Alayna after curlers in her hair

Time for relaxation?

July 26, 2009
Another busy week whizzed by! Where does the time go? I spent 30 hours this week doing my professional portfolio. It’s required here in Iowa. There are 8 Iowa teaching standards and each of those has about 5 substandards. You have to have 2-3 artifacts showing proof that you have met this standard in your classroom. So, if you do the math, it was about 120 pages that I had to include and write each thing met a standard. It was a flipping nightmare that took over 30 hours. My back end was planted at the kitchen table all week. Thank heavens the kids were perfect so I was able to complete it.

Tyler and Kayla went to volleyball camp this week and loved it. Out of all of LM district, Tyler and Hunter were the only boys that attended. I told him the other boys at school would be jealous that he and Hunter had a whole gym of girls to themselves! We have alos been going to play tennis as a family because the weather has been GORGEOUS!!! The summer has been so lovely. We had this incredible storm move in this week so that so majestic we had to open the sliding door and watch it (while praying it wouldn’t turn into a tornado!)

Our garden is flourishing! Our zucchini’s are out of control. We have been shredding them and freezing them. I have made yummy zucchini bread too. Now our green beans are taking off- any idea what to do with them all? Our tomatoes will be ripe soon and then we plan to can homemade salsa all day. Yummy! We also spent 4 hours as a family deep cleaning and organizing the kitchen yesterday. It looks so great now and we even know where everything is. Now maybe I can FINALLY relax this summer? Maybe??

Swim lessons

Bike accident

Never take life seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyway.

July 19, 2009
The girls made it back safely from teen week yesterday and said they had a great time. Once again I am counting on them to post their pics and update their blogs with information on teen week and camp.

Tyler, Alayna, and I had a fun week here at home:
*we went to see Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. So cute, but our movie theater over doubled their ticket prices, so we may not be going there anymore.
*Alayna had a bike accident and scraped up her knee pretty badly. Reminds me of someone else I know…
*Alayna finished swimming lessons on Friday. She can do some pretty cool stuff now and is much more confident in the water.
*They went over to a friend’s house to play this week, and some friends came over to play.
*I got through several hours of stuff for Primary and have started stuff for work again. This summer has flown by faster than any other summer- ever!! I will focus this week on putting on professional portfolio together since the principal will be checking it in November. Talk about stress! I go back to work on August 13. Can we vote on a longer summer??
*Yesterday, Bob drove to pick up the girls, we cleaned and detailed both cars, did the laundry, cleaned the house, hair cuts, did the grocery shopping, and then watched Pink Panther 2 as a family. Its nice to finally have everyone home.

Our yard and garden

132 smiley cupcakes