she was there all day today, and will be there all day tomorrow getting ready for Monday. Hope you enjoy the pictures!
Emily's been excited getting ready for her school to start as well, which starts on the 27th. Hopefully we'll get some pictures of her new class and post them here as well.
leslie's classroom is almost finished! (8.14.07)
After working non-stop for four days now (and I mean NON-STOP), Leslie is almost done getting her classroom ready! We'll take pictures and post them soon, but tonight is back to school night for her, so she has to be done today!school's back! (8.14.07)
Well, that's it for summer! Teachers all report today, and school begins next Monday. Emily went to the doctor yesterday and we found out she is in the 75% now in height! We guess she's been growing overtime lately or something... Emily got to see Chebon last night - he came over and saw us, it was great to see him!
Anyway, not much else, but I found this through somebody on pownce, and since this movie is up there in my top 3, I had to post it. Talk to you later!
emily's first fun with a mouse! (8.13.07)
What could possibly be better than a first smile? A first crawl? A first step? Why, it's learning to use the mouse for the first time, that's what! Emily grabbed the mouse yesterday and started shooting fireworks! We're so proud :)
Leslie may get to start moving things into her classroom today! She is VERY excited as well!
what...no plans today? (8.12.07)
A day off??? We've almost forgotten what it's like! We will probably do some shopping today, get ready for the week, and probably play some in the back yard (pool, toys, etc). A relaxing Sunday!
Emily and I went to Shrek yesterday after I got home from Camp Turning Points. You can check them out on Picasa, or just click either of these pics. She was great yesterday, and we had a lot of fun! I keep forgetting about that dollar theater! We got two tickets and some popcorn for less than one ticket at Spotlight.
another busy day (8.11.07)
I'm up early to get to work in time for Camp Turning Points. I still find it amazing how much time it takes to coordinate an event that really only lasts a few hours. It reminds me of the days planning band functions that took FOREVER to plan, and then it was over before I knew it. I can't wait to see if all my notes from last year paid off (last year was a HUGE learning experience for me... during this day last year I ran around with a notebook writing "remember to do THIS next year!!!"). Hopefully it will go well today!
When I get back from that this afternoon, it'll be time to mow a few lawns, and then if there is time, go to another party (going away) for one of my former students. I hope we make that one, I think Emily will love the horses out there.
That's it for now!
more parties today! (8.10.07)
I'm getting ready for the 8th grade team party at my house, and Leslie is on her way to the McKinley party for the year! Today I got to spend most of the day with our new teachers, and I'm very excited about this year at Alcott! They are a great group of teachers, and I can't wait to see them in action when the year begins!
Leslie is getting VERY excited for her new classroom, so we're getting ready for that as well. Not much else now, hopefully we can have pictures up later or tomorrow!
it's emily's birthday today!!! (8.9.07)
We can't believe she's three already! We're planning a special birthday lunch for Emily today, even though we don't know yet where we're going. I'll be at enrollment all morning, then we'll head to lunch. Leslie found out today that she MAY be in her classroom next Tuesday, so she's getting very excited! If that happens, we all know where she'll be living for several days after! Moving all of those boxes and stuff into her room is no small task!
Being at work sure is different than being able to see Emily all day every day during the summer. Every time I think about how little time I get to spend with her now, I think back to just a few years ago when I was doing band. In that world, I got up before Emily did, left home before Emily was up, stayed at school usually until after 8 or 9 PM every night, and Emily was asleep by the time I got home just about every night. This didn't include the weekends that I was away on a band contest, function, trip, etc. Now I get to see Emily every morning before I leave, and get to see her every night, and what a wonderful difference that is! I know this will change as our night events start stacking up, but it sure is nice right now!
I know very few of you are very interested in the online world of television, but things are getting rather interesting out in web-world. Jim Lauderback, former editor in Chief of PC Magazine (for a loooong time) just became the CEO of revision3. Now, just shortly after that, Patrick Norton (of one of my FAVORITE SHOWS OF ALL TIME: THE SCREENSAVERS on Tech TV before it became poop G4 tv) has left DL.TV to join revision3. Rev3 is home to Diggnation (taking stories from one of my absolutely favorite websites, digg.com with Kevin Rose (old ScreenSavers star), Alex Albrecht (ScreenSavers) and now I hear Sarah Lane (ScreenSavers). Leo Laporte is still steering the huge ocean liner TWIT, but the thing I don't understand about that huge deal is Leo just does audio, no video. Sure, he's doing the new Lab with Leo, but if the iptv thing is going where we all think it should, I feel that Leo should jump at the chance to start his own network of video shows.
Wow, a lot of ranting for nothing here, but things are getting very exciting on the internet tv front. With DLTV and Cranky Geeks now on tivo, and apple tv now being able to stream other shows like this, I think it's a big shift in how we view television. They've been saying for a while now that internet video is possible by anybody with a camera, so instead of being corporate driven, it truly is user driven (those shows which get watched survive).
Okay okay, I'm done for now with this, back to Emily's birthday. The best part of telling her again and again what today is for her, she keeps asking "again?" because to her, she's already had her birthday... we're just going to confuse her into thinking that everybody gets two birthdays if we keep this up!
So, happy birthday Emily! We love you very much!
work, work, work... (8.8.07)
We've been busy settling in to the new norm: getting up, me going to work, Leslie and Emily going to work at her school, me coming home, us all walking/running (in the heat!) then off to bed. This week I've got a meeting at the house Friday night, while Leslie has a party for her faculty somewhere else.
Emily has been enjoying the pool in the backyard with the toy from her birthday, as well as playing with all of her new toys, and wearing all of her new clothes! Tonight she rode bikes with Abby and Ryan outside while I ran, and went over to Sonic near Mema's house.
Her nightly ritual these days is to get settled in (after reading a book with daddy, saying her prayers and singing a song with mommy, then saying goodnight to both of us with hugs and kisses) is to wait a few minutes and then yell either "daddy daddy....daddy" or "mommy mommy...mommy" and wait for one of us to come in so she can smile at us and stall to keep us in there.
I think she's ready for her school to start again, so that should be very exciting this Fall!
Not much too else going on, just boring work all the time now. We'll take some more pictures soon and post them here and on picasa. See you later!
Emily's birthday party (8.4.07)
Today we had Emily's big party, and it was great! Thanks to everybody who showed up, and all the wonderful presents! Emily had a fantastic time, and we hope everybody else did too! She wanted to sleep in all of her new clothes... made it rather interesting at bedtime.
Again, thanks for everything!
Movie night update and getting ready for emily's big party today! (8.4.07)
Well, everybody got over to the house around 6:00 last night, we played wii for a while, Emily gave lots of house tours, and then we watched 300 (I hadn't seen that one yet). Excessive is a pretty good word to describe this one. It was a lot like Gladiator, without the plot, character development, dialogue, emotion, or substance. All that being said, I liked it :)
Thanks to the crew for joining Leslie, Emily, and myself last night for a little food and hopefully some fun! We hope to do it again soon!
Now we're up and already getting ready for Emily's birthday party tonight! I've got to go and get some spray for bugs in the backyard before tonight, clean a little, and set up the toys in the yard. Leslie is still hard at work getting food ready (the party last night thought that some of the food was for them... we may be 2 cupcakes short :) )
And... I've just noticed that picasa is finally uploading my videos to the site! You can check out some of the videos in Emily's new dress, and also movie night (showing off the wii in action on the big screen).
Movie night! (8.3.07)
Well, today after a morning full of meetings, I managed to make it to Dillards to look for some new clothes. Bill is the guy who helped me last year, and his comment last year was (after I told him I was working at a middle school) "Sorry, we don't make anything in lead." Well, it's a year later, and believe it or not, as soon as I walked in he remembered me. He showed me a TON of great stuff, so Leslie is going to have to go tomorrow and decide what's "cool" and what I should stay away from :)
We're getting closer and closer to school starting, and I can't wait! It was great seeing a lot of the teachers coming in over these past days preparing for the year, and we all are anxious to see our kids again!
Tonight is movie night at my house! It looks like about 8 or so people will be joining us, so that will be great! Leslie has gotten stuff for 7 layer dip, as well as a taco bar. The Facebook invite list has 20 "maybe" members of this party, so if we end up having close to 30 people here tomorrow, it sure will be packed up there in the movie room! To get ready for this, I mowed the lawn today, and for a large portion of the back yard, it was the first time in about a month, due to it being completely under water from all the rain. I'm sure you can imagine how much fun THAT was!
We'll be cleaning like mad tomorrow getting ready for the evening, and as soon as that's over, it's time to get ready for Emily's 3rd year birthday party! We cannot believe she's already 3!!! She sure can though, just ask her! :)
Well, that's about it for today. I'll take some pictures of the movie night and post them here and on picasa. I'm sure it will be a great time! I wonder what everybody is going to want to watch?
(8.2.07)
Not much going on right now, so pretty boring posts... Leslie is desparately hoping for her classroom to be finished in time for school. I've been at work, and things are starting to move quickly! Emily fell and got a nasty little rug burn at Toys R Us tonight, so that wasn't too much fun, but I did have a chance to upload some more photos and movies (with the new camera!) to picasa. You can see Emily showing off her new dress in them here.
Friday I'm having a movie night for some folks, so that should be fun, and Saturday is Emily's birthday party! We've been looking around for stuff for her, and Leslie has been planning her cake and other stuff for it. We hope it will be lots of fun, and hope to see everybody there!
Oh yeah, a couple of other things... First, I figured out what the nonsense was with the camera. It's called purple fringing, and this canon seems to have it big time. The only time it is a real problem is on video recording and playback. It's really annoying, but I'm getting over it. Also, Ryan just got an iphone, and it is KILLING me not having one. I know deep down I want to wait until they work out a few kinks in it, but JEEEEEEEEEZ it is awesome, and I even figured out how to sync all my calendar stuff with it today, which was my major hangup with it! Here's the major problem though: if I wait until the holidays to treat myself (or beg other family members... hint hint Leslie!! :) ) to get one for me, then it's too close to the "probable" time the 2nd gen version of it will hit the streets, improving on (hopefully) the network speed, phone jack, and other various things. So, if I wait that long, might as well wait for the second gen version. BUT, if I get one now... well... that just means that I need the new one anyway, because I'm SURE Leslie would want one anyway!
Yeah, I know... I'm pathetic.