Apple Cup Victory!

Can you believe it? The Cougars won another Apple Cup last Saturday in Seattle. I watched the game from the comfort of my living room, but would have loved to have been there! The fourth quarter was so intense, and I'm not embarassed to say that I did my fair share of yelling at the TV!

A great thing about being a teacher of little ones is that I can influence them to make good choices, like being a Cougar fan! Every Friday during football season, we would be lined up at the door ready to go home, and the whole class yelled "Go Cougs!" I think we'll have to continue this tradition through basketball season too.

I also like to decorate the room with little Coug things here and there. On our alphabet strip, there is a cougar for the letter C, which I altered a bit by adding a Cougar head collar! For the Christmas season I also have my Cougar stocking hanging right up front next to our daily schedule.

And to add to all my happiness...none of my students are die hard Husky fans! I had a few last year who liked to give me trouble, but this year the Cougars reign in Mrs. Stein's class!

Is it Christmas yet?

As a teacher, one of the great perks is getting nearly three weeks off for "Winter Break." At my school we still can say "Christmas" and even dress up for Halloween. But back to the point, I am so ready for vacation. This year I have 27 darling little seven-year-olds depending on me to educate them. Unfortunately with this large number of kids I feel more like a referee than a teacher. Instead of spending 15 minutes on proper nouns, it's 10 minutes getting 54 eyes looking at me and 270 fingers out of their noses. Not to mention all of the "So-and-so hit me" and "so-and-so called me a name." (By the way, my kids do have nicer names than so-and-so, just keeping my hynie covered.) So that leaves 5 minutes learning about proper nouns. And in just a year these kids will be taking a state standardized test that is supposed to reflect on how effective my teaching is. I guess what this all really boils down to is that there are too many little darlings under my wings. I love each of them for their own little quirks, but man am I drained at the end of each day. So as I look at the calendar and count down the days, I can't wait for that Christmas vacation just for the sheer fact that I can re-energize! And shop :)

Our visit up north

This weekend Skip needed to go to Tacoma to do some scuba diving. He earned his first scuba certification and did four dives in the chilly waters of the Puget Sound. But the exciting part of the weekend was staying with the Cahill's! While Skip was diving on Saturday the rest of us went shopping for Katrina (Skip's God-daughter.) Scott and Staci are working on baby-proofing the house because Katrina is starting to scoot around on her own and will be crawling soon!

It was a fantastic weekend with our dear friends and the cutie Katrina!

I've had so much fun looking at all the blogs out there that it's time to start my own. Since there are no little Stein's, I'll keep you updated on how my cat, Max, is doing. Enjoy!