What Excitement!

An award! This is so fun. The lovely Brittany gave me the following fabulous award:

Unlike some bloggers, I like the rules that come along with these. It makes it so much more interactive.

1. Thank the person who nominated you for this award.

Brittany, you're the best. Address labels and an award...what more could I ask for

2. Copy logo and place it on your blog.

3. Link the person who nominated you for the award.

LINK

4. Name seven things about yourself that people don't know.

1. I have two tattoos and can't wait to get my third.

2. I get my best teaching ideas in the shower.

3. I kissed my first boy in kindergarten. (so scandalous)

4. I am a HUGE rap music fan.

5. I read the last Harry Potter book in 10 hours.

6. I will watch the movie A Walk to Remember any time it is on t.v. No matter what. It's

the only movie I think is better than the book.

7. My favorite pop tarts are the strawberry frosted, lightly toasted, with the crust broken

off.

5. Nominate 7 Kreative bloggers and link them (I will only be able to give 3)

ALin @ This Years Love...

Sarah @ A Life More Exciting

Erin.Patrice @ Wedding Planning Memoir

6. Leave a comment on the blog of those you nominated to let them know.

I wanted to re-gift the award back to Brittany, who is by far one of my favorite bloggers...but she'll earn many more awards I'm sure.

Next Blog

Has anyone used the "next blog" button at the top of your blog page? Has anyone had any luck finding something interesting searching this route? I spent about half an hour doing this and barely found any in English. I found one blog I though looked interesting, but then thought it might be weird if I randomly started following. Please share any great blogs you've found searching randomly through the "next blog."

A week later

So I'm finally sitting down to tell about my fun fabulous weekend last weekend. We had a great time. Hubby and I along with another couple drove up to Chicago Friday after work. On Saturday we had Gino's East pizza. If you've never eaten there, the pizza is worth the drive alone. Then we wandered the city, went to Navy Pier, saw a really weird "global" band, then went to a bar and watched some football. That evening we made the trek up to Green Bay, our ultimate destination.

Sunday we got up early and headed out to some Green Bay tailgates. The fans there are the nicest fans I've ever encountered. We heard a lot of "We hope you enjoy Green Bay" and "Good luck today" and "Have a great time." The game was great. The Bengals won, which was a total surprise. Even after the game, the Green Bay fans were so gracious. We went to a bar to watch the Steelers lose; my traveling companions got pretty drunk. Then we headed back to take advantage of the indoor water park at our hotel. It was great fun.

I don't know how much blogging I will accomplish this week. I won't be home before 8:30p.m. Monday thru Thursday, and considering by bedtime has been 9:30 recently, I may not have much time to share my thoughts. I hope you all don't miss me too much! :)

Damn you State Farm

I don't know how many of you have seen the new State Farm commercial, but the summary is a new father walks into the hospital room and picks up his newborn baby, holding her close, wondering about insurance. The baby smiles at him, and melts his heart. Patrick Dempsey is the narrator. Well I saw it today and had to go get a box of tissues. Great! I've started the phase where I cry at baby commercials.

Stay tuned for a weekend wrap up...I need sleep now

Gifts for Baby

I've been getting some really cute gifts for our new little one. Courtney bought this adorable Buckeye onesie.

Future Aunt Brittany bought an adorable Classic Pooh outfit and Baby's first bath set.

Auntie Em (whose having a really cool Giveaway...check her out) sent this really cute polka dot outfit with irresistible little bear footies.

Getting Gifts for baby is just as much fun as getting gifts for myself...if not a little more fun.

Utter Depression

These two pictures say it all...

Tailgating and Victory

Today is one of those days that builds and builds your excitement...OSU vs. USC. I'm hoping that this year the excitement is not followed by a severe let down (that which the like of the past few seasons has given) We plan to tailgate all day and then take advantage of living less than a mile from campus and going home to watch the game on the big screen in the basement.

I love having our finished basement...it's great for parties. The best feature is the kegerator with the beer tap coming out of the wall.

So everyone enjoy the game today and GO Bucks!

I won my very first giveaway today! I'm super excited about it. Brittany found this great website Vistaprint where you can get some awesome stuff. I'm leaning toward the address labels, but there are so many designs to choose from. Thanks Brittany! You're awesome!

Am I an Eighth Grader

Sometimes I worry that my sense of humor isn't that much more mature than that of the students I teach. Case and point: Today we were doing an activity that had them see how many tennis balls they could make into a trash can in 15 seconds. Each trial they would move further away from the basket. The goal was to show a negative correlation in a scatter plot. (Geeky, I know) Students who weren't throwing were in charge of chasing down rogue tennis balls. So it played out like this...
Me: " Everyone needs to help pick up the balls"
Me: "Go get that ball, I don't want it to roll away"
Student " Grab my balls before they get away"
Me: "Don't throw those balls, place them gently in the container"
Student: " BALLS!"

For some reason, all of those were funny to me...and getting to say balls about 20 times in 30 minutes was really hard not to laugh at. Who knows what's wrong with me, but balls are funny.

Mentoring

So I got picked to be the mentor for the new math teacher we hired. This is kind of a cool honor. People must like what I do enough to let me help someone else figure this whole teaching thing out. Some of my duties include:
-watching her teach, then giving her advice on how to make things go better
-listening to her vent about the crazy jerks in her class
-reminding her that it is okay to just use the material in the book and not stress herself out to make something better
-filling her in on all the basic necessities for the school building
-attending monthly mentor meetings

We had our first meeting today and it took me right back to my first year. I can remember getting together with a bunch of new teachers and feeling the relief that I wasn't the only one who totally sucked at this job. It's great knowing that I can reassure our new teacher that everyone's first year is like this, and it will get better.

Pregnancy affect on Mentoring: Having an extra two hours after school for a meeting before I get to home makes baby very cranky due to hunger. Good thing I remembered to pack a granola bar, or else I might have eaten the papers they passed out to us, just to satisfy the rumbling in my tummy.

Go Bucks

Joe and I were lucky enough to attend today's home opener against Navy. (Thank you Mays!) Coming from a military family, it's always nice witnessing honest tributes to the men and women who protect this country allowing it to become what it has. The game was pretty normal for an opening day game, up until the 4th quarter. Then Navy made it exciting, coming very close to tying up the game. I question a couple of calls by Coach Tressel, especially not kicking the field goal on 4th and two. Although it puts me in the minority, I'm still not a fan of Pryor. I get nervous every time he throws the ball...he can't seem to hit his receivers in the numbers...which led to a very untimely interception. We'll see how he handles himself next week. Hopefully we'll be organizing a fun tailgate for the USC game.

Pregnancy effect on football: I've always felt a tug at the heart strings when hearing Carmen Ohio. It always makes me think about how lucky I was to meet the love of my life and the best of friends by going to OSU. Well today, not only was my heart being tugged, but my tear buds were on full blast. I was actually crying. I had to wipe away tears. These pregnancy hormones apparently cannot handle emotional songs. The baby, however, truly enjoyed the dip and dots that Daddy trekked down to get us at half time.

First Times a Charm

Well...it had happened. And on our first try. Joe and I have made a baby. That's right, in about 8 months there will be a new member in our family. We've been keeping the secret for weeks, waiting until we got to see the ultrasound to make sure everything is okay. We told my parents today, followed by the few people I just couldn't wait to tell. It's very exciting finally getting to share this news that Joe and I have been relishing for the past 7 and a half weeks. So I would like to prepare you all...many baby posts will be to follow. I'll begin with this glorious image.