Back to School

My kids got back to "school" on January 2. The spring semester at my university started today. The supervisors were supposed to meet with their student teachers around noon today, but I saw that one supervisor in my department was meeting with his at 7:30, and I decided to do the same because our babysitter has another job on Mondays (meaning she can't babysit that day). I thought Paul could just go in to work later than usual. I asked him in December, and he agreed. Then he decided two weeks ago to go to Las Vegas this week. So yesterday evening he came up with this plan that involved waking the kids up at 6:00 (60-90 minutes earlier than they usually get up), taking them to his parents house, and then about 90 minutes later driving to meet me somewhere in between my job and his. Well hopefully this is the only day this semester they will be awakened early on account of my job. They had to do it twice a week last semester, and I thought we'd be avoiding that this semester. I had thought they would do some schoolwork with Daddy, and then I'd come home and finish up with them. While I was on campus I met with my 15 student teachers, signed my contract at HR, picked up my student evaluations from the fall semester, and got my parking permit for this semester from the university police. Now I just need to have access to things like the student roster for my class and the learning management system. It's rather frustrating, but there's nothing I can do about it. Hopefully by the end of this week I'll have been able to accomplish that. A professor also helped me by showing me the way to submit mileage for reimbursement. That had changed while I was gone.

At one point today I was asked if I wanted to be on overload this semester by taking on a second section of the math class, but then the department chair realized it was too late to do that. There was a long waiting list for my class. I agreed to take as many students as would fit in the classroom. We shall see tomorrow how many that ends up being! She said in the fall they'll offer one of the sections of this class as an on-line course to solve part of the problem.

The babysitter texted me to tell me that one of her sons had a fever and probably has strep throat. She took him to the doctor today. I texted two neighbors to see if either one could babysit the kids for 3.5 hours tomorrow afternoon, but neither were available. So we're just going to hope and pray that my kids don't catch what her son has. With Paul in Nevada there isn't anything else I can do about it. I don't have a long list of babysitters because up until I went back to work last semester we hadn't been using any babysitting services for several years.

Nadia keeps asking when we will have our next field trip. We were supposed to go to the children's museum in Bloomsburg last Wednesday for a homeschool program, but it was cancelled due to the schools having a snow day that day. There is a price to be paid for me juggling a FT job while homeschooling. Hopefully we'll go on lots of field trips the week of spring break in March, and I won't be teaching this summer so I'll have a little over three months off this summer, and that gives us many opportunities for field trips/vacations.

One of my student teachers was at the Eagles football game last night. For the next two weeks I will be a HUGE Eagles fan because I really, really, really don't want the Patriots to win the Super bowl. I am assuming the Patriots will win, but I'd love to be wrong. The Giants did beat them in the Super bowl twice. It is possible.