Moving On

I can’t remember when I last looked forward to a weekend so badly. I was basically over my cold, but my voice was still coming back the entire week. And I was playing catch-up both with kindergarten work and housework. And the little chickies were hatching and visiting, which takes extra time and care. And David had a busy week between friends coming here or him going over there. So I was ready to just veg.

Friday night we used one of our many gift cards from Christmas and dined at T.G.I. Friday’s. The closest one is in Delaware, so we had a tax-free dinner :). I always like to walk around after a big dinner and Kohl’s just happened to be in the general vicinity. D spotted this shirt (below) as we were walking past the kids’ section. I’ve never seen anything like it before and would have gotten it if I thought I would wear it. We settled on taking a picture and remembering it that way…

Saturday D was gone all day at our church’s Pioneer Club camp. His job was to help oversee the hiking part of the day, so he took five 45-minute hikes. He got to hang out with some people from our Sunday School class and eat a campfire lunch (smores and all), too, which he enjoyed. However, he did mention that he was glad that the diarrhea song did not die out with his generation. Boys… In other David news, he is now the proud owner of a Wii. Yes, you read correctly, a Wii. It was only a matter of time. My mother happened upon one in a store she was at recently and picked it up to sell on eBay. Instead of doing that, she offered it to my husband at a discount price which he readily wanted to accept. I couldn’t really justify such an expensive game/want when we’re on a med school budget, but D put on his “pretty please” face and, well, who could resist that?? To justify such spending, the deal is D will plan and execute all dinners for a week, as well as take care of clean up. Now that’s a deal I can live with. Of course he’s on call one day this week, has choir practice another, and we are invited over to some friends on yet another. One way or another, I am going to get my 7 days of dinners!

Today, Sunday, brought with it perfect 70-degree weather. After church, we offered our help to friends who will be moving to D.C. in a few months (he accepted a job with the Department of Justice as one of their lawyers, which has to be a pretty cool job!). We went over for lunch and an afternoon of working on their house. The “many hands make light work” adage still holds true and I would like to add that it makes not only light work, but fun work. Driving by, you would never have guessed we were all there to work…we were having too much fun! On our way home, we stopped by a local park to get some more outdoor exercise. It had hills and everything, so it was quite the workout. We even saw a deer running by.

Maybe now I will get the opportunity to veg…

Be glad kindergarteners do not have the responsibility of naming anything important. Meet our dozen chicks...by name...

This weekend’s weather was unbelievable. A friend from church was throwing a Birthday BBQ for her husband on Saturday and asked everyone to pray for good weather. We prayed, but she asked on Monday…when that Nor’easter was in town. I told her on Saturday that I wanted everyone who was praying for good weather to be available for prayer when I have any requests because the Lord sure delivered a wonderfully beautiful day.

I wasn’t sure I was up to going since I was still in recovery from my cold. My voice was still on the mend and I was still coughing intermittently. David convinced me that both the good weather and the good company would be good for my health. He was right. We had the best time we’ve had with friends in a long time. Everyone was thoroughly enjoying the much-anticipated weather so it was hard not to have a good time. Just about everyone was there from our Sunday School class…14 in all, plus 4 kids! We ate, chatted, ate, played ball, ate, chatted, made smores, ate, watched the kids play, and…well…ate. None of us realized it was 7:30pm by the time we were done with all the festivities. I can’t wait for the summer months!

Sunday went by quickly, which I didn’t mind so much because our chicks were due to hatch on Monday and Tuesday!! And I got a call bright and early at 6:30am on Monday morning from a co-worker telling me one, loud chick was out of its shell. They didn’t stop there. We got to see three more hatch during the day. Three more hatched in the two hours I left and when the center closed. I ended up bringing the first four home with me and returned to work before it closed to retrieve the other three that had hatched. Saying that they are quite entertaining is an understatement. D had a med school buddy over to work on some presentation and they were chirping in the background the entire time. I made dinner for the three of us and it included some chicken. There was something entirely not right with that…

Eventually all twelve eggs hatched and they are here again visiting tonight. They are fun to watch. They have such a group mentality: when one sleeps they all sleep, when one wakes they all wake, when one eats they are all swarming the food dish, and when one starts drinking, well you can guess what happens. Right now they are all staring through their bin at D who is cutting his nails. I have yet to introduce them to Douglas. I think I’ll give it another night, for Dougie’s sake.

Here are some pics from last night for your viewing pleasure:

I came home the other week to find this nice plant sitting on our coffee table with a very sweet note attached. It was from David (of course). I liked the thought that went into it and it looked really neat, too. But it hasn't stopped at looking cool...

This is how it looks during the day:



And this is how it looks at nighttime:


The first time I saw it closed, I thought, Great, I can't even make it through an entire week without killing vegetation. I was both relieved and surprised to see it back to normal the following morning. I'm not exactly sure how it knows it's getting to be nighttime because we have the lights on to make it as bright, if not brighter, as the daytime. But it's a smart little bugger. Even now as I'm typing the petals are half-way closed. D said he took out the tab with the description on it, so I have no idea what it's called or where it comes from. Maybe I'll just make up my own name for it...like really-smart-plant-that-knows-how-to-open-and-close-on-its-own.

I should have been doing this all along. By this I mean writing down in some sort of notebook all the funny/cute/puzzling things my kindergarteners say. And by all along, I mean I should have started the first day I started teaching kindergarten. Oh well. Here are some of the few I remember from the past week or two:

One of my students decided to do some explaining to some parents she saw: "She [meaning me] lost her voice because she was yelling too much yesterday." (Real answer: I'm sick!)

"I know how to spell TV. [Looks up, take a deep breath, looks directly at me...] T........[very drawn out] V." Looks at me proudly. First question that popped into my head: Where did I go wrong??

"Shhhhh guys! Don't say we're having chicken for lunch! The chicks might hear you and be sad and then they won't hatch! You know they're going to get eaten when they're bigger, right?" The quickly-adopted codename for chicken: turkey.

All of the sudden out of nowhere one of my kids shouts, "Ms. Jessica, you look like the REAL Ms. Jessica!!" I must have missed part of that conversation...

Oh, I just remembered one from last year. It was a note I got from a student who hadn't been listening to me and I asked her to write a note as to why this kept on occurring. Well, I got a response:

"Dear Ms. Jessica. Sorry I didn't listen to you. I am going to the ear doctor very soon. I love you." (I edited the spelling for those of you who don't read "kindergarten.") I still have that note.

Hopefully I'll be able to think of more. And if I don't, it's okay because this class, especially, supplies me with lots of material!

Well it’s here again: my annual cold. It has come mid-April every year since moving to PA. I can even predict its arrival and the course it will take. Last week I commented – only in my head, not because I’m superstitious or anything – that I just may avoid my knock-out cold this year. I was even cautiously optimistic. Silly me.

Then it hit – late Friday night into Saturday. It always starts with a sore throat and a nice dose of the chills with a slight fever. I was still functional on Saturday. We visited the University of Pennsylvania campus in Philly because it has this unique restaurant called Copa Banana smack-dab in the middle of it. Lunch was especially yummy, and another observation: the 80’s style is coming back – ugh. I was telling D that if you want to see the most up-to-date fashion, check out college campuses. He wasn’t too interested in that conversation and totally didn’t get what I meant by the 80’s style, but that’s okay. I think I would have been worried if he did. All that to say, “The 80’s called and wants its clothes back.”

We went back home and I rested up a bit and did some homework. Last week was the final week of official classes – ever. Yay! D wanted to see Shooter (A+), with Mark Wahlberg, at the theater so we caught the 7:20pm showing. It was a really good spur-of-the-moment movie to see. Saturday night, however, was not a good night. D said my having a cold is like having a sick child.

He’s right. And my mom is there to back him up. I get a cold once a year and that is the extent of my sicknesses. So I don’t handle it with the ease and grace that others might. Poor David. He was up with me both Saturday and Sunday nights being such a caring and understanding husband. I told him I was just getting him ready for children…

Sunday I didn’t feel any worse, which was good. Monday I went to work because our eggs were coming. I was so excited, in spite of my sickness, all day Sunday...which definitely put me on the level of my kindergarteners. (All 12 eggs arrived safe and sound, through that wacky Nor’easter and all!) This morning I woke up with the next phase of my cold: a stuffy nose and no voice. You can only imagine how fun my day in kindergarten was today :).

Romans 6:5 For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, 6 knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. 7 For he who has died has been freed from sin. 8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, 9 knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him. 10 For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. 11 Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
~the passage our Pastor preached from on Easter Sunday

We were actually in PA for a holiday. I think this may have been the first one since we moved here some two and a half years ago. I hadn’t really thought about it either, until people at church were saying they were surprised to see us there on Easter Sunday. Why? I asked. Well, you’re always in CT for holidays, so we didn’t think we’d be seeing you here today. Made sense. However, it was the first weekend in a month that we didn’t have anything planned, so I was enjoying our time together.

That is until I looked at my List of Things To Do which seems to have “Portfolio” permanently etched in it. This is the last week of actual classes, which means I won’t have anymore excuses as to why I can put off working, full force, on it. There are so many fun distractions, like…anything! We still have our Netflix subscription (can I recommend Tristan & Isolde (A+++)?, the first romantic pick of our entire subscription). And Facing the Giants (A), Flags of Our Fathers (A), and Flyboys (A-) have all kept the DVD player warm lately. And then there’s Instant Messaging and TV shows and outings that all seem much more interesting than thinking hard about what I have learned about Elementary Reading and Literacy.

All this to say that I was actually looking forward to a quiet Sunday, after church of course, where lots of work would be accomplished. That was not to be…in a good way, though. David sang in a 45-minute cantata at church and did exceptionally well. The choir was so glad to have him back. I love his voice. My mom does, too. She’s always jostling me aside in church to get closer to David so she can hear him sing. After church, different people were asking about our plans, and I told D that I didn’t want anyone to know we weren’t going anywhere or doing anything because a) I had work to do and b) I didn’t want anyone to feel like they had to invite us over their house. Well that plan didn’t work so well.

Our friends Keith and Julie were going over Keith’s brother’s house with the rest of his family, whom we know from church. They are always so welcoming and are always inviting us to do things with them, a lot of which we turn down. D really wanted to go because he felt bad we say no a lot and we didn’t have a good excuse this time…not that we try to avoid them because we totally don’t! So we accepted and the plan was to meet them at 4pm. We got there right on time and had the best 4+ socializing hours in a while. The house and the people reminded me of my house and my family: warm, entertaining, happy, sociable, and just all around nice people. We could have stayed another four hours, but, well, duty called. I was telling David later that these are the type of people we will make a point of seeing when we come back to PA for a visit.

I couldn't decide which ticker I liked better. The first one is more accurate: the eggs are coming on Monday the 16th. Our class is hatching a dozen eggs again this year (since I had SO much fun with it last year!) and they are very excited. We have them for two weeks. The first week we have to rotate the eggs twice a day, I believe. The second week is when they should start hatching. So I guess the second ticker would be more accurate if I added a week to the countdown. Anyway, I posted a countdown in the classroom, too, which got the little people even more excited. It's so much fun being a kindergarten teacher...most days!!

Picking up on Saturday morning – all of us gathered around 10:30 to take our family pictures. Mom has wanted to do this for a while and finally she set the date in stone. It was a lot of fun. Ryan set up the front room to look like a studio, since he has all this camera and lighting equipment. They put the camera on a tripod, set the timer for 7 seconds to take two pictures in a row, and there’s how we got over 170 pictures. Counting in fooling around time, it took about two hours before all was said and done. Dad rewarded us with a deeeeelicious steak lunch. I got some behind the scenes photographs:



Auntie came over around 2pm and made it just in time to watch our slideshow of pictures on the Wii. The Wii is a very talented machine…so talented in fact that D is trying to convince me that we need one. We just got new tires for his car, went to the doctor, and went to the dentist. So we just might have to put that need off for a little while longer, right honey? Right? Honey? I’m not so sure he’s convinced. Anyway, Auntie, Mom, and I went to this little spa in Avon for our 3:00 hour-long facials. Never having had one before, I was completely excited. It didn’t totally work out the way we had hoped in that they were running behind. Mom didn’t even get a chance to have hers and I think I got only part of the package. But, boy, was it niiiiiiiiiiice!! I’m wondering how we could work them into our budget… Two hours later we were zooming back home because D and I had dinner plans at his house. I literally jumped from one car to the other.

I got to see Ari-girl at D’s house. She is so lively and interactive. I love this age. She was smiling and talking and hanging out. Quite the entertainer. We played together practically the whole time I was there. I was surprised she went to me so easily because D said he had seen her earlier in the week and she gave him this, “Do I know you?” look. It was fun. Sara and Tony ended up dropping me off at home, while D stayed at his house a bit longer, because I had plans to hang out with Kristina. We ended up watching Happy Feet (A++) with Mom…and Yana was there for part of it, too. I once again managed to fall asleep during the movie. I was so tired. I kept waking up for a minute or two but couldn’t force my eyes to stay open. Sorry Kristina! :)

Where was Dave? Hanging with Ryan and Dad, mostly. He had some homework he did here and there to prepare for his Psych rotation, but I told him he had to have more fun time than reading time this visit. When he wasn’t hanging out with the guys, he was over his house. We managed to make a Wal-Mart run together on Friday afternoon. We’re used to not seeing much of each other when we’re in CT for a short period of time. That’s what the car rides there and back are for.

On Sunday, we went to church and then came back to the house to celebrate Nick’s 20th birthday. No more teenagers in our house! In true Nick fashion, he didn’t want a fancy dinner or lots of people in attendance. We had a three-foot long grinder from Blimpie’s to split between the eight of us and Auntie and Anie. I think Dougie might have managed to get tomato slice or two. The cake was the boxed yellow kind with chocolate frosting. His tastes are simple.

After the party, we went to Dave’s to say goodbye to his parents. We went back home to pack up and visited until everyone left for church. It was raining when we left and I offered to drive the first hour so D could get some reading time in. It was an uneventful four-hour ride home with a stop in New Jersey for some cheap gas. I had to finish my paper on the way home because it was due that night – reality set in so quickly!

From now to May I’ll be submerged in my Portfolio-completing tasks. Maybe I’ll have earned another little vacation by that point, right honey? Right? Honey?

I usually need a vacation from my vacation when we visit Connecticut – and this time was no different…

We arrived Wednesday night after an eventful five-hour ride. It all started when we were crossing the Commodore Barry Bridge ten minutes into our trip. A guy was standing on the other side, preparing to jump. A ton of policemen were simply standing there looking at him. The newspaper said he was there at 1:30pm with a water bottle. We passed him around 5:15pm. I would have felt bad for him except he was wanted in two states for crimes against minors. David told me this because the guy was admitted to the local hospital’s Psychiatric unit – D’s current rotation. Then we passed two accidents in New Jersey and had to take the Lincoln Tunnel to avoid the 90-minute backup on the George Washington Bridge in New York. All on a Wednesday night. We arrived safely, thank you Lord, around 10:00pm.

I didn’t stay up too much later because I had a 8am doctor appointment followed by a 10:30 dentist appointment followed by a 12:00 hair appointment. Mom took me to the hair appointment and we got our nails done after that. I had just enough time to go home and say hi to David before heading out to Pizzeria Uno’s for dinner with one of my friend’s from church. Two and a half hours later it was back home to visit with some friends over a cup of nice, warm tea.

The next morning, I was up bright and early to go food shopping with Dad. It’s a ritual we inadvertently started a few years ago. We love going to the food store together: discussing prices, looking for the best deals, discussing healthy foods, and getting a treat or two along the way.We always have a good time. Later that morning, Mom and I went to my friend’s kindergarten classroom in West Hartford. We were able to see her teach and we enjoyed visiting with her kids. It was nice to be able to leave, though, since it was my day off and I didn’t have to be in a classroom. From there, Mom and I went into Hartford to have lunch with my Auntie. This is another ritual that was inadvertently started a while ago. This time we went to a Japanese restaurant, which was a big deal for my eats-only-five-types-of-meals mother. We started off with Miso soup, a delicious blend of tofu, seaweed, and scallions. We all got the same, lone recognizable menu item: the Chicken Teryaki Lunchbox. It was good: chicken with broccoli, rice, veggie rolls that looked like sushi, shrimp paste wrapped in rice paper, and a little mixed salad. I liked how there were small portions and a large variety. Mom was a trooper, although Auntie and I did get a few items from her plate. Speaking of Auntie, she was the only one who used those chopsticks, go Auntie! After lunch, we got coffee (well, hot chocolate for me) at Dunkin' Donuts and chatted for a while. It was so relaxing, so different from my everyday life!

That night, Nick and Kristina took us to the Dawg House for these delicious hot dogs. There is an ongoing debate in our family as to whether the hot dogs from Capital Lunch are better than the ones from the Dawg House. Not having tasted them side by side, I reserve the right to offer my opinion. Later that evening, Mom and I went over to Ryan’s girlfriend’s house for an impromptu Ladies Night. We had tea and brownies and a late-night pizza snack. Yana’s mom was there, so it started off as the four of us and Kristina joined us a while later. We watched this really sad movie, so sad in fact, that I guess I blocked it out of my mind because I can’t recall the title! We finally left around 12:30am…I’ve never been out that late with my mom before. It’s a very different experience, fun, but different. Different, probably, because everyone is usually at our house so we don’t have to be anywhere late.

Well that’s part 1 of our trip. Part 2 to follow!

A longer, more detailed post is on its way, but I figured this deserved an entry of its own since there are lots of pictures involved. On Saturday morning, the eight of us gathered together in our uniforms, decided by Mom, and took over 170 pictures of various combinations. Here are just a few: