Celebrating punishment

Is it bad when I want to celebrate one of my students getting punished? I must say it did kind of put a smile on my face when one of my students was sent home early today for misbehaving. hehe

14 days and counting

I know I am the most terrible blogger because it has been way over a month since I last posted. I always have the hardest time figuring out what I should write about. All I can think about today is the fact that there are only 14 days of school left! I know it sounds crazy to know that today is May 26th, and there are still 14 days left. When I was in school, we were usually out for the summer by Memorial Day. It does kinda stink to know my summer doesn't officially start until June 16 (or actually the 17th after my teacher workday), but hey...atleast I get a summer vacation from my job! :)

Peeling Face

It has now been exactly seven days since my face was turned into a bright tomato. Last Saturday, I was outside at my family's yard sale from about 8:30 to 3:30 in the sunshine with absolutely no sunscreen. I was also wearing my slightly oversized sunglasses the whole day. By the time dinner rolled around, my face hurt to move and I discovered in the mirror that my forehead and nose were extremely burnt (my raccoon eyes were perfectly okay though). I diligently put aloe lotion on both areas for the next two days. When I went back to work on Monday though, the first thing that one of my students asked me was, "Are you hot?" I thought this was a strange question and I answered with a no and why. She said, "Well, your face is really red so I thought you might be hot." This continued on throughout the day as students commented about my red face while they also asked me if I was mad. As the week continued, my face started to peel off. It was actually pretty disgusting, and there seemed to be nothing I could do about it. The comments continued from my students. These are some of the things I heard:
What's wrong with your face Mrs. Austin?
Why is your face coming off?
Why is your skin falling off?
What is wrong with your nose? (the student said as he got super close to my face actually touching my nose)

What's crazy about all this is that most of my students have no personal experiences when it comes to getting burnt and peeling. The couple students that did have this experience were quite excited that they could relate to what I was going through. Hopefully, I have learned my lesson.
On day 7, I am still peeling away.

Braxton

I know I've been slack lately about blogging. I was sitting here trying to think of something to blog about, and all I could think about was our one and only child: Braxton. If you have never met Braxton, he is the cutest dog in the world (and also very hyper). He is a Jack Russell and he just had his one year birthday earlier this month. Isn't he cute? Even though he can drive us nuts sometimes (and he definitely drives any visitors nuts), he is still our spoiled little child. :)

My beautiful niece

This is a picture of my beautiful new niece, Charlotte! She was born on Thursday, February 12, 2009, in Norfolk, Virginia. If you don't know this already, my sister, her husband, and their son (my wonderful nephew) Owen, live up there. I went to visit last weekend to spend time with the family and meet Charlotte. Charlotte is a special baby who was born with a heart defect. She had to have surgery before she was even a week old! This is a photo that I took of her a couple days after her surgery. This was the first day that I got to see her with her eyes open! She is doing very well right now thanks to everyone's prayers and the Lord's blessings. She is home and doing all the normal baby stuff (ya know-the fun stuff-peeing, pooping, crying, etc.). Anyway, keep her and the family in your prayers. Raising two children under the age of 4 is not an easy task. Love you Christy!

Valedictorian??

While I was out of town last week visiting family (I will blog about that soon), my sister informed me she saw an interview on TV that she thought was quite interesting. When we returned back to her house that night, she pulled the interview up on the computer for me to watch. It was an interview on Jim Rome's show. Jim was interviewing Brian Vickers. For those of you that don't know this, I graduated with Brian Vickers and now he is a well-known racecar driver. Anyway, on to the interesting part. Toward the end of the interview, Jim makes a comment to Brian about how he was the valedictorian of his graduating class. This was the part of the interview where my mouth immediately fell open. He went on to mention Brian's GPA of 4.47. You may be thinking, "Good for Brian. He must be a smart guy!" Too bad this is not the truth! It seems quite interesting that he claims to be the valedictorian considering the fact that our high school did not name valedictorians. What was even more interesting was the fact that I graduated with a 4.507.

Valedictorian??? I think not.

Spread the word.

Overpaid Jobs

So I was listening to a local radio station the other night on the way home from Daniel's basketball game. The DJ was asking people to call in and say what they thought were the most overpaid jobs out there. The first person that called in immediately said that teachers were the most overpaid people. (If you don't already know this, I am a 3rd grade teacher). I immediately shot my most evil looking teacher glare at the radio as I continued to listen to this person talk about overpaid teachers on the radio. The person continued on to say that teachers should only be paid minimum wage for every hour that they work. As I was digging into my pocketbook for my cell phone so I could call into the radio station, one of the radio station people got on the air to talk to the person. The first thing they asked the caller was how old she was. She said she was only 13. At this point, I immediately started laughing, but still felt the need to call into the radio station to express my true feelings. The radio people went on to basically say that the caller had no clue what she was talking about since she was only 13. I don't know about you all out there, but I think teachers are severely UNDERpaid for the mess that they deal with on a day to day basis. Of course, I have a somewhat biased opinion since I am actually a teacher, but I'm sure you all will agree with me that teachers are NOT overpaid. :)

Fancy Eating

I've realized over my almost twenty-five years of living, that it's kinda hard to be "fancy-schmancy" or "super sophisticated" when you're from a small hick area like Hillsville, Archdale, etc. I may sometimes put on my tall clicky boots and a nice outfit and pretend to be "fancy-schmancy", but who am I really kidding? When you're somebody like me who can't even say the word country without indeed sounding super country, you can only fool so many people. Anyway, last night I had a good time with my family pretending to be all high class when we went to this fancy restaurant in High Point. What's terrible is that I cannot remember the name of the place, but it did have good food! Now, don't get me wrong...I have been to my fair share of nice restaurants in the last few years, so I do know how to behave in a place where you don't throw your peanut shells on the floor or throw your own trash away in the trash bins. I know all about the not putting your elbows on the table and using the outside silverware first as you are eating. I had a good time last night trying to remember not to talk too loud, put my elbows on the table, or swallow my whole meal in under four minutes. The whole experience made me remember that eating once used to be a whole evening of enjoyment. We tend to rush through dinner so fast these days that it's hard to truly enjoy it. Even though I did not exactly understand every thing on the menu (or even understand why anyone would be prompted to make sweet potato ravioli???), I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I also realized that even though you may never take the real country out of this girl, it sure is nice to atleast pretend like you're "fancy-schmancy" every once in a while.

Snow Day!

So I know I've been lazy by not posting lately, but I felt the need to blog because I have felt like such a kid today. Once the weather people started calling for snow yesterday, I immediately declared that I did not want school to get cancelled...I only wanted a delay. However, this morning at 5:45 when I checked the Internet, I couldn't help but to feel a little giddy to see that school was cancelled today. I was so excited to crawl back into my warm bed and sleep for a little while. It was even more exciting when Daniel found out he also didn't have to work. Needless to say, we are both still in our lounge clothes at 4:00 this afternoon. We've cooked breakfast, lunch, watched a movie, and watched our favorite show on DVD. It has been such a relaxing day, and I've loved every minute of it. So thank you snow! Even though I know I will probably somewhat regret this day in the future when the school calendar is adjusted and we will lose a vacation day, I will definitely enjoy it for now. :)