Reliving Vegas and School Stuff

That is what I am doing tomorrow. No, I’m not getting to go for another visit. We are presenting all of our knowledge and learnings to our staff. We have to present for something crazy like 3 hours. We put together a power point and some fun team building things. I hope all goes well. The best part about tomorrow is that breakfast and lunch are both provided for us. I love not having to worry about what is for lunch. And, I love food. I love to eat. I know it doesn’t look like it, but I do. I miss being in Memphis and having such fantastic chefs so close. I could pop in a few different places and have a fabulous meal in no time. Here, not so much. I have only found one restaurant that I love. There are a few others that are okay or even good. It’s just not what I’m used to. I’m adjusting. The restaurant that I love is Juicy Lucy’s. They have awesome steak and seafood. I’ve only eaten there twice. It’s a little pricey, but it is a steakhouse. I should go again soon. Maybe I’ll find someone that wants to take me out for a date. I could suggest it. Of course, if I do that on a first date I might not get asked out again.

Yesterday, I left school on my first break to take my mother’s day present to UPS. (Mom it will be there Monday. I’m sorry and I feel bad, but I refuse to pay $45 to get it there by Friday. I wish I could be there. Love you!) I was feeling bad about not getting Mom’s present to her in time and decided that I needed something good to eat to help lift my spirits. (wow, this post is all about food) I stopped at the local sandwich shop at 10:30 in the morning. We eat lunch early in 8th grade. Luckily, they were selling lunch and just stopped serving breakfast. I decided to be nice to someone else to make me feel better. It works. The guy working, possibly an owner or manager, strikes up a conversation. He is a former teacher and is ready to get back into teaching. And that has nothing to do with what I was saying. Um, okay, I went back to school with my turkey and an Italian for Jamie. He loves that sandwich. I ran in his room and said, “Italian. I’m just going to put it on your desk.” He stood there with his mouth gaping open. I replied with, “Just thought I would make your day.” That was not the right thing to say in front of a group of 7th graders. Jamie said thanks and I left the room. I was about half-way down the hall when I heard the ooh and ahh and cooing from Jamie’s room. I walked back, threw open the door, and told his class to get over it, boys and girls can be friends. They laughed, pointed at Jamie and told me how red his face had just turned. It was really hot in his room and so I pointed it out to his students. They always give him a hard time. So far, he has been accused of having the following teachers as girlfriends: me (but this is actually the first time since football season), Kristen, and Suzanne. I guess in the minds of 7th graders anyone they see you talking to must be your girlfriend, your wife, or your crush. I will have to remember that.

We have three more weeks of school. It’s hard to believe. We have so much going on on. Three work days for our end of the year project. A field trip to the Caverns. (I’m sooo excited about this.) We have a service learning day where we are going to clean up some local parks and help a local church with some yard work. The last week of school (not included in the three weeks above, so that is actually 4 weeks) all of the students come on Monday and Tuesday and then, the 8th graders will come in groups to complete their interdisciplinary project. They will be giving 45 minute presentations on various topics. It will be a long couple of days for me, but I am very excited to see them. They started working on them in January and have many great ideas.

Going to finish watching Gray’s…..or talking to Jason since he just called. Now, I’ll have to watch it on the web.

Nothing New

Not much worth typing about around here.

The weather is getting warmer. : ) Yeah! I actually wore a skirt and flops to work yesterday. My kids all commented on the skirt. What does that say about my work wardrobe?  It was a perfect cinco de Mayo. Some other teachers and I went to a local restaurant for tacos and margaritas. Yum! I take that back. The tacos were good. I have yet to find a good margarita here. I had to order an extra shot of tequila.

Does anyone want to move to Colorado and teach with me? We have a Science and a Math position open. Come on, it’s beautiful. Everyone is really nice. We could be roomies.

I saw Ironman Friday night. It was really good. I wasn’t sure if I would like it or not, but I did. What I didn’t like was the big bruise I got on my knee. I got up during the movie to go to the restroom and hit my knee on the chair that was in front of me. The movie theater is downtown and very old. They have one screen and the cup holders are on the backs of the chairs. I guess it was actually the cup holder that I hit. All I know is that it hurt. It was bad enough that it woke me up in the middle of the night when I rolled over on that side. I am so clumsy.

Coming home last night I saw a beautiful doe. She was running in front of the elementary school. I was going to try to get a picture, but she didn’t like me following her and took off quickly. It was strange to see just one. They usually travel in small groups of 4 or 5.

Our kids are out of school on Friday. The teachers have a work day. I get to present all the awesome things I learned while in Vegas. Where to get drinks? Where I could shop? Where to eat family style at an Italian restaurant? No! I learned a lot about PLC’s, Results, Standards, Assessments, etc. I just need to put together a power point. The Vegas crew is putting together some things after school the next couple of days.

I still haven’t decided if I want to cut my hair shorter or not. I went through some pictures and I liked it shoulder length. I’m just indecisive right now. I know, not me?!

I’m going to go grade some papers and get things together for tomorrow. Night.

Holocaust Awareness Week

I don’t know how many of you realized that is was Holocaust Awareness Week. Our fabulous Language Arts teachers in 8th grade are completing a unit on the Holocaust. They are comparing stories and books. The kids are really getting into it and hopefully, it will make them think about their own behaviors. The students all wore paper clips everyday and made sure to offer them to other students and adults that didn’t have one. You can read about the paper clips here. On top of all that, they decided to make a visual representation of those that lost their lives.

In case you can’t read it, the blue flags represent non-Jews and the yellow flags represent Jews. One flag represents 10,000 individuals that died in the Holocaust.

The kids did a great job and were all so proud! There were a few more posters out there with explanations and several with pictures and stories of victims.

More white stuff

Well, I woke up Thursday morning to snow. It was on the ground, in the trees, everywhere. I knew we were getting a storm, but I figured we would get a light dusting. No cleaning off the truck. It would be more like rain. It’s been warm. We got snow.

My truck had to be cleaned off. Here is a view from my windshield.

And, here is a few of me with snowflakes in my hair. Happy May 1st!

I’m thinking about cutting my hair. It’s getting so long. Any thoughts??

Vegas in Pictures…

I love the Bellagio. It’s beautiful. The water show was amazing. This picture is from in front of the hotel facing the Paris. (like you can’t see that or something)

This one was taken outside of Cesar’s Palace. I loved all of the fountains and they are everywhere.

I made it to a show. I wasn’t sure that I would like it because I’m not necessarily a Monty Python fan, but it was fabulous. We had a great time.

In every casino that we went there was really cool stuff hanging from the ceiling. The Bellagio had glass artwork. The Wynn had what looked like umbrellas. It was really pretty.

I took this one for Marshell….(the bike not the light fixtures. I can’t make wordpress separate  my words from that picture. ? I tried. If typing all of this works - Yeah!  If not, please be assured  that  my brother is only interested in the motorcycle.) 

The famous Treasure Island boats….(I didn’t get to see the entire performance. We always missed it by a few minutes. I hear it is nothing like it used to be.)

Going to Vegas

We drove to Junction on Sunday afternoon to catch our flight. It was my first time to head that direction and well, there’s just not much to say about it. I heard that there are a few wineries to visit, but that was about it. We did a quick drive-thru at a fast food restaurant because the airport is so tiny that they only have a small news stand. We checked in and then had to drag our checked luggage to another location so it could be loaded onto the plane. ?? yeah. The flight was a little over an hour and a little bumpy with some strange noises. We made it and it was really cool to fly into Vegas at night. You could see the lights well before you were over the city. It reminded me of flying into NYC for the first time. After retrieving our luggage we piled into a shuttle and were off to our fabulous hotel, Planet Hollywood. It was a great hotel with very large rooms. The bathroom was as big as my bedroom. Not kidding. We unloaded into our rooms and then I met with Rob. He’s a seventh grade teacher at my school. We decided to feed some slots and have a few drinks. I think we made it back to our rooms around 1:30 or so. (Vegas is an hour behind GWS time.)

The next morning we were up bright and early for our first day of the conference. We checked in, received a bag to carry our stuff, a name tag, and BREAKFAST! I’m not much of a breakfast person when I first wake up, but they did a good job for the conference. We had choices of mixed fruit, yogurt, cereal, bagels, muffins, 2 different breakfast sandwiches, juice, coffee, and water. I won’t bore you with all the details of the conference. I know that the majority of my readers are not teachers and I will save them. I will just say that it was totally awesome and worth every penny that the school paid to send us. Most of the speakers were entertaining and motivating. I learned a lot!

Okay, I’ll give you some pictures to entertain you. I’m starting with my hotel. : )

Here’s the room..

Here’s the view from the room…..

Here’s part of the bathroom…..

I forgot to tell all of you that each room had a different theme. Our room had an Adam’s Family theme. We had the picture in the bathroom of the entire family. A picture in the bedroom was Uncle Fez’s head (is he the bald one?) with Thing on top of him. Another wall had a mini electric chair attached to it. A little creepy, but I loved it.

Here’s a picture looking down into the casino from the mezzanine….

We didn’t venture out of our casino until Monday night. I’ll post some pictures of other casinos and tell you about my new favorite Italian restaurant tomorrow.

Dance with me….

I drove to Vail the Saturday before I flew to Vegas for the Ben Harper concert. It was (of course) freakin’ amazing. I met up with my friend Kristen (KK) and her boyfriend Ryan.

It was cold and snowing in Vail. It took a while to find a parking spot, but I finally did in the garage. The walk to the concert was slippery. I skated and attempted to walk on about 3 inches of packed snow. Who am I kidding? It was pretty much ice and I almost fell about four times. I did stop and take the picture that is above. I love to see snow on the river. I don’t know why, but water is always beautiful. A lake, a river, the ocean, you get the point. And before some smart ass comments, water in nature is beautiful. Water in the toilet bowl is not. Moving on.  At first I was a little scared about standing outside in the snow to listen to KK’s crush. I’m a little thing. I get cold. But, once you get in the middle of a crowd and have a beer…it was very comfortable. And there was fire because people had to light their pipes and joints. This is the third time that I have Ben Harper since I moved to Colorado. The first time was at the Jazz Aspen Snowmass Festival. I met up with another teacher and her parents. I think I had a contact high that night. Wow! Welcome to Colorado! The second time was in October at the Orpheum in Memphis. I remember being a little upset that people were firing up IN the Orpheum. I love it and want it to always be beautiful. So, I wasn’t surprised that I felt a little funny when leaving or that KK lost her phone. Anyway, Ben Harper is amazing. If you ever get the chance to see him, you should. I leave you with one last picture from the concert. : )

Within 24 hours…

I went from ….

Snowbunny

to …..

Vegas Hottie!

MeMe From Joye

Before I go into my list of things to catch you all up, Joye tagged me for a meme. : ) We know each other from high school and we both teach meddle school! She’s a fun person. You should totally check her out. Oh, and I learned that we both have a female, tortie demon cat.

Here are the rules…(I didn’t make them up.)

1. Link back to the person who tagged you.

2. Post these rules on your blog.

3. Share six unimportant things about yourself

4. Tag six random people at the end of your entry.

Six unimportant things about me…..

1. I love Hostess chocolate cupcakes. They are so yummy. I always eat two and I eat them upside down. They start to crumble and the icing kind of helps keep them together.

2. I have only owned 3 cars in the past 12 years. My first car was a Grand Am. Part of the bumper was taped together and the head liner was falling when I sold it. My second car was a Sunfire. It was very basic. No power windows or locks. It was a stick shift like my Grand Am. I paid it off and planned to drive it for as long as I could. I did. It got smooshed when I was rear-ended in 2003. I bought my Explorer to replace it and it will be paid off at the beginning of next year. I don’t budget as well as Jana to pay my vehicles of early. ; )

3. I get very annoyed when people ask me if I want a regular or diet drink. Um, hello! Do I look like I need a DIET anything? I didn’t say diet, why would I want a diet? urgh. It’s kind of like my milk, full fat, please!

4. I have taught 7th grade LA, Enriched LA, 6th Science, Enriched LA, Math, a few weeks of SS, and 8th grade Algebra I and Linear Algebra all over the course of 3-1/2 school years. whew! I’ve been busy. I don’t know what was my favorite class. I teach students not subjects. : )

5. I used to fly once in a blue moon. Not anymore! I have been flying a lot more lately.

June - trip to Aspen    October - MEM  November - MEM   December - MEM   March - MEM

April - VEGAS! I know some people fly ALL the time for work, but I never did. You would think I would have a ton of frequent flyer miles. Nope. Different airlines most of the time. I love Frontier and hope that they hang on.

6. I always keep my toes painted. I love to bare foot or in sandals and you have to have pretty toes. Speaking of toes, I have long toes. Ask any of my friends and they will confirm this. I don’t know from where they came, but I sure got them. I’m glad that Spring is finally here so I can pull out my sandals. : ) It was great in Vegas.

Breaking the law, breaking the law

I’m not going to tag anyone since I’m so late in doing this and I haven’t finished reading everyone’s blogs from being out of town. So, if you love me and you haven’t done it…DO IT! or I will come after you with (insert one of your own fears). Not really that might mean I have to jump on another plane and I just can’t afford to do that right now.

I’m baaaack!

I made it back to Colorado last night. I have lots to tell and pictures to post. BUT, I am tired.

So here is my list of things to come…..

1. Ben Harper concert in Vail.

2. Vegas

3. Conference

4. Food in Vegas

5. Fires in Colorado

6. Spamalot in Vegas

7. Cool things in Vegas

Okay, I’m sure that you get the point. Off to bed. I have a busy weekend and will try to be back soon. I miss you all. I have to catch up on all of my reading soon. But, I have been thinking about y’all. : )