Friday, September 9, 2011

The Mysterouis Egg

I love my job. Like "have to drag myself out of bed every morning still because I hate waking up... but once I'm there can't wipe the smile off my face" - love my job.  Kids are so much more creative than adults, and I love that I get to see into their worlds every day.  Sounds hokey, but they inspire me. Okay, that sounded just as hokey on computer screen as it did in my head. 

Here is a piece of writing by one of my third graders. He approached me today with this piece of paper cut in an oval shape and said,
"Hey Mrs. S. I just cut this out, now what should I do with it?"

Seeing as he was supposed to be writing, not cutting his writer's notebook into random shapes I said, 
"How about you write about a mysterious egg found by scientists, and that's the egg they found." How's that for a consequence? Way to go, teach. : )

Well, this is the product. I think it speaks for itself. I present to you....The Mysterouis Egg.  (Oh come on, he had the right letters just in the wrong odre.  You know what he means!) (Did you catch my joke?) (Is a joke really good if you have to point it out?) (Do I overuse parenthesis?)

Nobody knows. : )

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Progress, Progress, Progress!

It seems like we've been checking a lot of things off our to-do list lately and it.feels.great.  I know I'm not the only one who is feeling this way when Jay sends me emails with exclamation marks in them!  Gosh it feels good to be making progress!

So what's new? Here's a quick photo-phone-dump to give you an idea.

These two mugs have had to go get our fingerprints done, send in some immigration forms, and get our background checks started. All things to get the ball rolling, rolling, rolling. 


Our kitchen table has officially turned into paper-chase central. It looks like this at all times, and we just eat in the opposite corner of the paperwork.  See the salt and pepper, they prove my point.  If our dinner has any spilling potential, Jay makes us eat at the table in the basement.  We spent a lot of time on these documents, and would hate to mess one up with a pizza sauce splatter! 


This week marked the start of Cyclone football! We get really geeked out to be back in the town of our alma mater, and although the Clones aren't the best team ever, it's a nice excuse to tailgate and get that "college" feeling again! 

We took a detour on our way to Ames and bought a crib.  Yikes!  Our homestudy has started and we were told we need to begin getting our house "kid ready". Well, kids need a place to sleep, and I had a coupon.  So...check! Another thing off the list.  

I couldn't resist having a crib in a box in my house.  That is too much for this girl to handle! So we spent all day Sunday taking EVERYTHING out of the two upstairs bedrooms we currently use as a guest room and as an office and repurposing the spaces. We now have a kids room (Holy cow I have a kids room at my house!!!) and a guest room that also works as an office space.
Here is the kid's room with the crib up and the day bed in it. It is not decorated and you can bet big money the wall color will change - but it makes me feel like we've made a lot more room for the little ones in our life.  The closet is empty and ready to be kidafied.  My newest itch I need to scratch is decorating. Ohhhh how I love decorating!  I know these things are not important, but they are fun, and I'm enjoying it right now! 

I realize this room could sit kidless for over a year easy, and I'm okay with that, this is part of the process for me. It helps me to slowly picture these little people that are going to enter our lives.

This week felt like bigtime progress and left a big ole smile on my face.  This is the first week we've really felt like we made substantial movement, as most weeks are full of waiting on something or another. In the meantime, Jay and I are enjoying every moment of being DINKS (double income no kids), but also excitedly preparing for our kids.  Next week: home visit!