Thankful Tuesday

1. My mammogram on November 27 was normal.

2. Nadia and Ian are enjoying their art class at the Christian school on Fridays. Oliver enjoys playing in the indoor playground while they are in their art class.

3. We really enjoyed the Very Electric Christmas show at Bucknell on Saturday. I'm so thankful we got four free tickets through our membership at the Children's Museum in Bloomsburg!

4. We had a great time at the glass museum in Corning on Sunday afternoon. The kids did their very first make your own glass activities. I won a beautiful hand blown glass vase! Admission was free for all five of us, and the cost of the make your own glass projects was reduced by more than 50%.

5. Paul's grandma turned 95 years old yesterday! None of my grandparents lived that long. She had a small surgery recently as a result of an injury she sustained from a fall. Thankful that procedure went well.

6. The Steelers won last night! I was too tired to stay up for the whole game. These night games are killing me now that I am getting up earlier. When I went to bed at half-time the score was 17-3 (we were losing). I was so happy to see when I got up at 5:15 this morning that we won (23-20). I am thrilled that we are 10-2 with four games left in the regular season! I'm also very relieved that one of our defensive players isn't paralyzed. He left the game early on with what later was described as a spinal contusion. Based on how he acted on the field the commentators weren't sure if he could move his legs at all. That was a scary moment! I think Paul is happy that the Giants Coach and GM were fired because Paul was very upset that they benched their QB - Eli Manning, who up until Sunday hadn't missed a single game in fourteen years. I think it's also the first time he wanted his team to lose as he didn't want people to think benching Eli was a good idea.

7. I have been doing a lot of multitasking lately. More than I actually prefer to do, but last night while watching the first half of the football game I was wrapping birthday and Christmas presents. Wrapping gifts isn't my favorite activity so doing it during a football game worked out well although it would have been more pleasurable if the team had played better in the first half, ha ha! I did give myself permission last night to read a NOVEL during Ian and Oliver's one hour gymnastics class. It was by one of my favorite authors - Karen Kingsbury. I had checked the book out of the library even though I haven't had time for leisure reading the past four months. It felt so nice to relax for an hour as usually I am trying to grade or something like that during their gymnastics class. I wasn't even totally caught up with my grading, but I gave myself permission to relax even though I still had work I could have been doing.

8. Although I shop online all year long, this time of year I am especially grateful for online shopping. The thought of needing to do all my shopping in person at stores is completely overwhelming. I'm also thankful that our budget isn't as tight as it was the last couple of years.

9. I barely did any Black Friday or Cyber Monday type shopping, but I did place an order on Yankee Candle just as I did last year as they have everything on sale 50% off plus free shipping if you spend over a certain amount (and that amount is lower than what it is most of the year). I placed an order for the fragrance spheres that I have grown to love having in the bathrooms, and with this sale they are only $3 each. Yay!

10. The kids are staying one extra hour at Tab's house today, and Paul is coming home earlier than usual to pick them up at her house at 4:45 so that I can attend a Christmas party at a restaurant with my colleagues. My social life is almost nonexistent so I am grateful for this opportunity to have an adult conversation over a meal.

11. The gymnastics program moved to a new location recently. The parking situation is much better now, but I hope they are going to turn on the lights in the parking lot as it's rather dangerous right now. After the boys' class was done last night, I took them to Bucknell for a Gizmos and Gadgets science event hosted for children. Ian is making great progress with his cartwheels!

12. I was able to use more Coke caps recently. They were giving away two free movie tickets (to see any movie) for just one Coke cap! We don't usually go to the movie theater, but with two free tickets I'm planning to take the kids some time this month. We looked at what movies are coming out the next couple of months. At first they were leaning toward Paddington 2, but then they ended up picking "Ferdinand" (the bull who doesn't want to fight matadors). Then for 10 Coke caps you could get a coupon for a large popcorn at the movie theater. I entered 20 caps so we have coupons for two large popcorns. I found another $10 off movie tickets deal elsewhere so it will cost about $5 total for the four of us to see a movie and eat popcorn during the movie.

13. The department chair sent me an email early on Friday morning asking me to stop by her office on Tuesday morning. Let me say that type of a message stresses me out. I had to work not to think about it as my mind can go in all different directions. I stopped by this morning and found out that the other two professors did request "my" classes as overloads, which means my schedule for the spring semester will be 15 student teachers plus the Math methods course from 3:30-4:45pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Ironically, the class was to be offered at a different time, and she moved it so that it would be before my 5-8pm classes. In the beginning I had asked for 15 student teachers plus one 5-8pm class or 10 student teachers and two 5-8pm classes. The math methods class was the last course added to my schedule, and now it's actually the only on campus class I'll be teaching.

Part of me thinks I should have just requested 20 student teachers because I'll be driving to campus to only teach for 75 minutes, but the math methods course is one I really like to teach, and the professor who has taught it since 2005 might be retiring in the near future so it could possibly become "my" regular class to teach every semester. Usually they offer 2 sections of it each semester - one online and one face-to-face. He's still teaching the online version of it in the spring, but maybe next fall I could possibly teach the online and face-to-face sections. The positives are that supervising student teachers is a very flexible schedule and there aren't any lectures to prepare. The assessment is also not very time consuming because it's done while you are in the classroom observing them teach.  One potential downside is the driving time depending on where the schools are located. I was told today where my student teachers will be located. I think they'll all be within 40 minutes of my house. Some are within 15 minutes of my house. The other downside is that I had put time into preparing these courses - primarily because the deadline for picking textbooks was in October. I had read books, made notes, started to work on writing my syllabi, etc. Maybe I'll teach these other two courses in the future some time. The one I had taught before. The other would have been a new preparation, and maybe it's better not to have a new preparation right now. I know how much work that added to my plate this semester. Maybe my efforts were in vain, or maybe I'll put them to use in the future. Who knows. For now I am thankful for a job that I enjoy (haven't officially been offered the contract for the spring semester yet), and I do really enjoy supervising student teachers in particular. Maybe this is actually the idea schedule for our family even though Paul and I had selected a different one. If my schedule was going to change, I am VERY grateful it happened now rather than next month as by then I would have invested far more time and energy into my preparations.

When I first started the blog, I didn't post many pictures. Then it eventually got to the point where just about every post contained a picture. Since I don't use my camera as often these days, I have to remind myself that I am allowed to write a post that doesn't include any pictures.