Beginning of the Christmas Season

Chip and I are approaching exams... they start tomorrow! I can't believe that an ENTIRE semester has gone by. This year has FLOWN by so fast. I'm taking it easy on my kids this semester for their exams. Being an exploratory class, I don't want to stress them with my exam AND I've worked their butts off this nine weeks with all the stuff they've done. They've really learned to meet my expectations and done a great job meeting deadlines, too. This week we're going to have fun after their exams watching Christmas classics like The Polar Express, It's A Wonderful Life, and Home Alone...

This past Friday we went to eat breakfast with Santa (at the CLC). Jo had no real interest in Santa when she had her photo taken, she was most interested in his beard. I'm pretty sure the photographer got NO good pictures of her with Santa, but we've got them for proof. One day she'll want to see her first photo with Santa...

Today I made some treats for us to enjoy. Between Jo, Chip, and myself, we've gone through 1 1/2 custard pies today!!! Jo LOVED custard pie and ate an entire piece herself. (It was a small piece.) I also made cocoons for our "team" Christmas party at work. I just realized that our faculty gathering is Tuesday. Still haven't worked out whether we'll be able to go or not. Chip tutors on Tuesdays at the family school in Starkville, so our schedules may not allow us to go.

Earlier today, when we were in the kitchen baking/cleaning, Jo was on the ground scooting around in the living room and when we looked around, she had made it all the way into the kitchen with us! Chip walked her back to her area with her toys, and she proceeded to scoot right back into the kitchen. She's getting around really well and starting to get up on her knees. It's so exciting. We've really got to baby proof. All the stuff on her level is safe, but we've got to get outlet covers and baby gates SOON!

Sooner than later, we'll be Christmasing with Chip's family and up in Tupelo with mine. And then, before we know it - it'll be 2010 and I'll be back at work!

Oh my.

Thanksgiving and a visit to Papa John's

This past weekend Chip had class in Tupelo for his administration thing. He normally rides with another guy, but it didn't work out this weekend. Jo and I accompanied him up to Tupelo. We visited with Papa John and Winnie Saturday - we went shopping for furniture!! Jo loves shopping!!!
She has a great time with regular household products (as all kids do). Anyway, we had a blast together and it was nice to spend a long day with my dad (and Jo's grandpa). She loves Papa John and Winnie!
Note in the picture below - the tshirt is an 18 month shirt and the overalls are 12 month... and the overalls are almost too small. She's an Amazon Baby. And quite a work out to carry around furniture stores - especially when you have to sit in every couch there.

Josephine really liked her cousin Stephanie's cheesecake. It was Key Lime cheesecake. She liked it, but that tang suprised her every time! This is the best photo I got. She was scooting around when we were feeding her.

Jo and her second cousin, Asher. Asher turned one about a week before Thanksgiving. They're about 4 months apart. They had a great time together. Jo was interested in EVERYTHING Asher did.

Jo and I - getting ready to go to family Thanksgiving. She discovered that the nuts can was a great drum! (We were in Meridian with Chip's family for Thanksgiving. His whole mom's side of the family gathered at the church to eat - it was wonderful!)

We did informal Christmas pics this year in front of our new tree. Jo was not all that excited to be in a dress just for pictures, but she was a good sport.

Family Christmas photo. Sorry we're not perfectly color coordinated! (It's not really our style...) For my siblings... this pic will be your Christmas present. Happy early Christmas! :)

Birthday

WAAAAHH!!! I'm getting old! My birthday's on Saturday. I'm not really thinking about it (quite honestly, I have too much on my mind... tryouts for our musical are Tuesday and Wednesday, we have a field trip to Meridian Monday, and I'm tutoring this afternoon...). Chip bought me two books for my birthday about the Kennedys. (I'm partially obsessed.) One book is about the male Kennedys through the generations and the other is Rose Kennedy's memoir. The latter is an original printing and he got it at a used book store here in town. I LOVE the smell of old books.



Some of my friends have Kindles and they're obsessed, but I still like to carry the book around with me and dog ear my pages. It's just not the same on the Kindle. The nice thing about those things is that books are significantly cheaper. Sometimes I'm just not about the technology.



In JOSEPHINE news, she cut her first tooth! I found it last Saturday. Since then, she's been drooling on EVERYTHING. She's so cute when she smiles and that one tooth sticks out! She's also starting to turn circles when you put her on her belly. She can turn circles and creep backwards. I'm sure she'll be crawling soon.



We will be traveling to Tupelo for my birthday this weekend. We're celebrating with a party on Friday at my mom's. Saturday morning Chip and I are going to Ballard Park to watch our girls comptete in a soccer tournament. We also plan to go to the Flea Market. Chip and I are getting a new TV for ourselves for Christmas, so we're going to try and find a good deal. Perhaps we'll be buying that the day after Thanksgiving, but we're going to look anyway. Saturday night is the Alabama game and, thankfully, we're not going to be in town. I promise - Starkville is NOT build for an extra 90 - 100 thousand people. I hope we win. I hate Alabama. Hate is not a strong enough word for how Chip feels about Alabama. I'll pull for Bama when they're playing Ole Miss... Chip won't watch the game.



Well... it's time for children again. I'll post some updated pictures that we have of Josephine soon.

We're using digital photography to create stop-motion music videos in class. I never assign a project without having done it myself. I think that's a good rule of thumb as a teacher. I've never given a test I haven't taken and I've never asked kids to do something I can't do... so here's my music video. It took about a day and a half, and I worked on it during the day (so you may see some students in the background). They're doing such an awesome job, but the cameras we have use AA batteries and we're burning through those faster than 7th graders lose pencils!

Hope this works... I'm at school and it may take the rest of the day for this to upload!

Here's Jo's "friendly" fall costume. I didn't know what First Baptist's daycare was referring to as "friendly" and a Baptist friend of mine told me as long as she didn't go as a witch or a devil, she was fine. Pumpkin, apparently, is friendly. Here's Jo sitting in her costume. We're probably going to put her in some black sweatpants and a long sleeved black shirt that she has. And she won't wear the bib... but, you get the idea. This is just such a funny picture!

This picture reminds me of "fat guy in a little coat." Wonder why?

This was the day of the Georgia Tech game. Jo had on an MSU shirt, but you can't see it because of the bib. She was rooting - hard! Oh well.

She and Daddy did try to listen to the game to make sure they weren't missing anything! I think this is so cute. It looks like she's listening intently, but, really, she's just trying to reach for the mp3 player.

She tries to stand, but falls over most of the time! I think this picture is sweet though.

My birthday's in two and a half weeks. Chip's getting ready for that now. Wonder what he'll get me...

And since my birthday's coming up, we all know Christmas is right around the corner. Seems like we're frantically making plans. We have over 8 weeks. If I can teach the Civil War and Reconstruction in 8 weeks, I think our family can plan a Christmas get together! :) Looking forward to seeing everyone... for my birthday AND for Christmas!

Octibbidy.

These past few weeks have gone by VERY quickly. Chip and I both have a head cold (mine's spreading into my chest) and poor Jo was the only one who felt well this past weekend. But she's going through a growth spurt, so she's up a couple times at night to eat.

She's started eating real food at daycare. Yesterday I sent her with sweet peas and I told Mrs. Susan good luck. I think sweet peas are DISGUSTING! Jo ate all of them. She's SO Chip's baby.

We've had such a busy week at school. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow in the morning we've been doing MCT2 style testing. It's thrown our schedule off, which has been challenging, but we've got to do what we've got to do. The school district hired a new PEAK teacher and they gave her my PEAK class and gave me some VIVA art kids. It's been hard to lose my kids, but I can only do so much.

The musical is getting underway. We're having an interest meeting next Thursday. I can't believe it's here already!!! OH MY GOSH!!! Life is going to FLY by the next few months. I know it.

Thursday night we're having birthday parties for all of our "Octibbidy" birthdays. It'll be fun to take Jo up to Tupelo and show her off. Papa John's seen her most recently -but she's trying to sit up now and Chip's been putting her on her belly and watching her try to scoot around. What a mess! I gave her applesauce yesterday - she HATED it. Chip thought she was going to throw up. Poor thing.

Well... I just felt like I should update the blog... it's been a little while. I'm still alive!!!

Jo's First MSU Game

Well, I guess we picked a good game for Jo to go to. It was the LSU game and, although we didn't win, it was a really good football game - not like the usual clobbering that we receive from LSU. Here she is with Papa John. Winnie and Papa John got to pass her around a little bit during the game. She was quite entertained with Winnie's phone and her glasses case. She had a wonderful time watching people and was in a really good mood - despite all of the rain that morning. We were soaked... she was pretty dry.

She just hung out. We got a lot of compliments from people sitting around us about how good she was. She was wonderful. She loves being outside and LOVES being around people.

I was worried about what we'd do when naptime came around. Chip tried to get her to nap in his lap, but Jo wouldn't take it. I held her and kept the pacifier in and she went right to sleep. That child slept through touchdowns and interceptions. Even with the crowd yelling, cheering, and ringing their cowbells. She slept through most of the 2nd quarter and she woke up right before half time.

She was a trooper that day. She went to the game, sat through the weather, napped through the cheers, and then went to Old Venice and let us eat a nice dinner. We are so lucky! (I promise, she's not that patient at home...)

Well. One nine weeks will be over next week. It seems like school just started and we're already 1/4 of the way through. Amazing.