October already. The first month of school has gone by in the blink of an eye. The first graders are slowly settling in. It didn't take me long to realize that first grade has to be the most difficult grade from K-5. The kids still need so much support but I only have a teaching assistant for the hour that I teach guided reading. It's frustrating. Thank God I've got a great mentor this year. Dawn is next door to me & has been my sanity over the last 8 weeks! It makes me feel better too see that after 20+ years of teaching, she's just as frustrated as I am most of the time. I've only been staying late at school until the latest 7PM. She's been known at times to leave after midnight! (like the night before parent orientation!) My goal this year is to get out of school earlier & keep my classroom more neat & organized (like every year! HA!) My website is fairly up to date already. I have to download the pics from Spirit week that I took of the kids this week and upload them to the site. From what I can tell, I'm the only teacher in the Primary School that's so up to date! Kudos to me!!! Needless to say, I'm definately looking forward to having Monday off for Columubus Day as our first day off since school started.
Jake & I celbrated Bailey's first birthday last weekend. I actually went to Wegman's and bought doggie ice cream for her. I had Jake take a pic of her wearing a party hat while I basically held it on her head. As soon as I let go of her she shook it off of course! - Crazy, I know, but she's our "baby" right now and will be for a while. - Let's say that getting pregnant hasn't been as easy as either Jake or I had thought. It's been 3 months now that we've been trying and so far - nothing. Hopefully it's just a matter of relaxing more and not stressing about it. I guess all we can do for now is wait & see.

I did it! After ten years of waiting I got my first tattoo! Jake's sister Barb and I went to a place in Greece where Kerri's brother-in-law tattoos on Thursday. We had figured we'd only have time to make an appt then run to a family dinner but the guys there actually had time for us. I showed them my ideas for my ladybug tattoo & they liked it. About a half hour later I walked out of the place with my adorable tattoo on my ankle. I expected it to hurt like hell but it wasn't bad at all. It was almost surreal. . . it still is. When looking down at it I still can't believe it's really there! Jake was shocked when I showed it to him . . . I hadn't told him what we were doing since he wasn't quite sure if he liked the idea or not. Well, he's since gotten used to the lucky bug and has admitted that it's kind of cute. I'm quite proud of myself that I got up the nerve and courage to finally do this for myself and myself alone.

Woke up this morning and put the local abc station on the tv. I was shocked to see the breaking news on Good Morning America (which ended a few minutes later). I'm attached to CNN... looking at how the Heathrow airport in London has basically been shut down. Apparently British police unfoiled a terror plot that was supposed to take down at least half a dozen planes over the Atlantic ocean after leaving Heathrow on route to the U.S. It's absolutely terrifying to me that only a few weeks ago we were flying that way.

9-11's 5 year anniversary is coming up next month and I hadn't really thought much of it before now. Living up here I've gotten to feel quite safe -- as well as push my memories of that horrific day well to the back of my mind. All of those memories seem to coming back to me right now. It's unsettling beyond belief.

I'm very proud to say that I've finished working with the fotos from vacation. The ones from England have been up on the Kodak Gallery and shared with friends. The ones from Austria are just about ready to be sent out to friends. I have to get a few more names of family friends from my Mom first.

The last two days I've been working in my new classroom. Between these 2 days I've unpacked & put away the stuff from about 30 boxes! Unfortunately I have at least 20 more to go. It feels really good to watch the empty cardboard containers stack up in the hallway outside my room. - Especially when the custodians don't remove them right away ;-) A few of my bulletin boards are already up and one filing cabinet is already full! I think I'm really ahead of myself this year! The open house for incoming parents & students is in 2 weeks and I don't have a single doubt about being ready for them! 16 of my Kindergarteners are in my new 1st grade class and I have 4 kids from other K classes. I'm really excited about the upcoming year and about being ahead of schedule/organized. -- Let's see how long it lasts! ;-)

Okay, I feel horribly guilty that I haven't posted anything since that first one. Shame on me.

I'm back at home since late Monday night. My poor body is still trying to adjust to New York time from Austrian time (6 hours ahead of us). Luckily I don't have to be at work so I'm napping with my awesome puppy on the couch whenever I feel like it! (Lucky me!)

Spending a week in England and 2 weeks in Austria was great. We were on the run every day trying to see as much as humanly possible! Jake & I were exhausted and can't believe that my parents not only were able to keep up with us... they set the pace! The only thing we didn't enjoy was the record breaking heat in both countries. I didn't need my jeans or my short sleeved shirts (any kind of sleeve was too much in that heat!) Maybe by the next time we go back there (many years from now probably) locals will have come around to believe that air conditioning is actually a good thing! Yes, you read correctly, there was no a/c in most of the stores, homes, cars, buses and trains! We seemed to be the only ones really bothered by it. Oh well - we survived.

I filled my 1 gig compact flash card with fotos during the first week in England (surprise, surprise) and was able to use our friend Aaron's pc to transfer them onto our 1 gig thumb drive. I filled up the card again during the 2 weeks in Austria. I haven't gotten them cropped & fixed up yet or transfered to the Kokak gallery yet for other people to see. That'll probably be my project later on tonight and tomorrow. I'm surprised that I only took about 650 pictures during 3 weeks. Thank God for my digitial SLR though... otherwise it would have been worse than Alaska last year (11 rolls of film in 10 days!). It's going to be hard deciding which ones to print out and put in the vacation scrapbook. (Will I need two scrapbooks (1 for the UK and 1 for Austria) or just 1?) We'll have to wait & see I guess. Hopefully I can get that scrapbook started and finished before school starts up again. (Let's not talk about the San Fransisco vacation pictures from Feb. '05 that haven't made it into a scapbook yet ;-)

Scrapbooking is just one of my projects for this summer. I have yet to move my classroom up to the 2nd floor yet (supposedly the custodians will move my stuff up this week). Once that's done I'll have to spend at least a week (a day here and there) unpacking and setting up. I also want to sort out stuff in our basement at home. We have boxes down there that I don't even know about! Hopefully my Mom was serious about coming up here to help with that. I wanted to paint and redecorate our living room too but Jake just laughs and says there's not enought time. I think that's wishful thinking on his part b/c he likes the living room just the way it is. . . an exact duplicate of the set up in his apt. before we got married ;-) I would love to do the room just to prove that it can be done - & make it more to my liking of course! On top of those projects there are friends to get together with, German Fests to work at and dance at, and other social obligations that were signed up for months ago and were almost completely forgotten about! How can the summer vacation go by so quickly? It seems like I just got rid of my kids the other day!

Speaking of time going by quickly. . . Jake & I celebrated our third wedding anniversary on the 5th travelling from England to Austria. It doesn't feel like it's been that long at all . . . until I look at our pictures and see how much all the kids have grown since then. We've gotten quite a bit accomplished during the last 3 years. The last thing on our "list" is to have a baby and we've taken on the task of trying to get pregant. We thought we might be able to be successful at the attempt while in Europe, but we weren't that lucky to have it happen on our first try. I was a bit disappointed since 2 of our friends were able to get pregant on their first tries. We've still got plenty of time, but I've got my fingers crossed that we won't have any problems like so many of my coworkers have had. Only time will tell I guess.

I'm off to see how Jake is coming outside with installing our new pool ladder. I can't wait to jump into the water and get some relief from the heat. Maybe Bailey will join us!

Wow. I'm actually doing this. It's not something I envisioned myself doing. I guess I was intimadated by thinking I'd have to come up with some pretty amazing things to post. Some of my initial ramblings might just be that. Hopefully I'll get into things that are more thought provoking or get back to my poetry writing - having Ca inspire me!

Tommorow is the last day of the school year and I think I'm in denial. There's so much to do yet I'm beginning this Blog. For some odd reason I'm not ready to say farewell to my Kindergarteners yet . . . not sure why, especially since they are going to be my first graders in September! The classroom is only half packed, requistions partially filled out, student foto albums still empty, but report cards are all filled out!

My mind is brimming with school projects to cram in tomorrow in addition to projects to begin with the new class in September. Of course there are a zillion personal things to do as well. I found my mind so full of thoughts that I began writing them down while driving home from work! (No State Troopers around thank God!) Less than two weeks to go until we leave for Europe and not enough hours to prepare for the trip. I wish I could have a remote like Adam Sandler does in his new movie. Then maybe I could do everything I want to.

Well, I've got to stop rambling and get moving on my last minute chore list for school. We'll see how many tears get shed tomorrow. (Including adults'!)

Nicky