Bird Watch and One Day at a Time

 

Weekends are such a strange thing.

 

I love them when they’re coming up, I miss them when they’re over, and I freak out about them when they’re actually happening.

 

This weekend, for example, I got to do a ton of great things – listening to great music, bird watching, drinking a ton of coffee, going to a crazy ballet, and hanging out with my favorite people.

 

I always end up feeling like I have to cram all my enjoyable things into these two short days, and then I end up enjoying those things less because I’m freaking out about them – and that’s just stupid.

 

I want to be content in all things and taking joy in exactly what I am doing at this moment – whether that is solving a schedule crisis at work on Monday morning, or watching birds in the park on Saturday afternoon.

 

Pizza & Raccoon Sighting

What a week, guys. It was so crazy that I only took pictures three times. But they were good times!

1. Last weekend I was scouring the entire city for coconut flour. Why coconut flour, you ask? well, turns out it’s a key ingredient in this low carb pizza crust recipe a friend gave me.

Low carb pizza, you ask? That sounds gross, you say? Well, I was right there with you. Usually, when you put the words “low-carb” in front of a normal high-carb food, it’s bad news. And coconut with pizza? what?

But this was seriously amazing. Mozzarella (have we talked about how hard that is to spell?), coconut flour, flaxmeal, eggs and bam. Low carb pizza at your fingertips. It was super good.

Another highlight of my week was going to a super cool book signing/release with Danny. I neglected to take any pictures of the actual event, but we did see this huge raccoon on the way there!

Also, today was super cold:

January!

1. It’s been ages since I’ve updated here. My apologies to the 3 of you who kept checking the last two months. It’s been so long, in fact, that wordpress totally changed since the last time I logged in, and now I don’t even know what to do here. It’s like when you update your itunes library and then you think “Ugh, I don’t even want to listen to any music because it just looks so awful.”

Thanks, wordpress! So much for that.

2. I received the lovely gift of a camera for Christmas, and my goal since opening it was to take at least one picture every day. So I take it with me and try to keep an eye out for interesting and beautiful things to snap up. Sometimes I forget, but I’ve done okay so far. Here are some of the highlights from the last couple weeks:

I love the winter sunsets we’ve been having. Pink- and blue-times just seem a lot better when it’s cold and snowy. Also, Emma walks a lot faster when it’s cold outside, so that saves me a lot of time.

 

The whole family went on a wedding-dress-shopping adventure with my sister. Everyone was jealous of us for having such a great dad.

I started back to teaching today, and so far so good. I especially love all the spelling lessons we have in my classes:

That’s all! Oh, and this bonus squirrel picture:

You wish you had my job!

Right?

Right.

Because how often to you get a huge cookie with your name on it at work? Never? Except maybe when you retire or something?

One of my beloved students brought me this cookie for our last class. How sweet is that? And can we just take a moment to note (haHA! no pun intended) how she/her mom spelled my name correctly?? Sometimes I don’t even do that!

But seriously. I have such a great job. My students are awesome.

California

Hello, everyone!

First of all: my apologies for being a terrible blogger. The three of you who consistently read my blog must have been very upset this month. I know for sure one of them (who happens to live in my house) is very disappointed in me. I’m sorry.

In other news, I went to California for Thanksgiving! It was a blast. My favorite part was getting to spend time with some of my dearest friends on earth. It was really great to see their homes, workplaces, schools, and the places where they live their daily lives – I also got to visit their grocery stores and one car repair place.

I can’t believe Celeste sees this every day when she goes to school:

And she drives through this canyon to get there! Beautiful, right?

We went to Hollywood and saw all the sights there, plus some cool piano stairs that make sounds when you walk on them.

We had a tour of UCLA from Zach, our personal guide/grad student. It was surprisingly full of trees and quite a beautiful campus. I don’t know why I didn’t expect that.

This is Cel’s favorite study spot, just off a Malibu alley:

And this is the bookstore where Katie works!

It was a wonderful time. I’m so thankful to have such great friends!

Sticker MANIA

This semester, I instituted a practice prize system for my students. If they practice 6 days a week, they get to choose an item from the coveted Practice Box. Thus, I’ve learned a lot about what elementary-aged kids like:

#1: Stickers
#2: Glowsticks
#3: Plastic bugs
#4: Stick-on tattoos
#5: Halloween

Interestingly, they do NOT like Justin Bieber. He is SO last year. Last week, several of them sang, “Justin’s got rabies, rabies, rabies OHHHHH…” during class instead of practicing like I told them to.

But seriously. These kids go crazy for stickers. Just today I had one kid who was beatboxing instead of working on the note-reading exercise I’d give her (and can you blame her? beatboxing is so much more interesting than reading music) but as soon as I said, “Hey, I’ll give you a gold star sticker as soon as you finish that,” she stopped and got to work on those notes.

Today I realized that I’m just like my students – all I care about is getting stickers.

I got really excited about voting. I voted for the first time in 2008, but in absentee since I was not in Nebraska at the time. This was the first year I’ve actually gone to a polling place to vote… therefore, the first year I got a sweet “I voted today!” sticker. I planned my Election Day outfit very carefully so I could wear the same shirt to vote as I did to work… for optimal sticker-wearing time.

And then all my kids were like, “Miss Sara! You voted today? Who did you vote for??”

And I was all, “I’m not telling you, kid!”

After I voted, I promptly went to Target and bought 400 stickers. I’m secretly hoping my students won’t earn them so I can secretly use them for my own personal achievements: Woke up? get a sticker! Made coffee? another sticker! Went to the gym? double stickers!!

But seriously. Someone needs to come over to my house and hide all these stickers.

The final tally….

Final (approximate) count of October running miles = 24.

That may or may not be totally correct, depending on the accuracy of Google maps and that one week that I forgot to keep track of.

Maybe more for November?? We’ll see.

Just another quotable week of teaching…

“Miss Sara? Why is your hair so poofy?”

“Do you know how Bambi’s mom died? My mom says it was a forest fire.”

Student: I’m bad at piano! I can’t do this!
Me: You’re not allowed to say that in my class! You CAN do it.
Student: Oh. Well, I guess you’re my teacher so I have to do what you say.

“How old are you?”
“Guess.”
“28!” “26!” “30!!!” “40????” “Give us a hint!”
“It’s in the 20’s.”
“19!!”

Me: Ok, let’s try this first line here with your right hand. Ready, go!
Student: I’m really nervous about parent-teacher conferences tonight.
Me: Oh yeah? Are your teachers going to say good things?
Student: I have NO idea. Sometimes I have a little problem with listening.

“Did you know that half of 36 is 18?? I just learned that!”

“Miss Sara, your hair is fluffy again. I like it. Today was crazy hair day at my school.”

“Do you know the story of Oliver’s Twist? Can I tell you about it?”

I love my students. They crack me up all the time.

Knitting

I’ve been really getting into knitting lately.

By which I mean, I’ve made two things. So… kind of.

One of the two things is a sweater for my dog. I just finished it yesterday and I’m not really sure how she feels about it… when I first put it on her, she tried to rub it off on the couch when I wasn’t looking. She seems okay with it now.

That was when she was mad about being made to wear her sweater and wanted Lindsay to console her. She was NOT happy.

Jedi Knights

Me: I want you to practice this line until you’ve mastered it, okay? You can do it.
Student: You want me to master it like a Jedi Knight?
Me: Actually, yes! Exactly like a Jedi Knight.

What a wonderful, inspiring analogy. My students are so creative. Next time I have to do something hard I’m going to take his advice and do it just like a Jedi Knight would.

My student then launched into a detailed description of a Jedi Knight slicing a watermelon with a light saber. It was actually quite the opposite of him mastering the bass clef notes like a Jedi Knight, but was quite amusing. He eventually got down to business and did his piano Jedi Knight thing.

Oh, the joys of teaching small hilarious children.