When we moved last year we took a bunch of stuff from storage and stuck it in the basement. Then when we were hosting Christmas we put several unpacked boxes and items in the basement. Result: mess in the basement.
After wanting to get storage shelves for months we finally got some thanks to a Labor Day sale. I put them together yesterday and started moving things around.
Today I went back down and continued sorting and going through and reorganizing all the boxes and stuff and working to get everything where we can actually find something if we need it.
Next phase in the project is rearranging all that is next to the shelves and donating what we don’t need so we can move the holiday decorations and Christmas tree over next to the shelves.
We have one huge recycle pile …
A small pile to put away somewhere in the house and several picture frames to get hung (finally!!) …
(a few screens to dispose of as well) …
But mainly, we have more open space in the basement for the kids to ride their scooters around and maybe we can someday get a ping pong table and an elliptical down here.
Oh, and the basement is free of several spider egg sacs and a few of the spiders and bugs who dared to show they creepy crawly selves. Just need to empty the shop vac before they hatch or whatever.
I’m so thankful for this house and all this space.
I’ll apologize in advance, this is going to be a random post.
First off, I’ve been super distracted and stressed the past week. Ok, that’s optimistic, the past two weeks. Pretty certain this has impacted my family in a negative way.
While I am so glad to have more time at my school, and can just be in ONE school, I have been struggling to get adjusted to my new schedule and new responsibilities … and of course ended up having a ton of meetings that sucked away my time as well. And now I’m training coworkers to administer assessments. But at least once they are trained that will be a HUGE thing off my plate. Still draining and never ending. Well, I’m hoping that eventually some things will end and I’ll get used to my new work situation, but really, I am stoked about having one more week till Christmas break!!
On to the great things.
Weekends are awesome, can I get an amen?
We were so very busy, but we got a lot done and while I may not have had much time to relax it was nice to be productive.
This morning I had a nice time at church. The handbell choir is my favorite part of Christmastime and they played several Christmas songs this morning with the singing choir. Bummed we had to leave early to get to the football game, but I had been looking forward to the date with my hubby for a few weeks!
There was an incredible excitement and energy at Mile High today. I haven’t experienced anything like it at any game since we’ve had season tickets. Still, most of the game was just plain old booooring. We were waiting for some 4th quarter magic anyway, but seriously, the Broncos waited till the bitter end to bring it. But bring it they did! Looks like all is lost, and then a touchdown and a field goal and all of a sudden everyone is standing and cheering and the game is in overtime?!?! Then in overtime they recover a fumble get the game winning field goal. Bears down.
So exciting to walk out of the stadium with all the excitement and everyone high-fiving you.
What a crazy half hour.
headed to Target to get groceries without the kids and while there I overhear someone say “the Broncos lost” all snarky and I said no they didn’t! The two women were so shocked and did not believe me. I guess one was at the game and left early. Doesn’t she know that like every game won with Tebow at quarterback has been won in the last few minutes and overtime is now almost typical?? It was fun to set the record straight.
Now to finish another fun season of the Amazing Race.
Phew.
After Stephan throwing up several times yesterday I was nervous to send him school this morning and pretty much expected a call from his school all day.
But …
He made it, and had a great day too!
He got all his work done.
Had three recesses.
Played freeze tag with a bunch of people.
Got to go pick out two books at the book fair.
I even had a good day.
Still didn’t even come close to getting everything done, but I had several productive conversations and have gotten some things in place for after Turkey Break.
And most important, I finished my two reports for meetings tomorrow.
We also went to spend our Kohl’s cash so we don’t forget.
Folded all the wash. More wash to come, but progress all the same.
This is what I wanted and I am very glad everything has finally worked out and I will now just be at one school for my 24hrs/week.
But I still feel bad about deserting my team. While there were things I disliked there, the team I worked with was great and they work so hard to support the kids at the school despite lots of issues put of their control. It was an honor to work with them the past few months. I know they will survive and have some support from a floater psych, but it will not be the same and who knows when someone will be hired to take over.
So while I am long forward to the new challenge ahead at my other school, I hate leaving the other school in the middle of the year.
Here’s to hoping they find them a permanent psych soon and all goes well as I start focusing on supporting my other school with new role added into the mix.
Sheesh. I’m such a whiner.
I am exhausted.
Thank goodness tomorrow is FRIDAY!
Being that it’s Thursday and Turkey Day is almost upon us, and I just need to focus on the positive …
I’m thankful for …
… lunch with a friend today. Always wonderful to have a break in the middle of work chaos.
… a husband who loves me even when I’m a stressed out crazy woman.
… my kids. They might drive me batty sometimes, but are both sweet and Stephan was so willing to help me with all the cleaning around the house this afternoon.
… my job. Right now it may not be super fun, but I have a job, I like working with kids and hold out hope that somehow what I do makes a difference.
… my car.
… my house. It might be small, but people all over the world live in smaller places and there’s less to clean!
… my tech gadgets. I really love my iPad and an working on getting used to the new laptop I have for work. When they make life easier that is very helpful.
I did NOT want to get up and go to work this morning.
I wanted a snow day.
We got the snow, but not a day off.
So I dragged myself up and went off to work.
The whole morning I hard time with focus. So easy to get sidetracked and so hard to get anything done. When I finally got around to checking email I noticed one that changed made my day. For those who don’t know the short version of the story is that I really wanted more time at my middle school and in September found out that I was going to get more time … the process mid-year has taken FOREVER. Longer than I would have expected. But now, I finally have the official word that things are going to work out. Another psychologist is going to take over until they find a permanent replacement at my other school!!! I have one more crazy day with several meetings and then the week after she will come out, meet the team there and I’ll give her the run down of all the kids on the staffing list … and then I’ll be able to be at just ONE school for my 24hrs/week.
I can finally see the light at the end of at least this tunnel 🙂
Much of the time I feel like we are in our routine and doing our best to keep plugging away.
We have our big ultrasound next week and are all looking forward to that. We might all get the flu shot while we are there as well, though I’m still debating. So far things with the pregnancy seem to be going well. I’m feeling baby move pretty regularly, and Andy’s even felt the baby kick too, something he was never patient enough to feel with Stephan. The other day in the car Stephan asked me if he could hold the baby when she came out of my tummy. He’s such a sweetie. He thought he could hold the baby in the car, and I assured him we have a special seat for baby.
Last weekend on my birthday Andy took me up to Estes (we dropped Stephan off at nana & papa’s) and we enjoyed a nice evening watching All About Steve, which ended up being a great movie. Saturday morning we had a yummy breakfast at The Egg & I and after checking out of the hotel we wandered around downtown Estes for a couple hours before we ate an awesome pizza lunch at Bob & Tony’s and drove back to Loveland to do some more shopping and pick up Stephan.
The first “big” thing I figured out how to do in Photoshop is stitching photos together into a panorama. With no clue where to start, I ended up searching the web and finding a step-by-step process. When I started that I noticed that when you create a new file in Photoshop, there are these “Photomerge” options, one being panorama. Um. Yeah. Can you say easy? Here’s my Estes pano:
Stitching photos together is a great thing when it comes to scenery, so I’m glad to have found a simple way to make that happen. I think as I figure it all out, I’m going to love Photoshop as much as my sister.
I very much enjoyed playing with my GPS on the trip, and that my mom was able to order it with her Amazon prime so it came in time. Also great that Amazon sold the GPS for $100 cheaper than just about anywhere.
More birthday deals came in the form of a few dinners out and I was able to use the gift card from my in-laws to get a chain for my necklace pendant. I don’t know if I ever blogged about it, but one day a few weeks ago when I was picking Stephan up from school I noticed I had a chain, but no pendant. Freaked me out since it’s the necklace Andy & Stephan had gotten me for Mother’s Day. I freaked, figuring it could be anywhere, but then, as I was leaving the school with Stephan looked down and saw my pendant on the floor. I decided not to wear it again until I got a new chain! Thankfully, I was able to find a chain with the right length at Kohl’s and it was on sale on top of our coupon and my gift card paid for just about the whole necklace.
My parents both sent me some money and pooling that, I was able to order Photoshop. I’ve been wanting a new photo program and HP sent a deal for $20 off after we got our new printer. After ordering, Adobe gave me a rebate for another $20 since I downloaded it, another added bonus! While I have no clue where to start with the program, in time I’ll figure things out. Next week is fall break, so I should at least have some time then.
Today we are stuck waiting around the house for UPS. While I sincerely loathe having to wait around for them ALL DAY, I’m very excited to be getting my new phone, so aside from being a little impatient, I’m dealing with it. Yet another new thing for me to have to figure out, but as long as I can find a solid replacement for my beloved HandyShopper program on my Palm, I think I’ll be one happy camper. I’ve got one I’m going to try and start with that I’ve read some positive reviews on, we’ll see if I like it or need to go on a hunt for another one. I’m pretty much over carrying around my PDA for just the shopping list program.
The last thing I just want to whine about a little is work related. We have to create two objectives every year and this year my department is mandating one, the other we do with our school. I feel overwhelmed most of the time with what I have on my plate right now and don’t want to be adding any more to that, I think I should be able to create these objectives around what I am already doing. On top of that I’m out in March when the baby is born. I’m feeling pretty stressed because they are saying we need to do these with 30 students and I just can’t add that kind of additional work to my already loaded plate. No idea how to finagle my way out of this, but I’m sure going to try. The one thing that helps is knowing that it’s not tied to my pay, like it is with some people. That would probably make me really freak out. At least the one at school I can work around the student amount. At least I think I can, we’ll see.
While we almost missed our flight on Wednesday, we made it back. After getting in late we all had an early morning. I headed off to work for my first day back and Andy and Stephan trekked up to Loveland. Somehow we all made it through! I think I’ll like my new school this year. It’s a charter and they are starting with only 6th grade so there are only 120 students and I have a day a week there. Will be interesting, but I think not in a bad way.
This morning I was able to go see my chiropractor and run to Sam’s for a few things. As we were walking to get other things, I noticed an end cap with Thomas movies, each of which came with two wooden railway train cars, all for $9.86! I was excited and started searching through them for ones that Stephan doesn’t have and might like. The two car trains like Emily, Donald, Edward and Henry are all $19.99 at Target so getting two of them and two videos for the price of one train at Target was awesome. We picked up Emily and Donald and might consider going back for Edward and Henry. I’m also contemplating the one with the golden Thomas, but he already has two Thomas trains so I’m not sure we need four just so we can have the gold one.
I also found this sight word video that I’d seen an ad for in a magazine and decided to try that. So far he likes watching it and wants to watch it again already. We’ll see if he eventually picks up any of the words while we are reading books. There are two more sight word DVDs and one for numbers, letters, shapes and colors that might be nice too, but at $9.88 a pop I don’t think we’ll get them all.
Today I had a training for work. It wasn’t too long, and was actually super helpful and made me feel good about the changes coming … even though I have no idea how my schools will handle the changes. While some of it was a bit boring, at least I feel better about starting off the year.
Hard to believe that in less than two weeks I head to Chicago and in less than a month I go back to start off another year.
With spring break next week, I now have only 9 weeks of work left until the official start of SUMMER!
Can you tell I’m excited?? 🙂
Just had to let everyone know. I printed my door calendars for the last two months of school! (While they don’t seem to help anyone know which school I’m at on any given Wednesday that’s what they are for.) Made me happy to print out the last two!
I’m sure April and May will be over before I know it. And then, so will the summer, but I’m looking forward to this summer in a big way!
I’ll attempt to post something about our trip while we are gone … but don’t hold your breath …
The Life & Times of Mommiehood 