Where have I been??

I don't know if I could even tell you - it's been such a hectic and busy year so far!

Here's a quick run down of what has been going on with the Pages in the last month:

First week of October: I had a mysterious mole removed on my arm. My doctor thought it might be Melanoma, but it came back clear - YAY! It did give me a good scare though, so I made a dermatologist appointment and when I went he said all of my moles/freckles looked good, but that I have pre-cancerous cells on my lips. I had to have the skin on my bottom lip frozen which gave me an awesome blister that looked like a fever blister. I also have to use this cream (over the holiday break) that will burn off several layers of skin on my lips to get rid of the scary pre-cancerous cells.

October 8th: College Day at my elementary school! I love college day because I absolutely love where I went to college. It was a blast telling the kids all about "Essefay" (S.F.A.) and letting them try on my cap and gown. They also loved seeing the picture of "Mr. Casey" and me on my graduation day.

October 8-10: Home to Longview to visit my dad and relax. Casey and I helped him fix the roof and paint his kitchen. My dad also started a new job recently that he really loves. Thank you Lord for giving my dad a job that he loves!

October 11: I survived Parent/Teacher conferences - Year 2. Last year I threw up on my way into conferences. This year was much better. :) I have a great group of parents this year - another thing to be thankful for!

October 16: Dinner with our old friends the Tolars. Trey was my outside salesman when I worked at Elliott Electric Supply and we became great friends during that time. It was so great to hang out with them and get to see their kids - they are such a cute family!

October 23: Stephen F. Austin vs. Sam Houston game at Reliant Stadium! Casey and I got tickets through the ZTA alumni association earlier this year to go to the SFA vs. Sam game and we had so much fun tailgaiting with friends and watching the game. Oh and the Lumberjack Marching band did Beyonce "Single Ladies" and Lady Gaga!! That absolutely made my day. :)

October 22: Family pumpkin carving night at Casey's Aunt Jackie and Uncle Gregs! A year ago Casey proposed to me at this event so it was really tough opening up a pumpkin and not finding a diamond ring (kidding). Casey and I went traditional this year and made pretty basic pumpkins, but they turned out really well. Here we are with our pumpkins!

October 30: Halloween parties. Casey dressed up as the "Hide yo' kids, Hide yo' wife" guy (Antoine Dodson) and I dressed up as Santana from my favorite show GLEE!

October 31: My MIL's birthday! I love that her birthday is on Halloween! We went out to eat at Black Walnut Cafe and then back to the house for ice cream cake - yum!

That pretty much brings me up to date!

Oh the Places You'll Go In Books!

I love Dr. Seuss... which is why I named my Limeades for Learning project after one of my favorite books. Please go vote on me so that I can get emergent storybooks for my classroom library!

Here is the link to go vote:

http://www.limeadesforlearning.com/projects/view/446707?utm_source=et&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=l4lstaf

It's only open through Friday though so please vote as many times as you can (only one per email, per day, but if you have multiple emails you can vote multiple times!)

Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow!

IT SNOWED IN HOUSTON, TEXAS TODAY!!! Yes it's true, Houston, Texas, the hottest, muggiest, most gross weather having city in America, got snow ALL day long today. On Monday when the weather reports about Houston getting snow came out, I was thinking "Yeah, right- it never snows in Longview and Houston is WAY hotter!". The kids in my class kept assuring me that "On/In/At Friday it's going to snow!" Well today as we were doing morning circle and calendar, I looked outside and it was actually snowing! I could not believe my eyes. It was hard to see but the kids were so excited anyway. Since many of them had never seen snow before I decided that I would take it upon myself to let them go on a "mini-field trip" outside to play in the snow. So I bundled them up and instructed them that they could do whatever they wanted except scream and that if they screamed we would have to go inside immediately. Of course as soon as a snowflake hit their skin they all started screaming with excitement and I had to take them inside, but they really liked it. Later during the day when it started really coming down I took them out again and they really got to play in it and I didn't have to worry about them screaming because there were 3 other classes full of screaming kids outside too. The day was pretty chaotic with parents coming to pick their kids up early for fear that the roads would get too bad, but other than that it was a great Friday! Here are some pics of the kiddos in the snow while we were loading the buses and also one of Riley in the frosty grass!

Thankful for the Troops

As the holidays approach I am thinking about things that I am thankful for even more than ever. This week I had to comfort a very upset child and ended up making a cool class project out of it. Let me explain - one of my kids, Raven, is dealing with something very difficult right now. She just turned 6 and her mother is serving in Afghanistan right now. Raven is a very well adjusted, very bright child, but occasionally has a meltdown (rightfully so) because she misses her mother so much. On Wednesday Raven was particularly upset because we were talking about Thanksgiving and how we would be spending it. Most of the kids were saying "I'm going to my grandma's house with my mommy and daddy" or something along those lines and when I looked over at Raven she was visibly upset and soon started crying. I can't imagine how hard it is for her knowing that her mom is where she is and not coming home for a very long time. I decided to turn this into a special class project and on Thursday and Friday we made Thank You cards for Raven's mom to send to Afghanistan. This definitely cheered Raven up and Raven's grandmother (who she is currently living with) said that she was so excited that the whole class made cards for her mommy. I am sending the package on Monday, but I thought this one was particularly cute and that you might want to see it:




One of my kids Kendall did this one and yeah it's not perfectly spelled, but this is REALLY good for a kindergartner! Anyway, I hope that all of you are thinking about what you are thankful for this Thanksgiving and being especially thankful for your families. I know I am so thankful and feel so blessed that I have not one but TWO wonderful families this year (mine and Casey's).

College Day, Pumpkins, and more!

Okay so I have been a bad blogger lately. Things have been so busy and now that I have an iPhone I hardly ever get on my actual computer at home. So here are a few updates:

2 weeks ago my school had College Day and we got to wear College Tshirts and bring stuff from college to show the students. I think this is a great thing because it introduces the idea of college to so many students, some of whom may not even know what college is because their
parents didn't go. So of course I wore an SFA Alumni shirt and I even brought my cap, gown, and a picture from graduation. The kids loved hearing about "Essefay" and learning how to do the "Axe 'Em Jacks" sign! Luckily my librarian, next door teacher, and all 3 principals went to SFA so I wasn't the only one trying to indoctrinate them. Here are a few pictures from that day:




Yeah so maybe I brainwashed them, but so what?













Okay so on to Pumpkins!

Jessica, Chris, Casey, and I had our 3rd annual Chagla-Page/Wood pumpkin carving get together last Saturday and it was a blast as usual. Since Chris had to work from 3:00-5:00 we went to the pumpkin patch around noon and picked out our pumpkins. This year it was slim pickins at the pumpkin patch and Case and I were very upset that they didn't have hay bails and corn stalks for decorating. Here are some pics from the pumpkin patch:


After getting our pumpkins we headed back home and Jess and I went to get pedicures and did a little shopping. I found a really cute pair of winter boots at Kohls and even though I was trying to stay away from stilleto heels, these were too pretty to pass up.


After shopping and pedis, Jess and I picked up stuff for tacos and some southwestern eggrolls from Chilis- one of my biggest weaknesses. I am obsessed with those things! After getting home and devouring chips & salsa/queso and the eggrolls I cooked up some taco meat and we had dinner. I love taco night - it never gets old to me. After eating we started carving the pumpkins and put on some "scary" movies. Jessica doesn't like horror films so we watched Young Frankenstein & Shaun of the Dead- if you haven't checked these out you really need to they are both hilarious! Casey and I chose a Nightmare Before Christmas theme and I carved Jack Skellington and he carved the Oogie-Boogie. They turned out really cute!



Chris did a Scarecrow and Jess did a really awesome and complicated Haunted House scene- yet again she won for most difficult pumpkin pattern! I got done with my Jack-O-Lantern first so I took all of our pumpkin guts and separated the seeds from the goop and made some roasted pumpkin seeds with a twist. Jess and I had read an article in Redbook about making gourmet pumpkin seeds so I decided to experiment. I made three different kinds: Mexican inspired, Italian inspired, and Indian inspired. They were all pretty good except the curry ones were a little bitter.

To make a long story even longer - pumpkin night was a success! More later!

I survived Parent-Teacher Conferences...barely

So today was Parent Teacher conference day and boy was I nervous. So nervous in fact that I threw up twice before I got to school and once as I was walking in. Who knows if it was just nerves or maybe a touch of food poisoning, but it definitely was not fun being nauseous all day long.

Conferences went really well after I got in the swing of things and all of the parents seemed very receptive to my recommendations and concerns. Yay!

After leaving work I went directly to Half Price Books because today was the last day that they had an additional 20% off for teachers. Boy am I glad I went! I got about $100 worth of awesome best selling children's books for a total of $35- yay! I am most excited about the pristine hardback copy of "No, David!" by David Shannon that I found. David Shannon is by far my kids favorite author and is quickly becoming mine as well - his books are so cute! My class asks me to read that book to them literally every day about 3 times so I'm glad I now have my own copy and don't have to sneak next door to get Tiffany's copy. Yay for new books!

This evening I am working on lesson plans for my official Region IV observation tomorrow- I am super nervous so keep me in your prayers! Off to bed I go now!

Thursday, Friday, HAPPY DAYS, Saturday- What a day!

The end of this week and this weekend were both bittersweet. One one hand I had a great weekend with friends and on the other I found out that I will be unemployed at the end of this upcoming week. Luckily, tomorrow I am going to Conroe to have my subsitute teaching orientation so hopefully I will be able to sub as often as possible. I am also going tomorrow to submit a few applications at some retail places in the mall as well as a few child care facilities since that's what I've been doing all summer. Being unemployed is going to be super weird because I literally haven't been unemployed since I was 14 or 15. I have held at least one job for the past 10 years - crazy huh? Anyway, the weekend was a mix of fun and bad news, but here's the good stuff!

Thursday night, I went to happy hour at Baker's Street with a few of the girls and we had a blast catching up. Since our Bunko group has pretty much dissolved, I don't see those girls often enough. I finally met the elusive Stephanie Perez (she moved to Nacogdoches around the same time I started going to Bunko) and she was super sweet! Okay for this next part I need to give you a little backstory - when we went to Lake Conroe a weekend or two ago our friend Eric was part of the group. For some reason while we were riding around in the boat I decided that he would be a perfect match for Kelli and proceeded to tell him this. You know me - "matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match!" Anyway so I told him all about Kelli and he seemed interested. I told Kelli about him and she seemed interested, but the thing I didn't think about was - how was I going to get them to meet? Well fate worked this one out for me because while we were at Baker's St. in walks Eric! He had an appointment with his financial advisor, but ended up coming to our table for the rest of the night to hang out. He and Kelli seemed to be hitting it off so I invited him to come kayaking with us on Saturday (yesterday) and he was all about it! YAY! Not only would he get to hang out with Kelli and get to know her, but we would now have a guy to help us load and unload the kayaks! That my friends is a WIN WIN situation! I left fairly early because I have to get my beauty rest, but apparently Eric stayed up there and walked our group of girls to their cars - how gentlemanly!

Eric and Kelli and I

The girls!

On Friday I came to school with my bathing suit on - super ready for Splash day! Maggie and Gena had talked me into allowing the kids to dunk me in the dunking booth for our last Splash Day celebration! The kids had a blast dunking me and were chanting "DUNK MS. SARAH! DUNK MS. SARAH!" - sooo funny! Unfortunately the dunking booth that the rental company gave us was really crummy and broke after two or three dunks. That was a bummer, but we quickly distracted the kiddos with snow cones and all was right in the world. Here are a few pics from Splash Day!







Friday night Casey and I went to Mario's Mexican Restaurant and I did something that I haven't done in a month - I ate carbs! Not too many, but I did have several tortilla chips and one regular tortilla for my fajita. It was delicious but I was regretting it the next day. I promptly went back to full Atkin's mode Saturday! Speaking of Saturday- mine ROCKED!

Casey and I got up at around 7:30 on Saturday morning and started getting stuff done around the house. We had let the lawn grow for 3 weeks so it took Casey like 3 hours to mow - ouch! While he was mowing I went on a bike ride and let's just say - I had forgotten how hard biking is and what a good workout it is! Even though I'm up to running 2 miles straight, I couldn't even pedal for 1 mile straight and my legs were BURNING! I biked for about 30 minutes and called it quits because I had bigger and better things to move on to- KAYAKING! Since I knew Casey was going out of town on Saturday around lunch time I had arranged to borrow Chris and Jessica's kayak so Kelli could take her first venture out in a kayak. Luckily we had run into Eric so he was there to guide us around the lake and help us with loading and unloading. We spent a leisurely 2 hours floating around in Lake Woodlands and checking things out. I surprisingly didn't even get sunburned! After we got back to the shore we ate lunch at Northshore park and I stupidly fed one of the ducks and had an army of other ducks descend upon our picnic table. We were able to shoo them away, but those little guys are persistent to say the least! Although Kelli was hesitant about kayaking at first she got the hang of it and was leading us for most of the day - we had so much fun!

Kelli paddling away and Eric taking a break

Kelli and I

You give a guy a camera and he takes pictures of his feet? Typical - lol.

Kelli paddling over by the waterway apartments

Saturday night was a ton of fun - Adriane, Kelli (and her Chihuahua Jackson!), Jessica, and I had a good ol' fashioned Slumber Party at my house! The girls came over and I made enchiladas and we sat around snacking on delicious HEB queso and then later - cupcakes with super cute ocean inspired rings attached to them! What can I say - I work at a preschool and I take whatever leftover pastries that are offered to me. We had over 100 extra cupcakes after Splash Day celebration! After dinner we sat out on the back porch and watched the dogs go crazy chasing each other - let's just say they slept like babies that night! We finally came inside and rented "17 Again" - yes that's correct, the one with Zac Efron - lol. It was cute, but SUPER cheesy - what should I have expected though right? After that we all spread out on the ginormous bed we made using the couch and our air mattress - it was a sweet sleeping arrangement because there was plenty of room for all of us to stretch out AND the dogs got to snuggle with us too!

Our sweet bed/fort setup!

Our awesome friendship rings that we got from the cupcakes!

Saturday night was super fun - we are definitely going ot start doing that on a regular basis!

Well I gotta go now - Casey is installing more memory on my computer- yay!!

Work and an update on the diet

So I started Atkins on Wednesday and yesterday I had full on symptoms of ketosis (the state you need to be in to lose weight) I feel a lot lighter and have already started losing some mass (possibly water weight but hey I'll take it!). I decided I'm going to follow it as close as I can but that I'm not going to miss out on things like having a tiny slice of birthday cake (or half a cupcake today for Lexie's birthday!) but I won't be drinking for a few weeks - not that I drink much to begin with but I'm completely cutting out the glass of wine I have with dinner sometimes and absolutely no beer. I figure it's only three weeks and I can totally handle doing without something for that long. Yesterday I was super fatigued and really irritable, but today I'm much less irritable and not as fatigued. Today is the 9th birthday of one of my kids- Lexie - so I've been letting her do some stuff that the other students aren't doing and one of the things she asked if she could do was go to the workroom and do math with me. Isn't that weird? I hated math when I was her age, but I of course said yes so here I am in the workroom listening to Lexie and Lindsay solve multiplication problems! Good times. Anyway I just thought I would write a little update! More later!

Confirmation :)

For a "laid back" week and weekend it has felt like a long and busy one! This week was "Food & Healthy Eating" week at TWYLA which was right up my alley so me and the kids had a blast! On Tuesday they went to the Young Chef's Academy in Alden Bridge (The Woodlands) where they made a Denver omelette and cheesy muffins that tasted like the biscuits at Red Lobster - yum! Although the kids weren't huge fans of either of these dishes, they had a blast making them. On Thursday I had them make a delicious fruit salad with all fresh ingredients and boy did they have fun! I didn't want them using knives so I just had them use their play-doh toys and that worked perfectly. I'm learning that you have to improvise quite a bit as a teacher but it's cool having to figure out creative ways to do things. Here are some pictures from this week!



This weekend Casey and I intentionally made little to no plans because we've been so busy that we really haven't had time to spend with eachother and just relax at home. On Friday we went over to Casey's sister Shannon and her husband Andy's house to have dinner with them, Andy's sister, and Casey's parents. We had a great time grilling, hanging out on their newly built screened in porch and enjoying good food and good conversation. Andy's sister Rebecca lives in Oregon and is a musician- what a cool life! Casey is obsessed with getting to see Oregon because that's where The Goonies was filmed so we might have to take a trip up there sometime in the next couple of years. On Saturday we ran some errands and cleaned around the house during the day and then went for a late swim around 8 at the neighborhood pool. I've been trying to swim more often because it's a great workout and a lot easier on the joints than running. GEEZ I sound like an old lady, but I guess all the sports and stuff I did as a kid are really affecting me now. Oh well!

Today my dad came in town for Father's Day and also to go to church with us. Today was "New Member Sunday" and also the day I officially became a member of the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod. I was confirmed during the 11 o'clock service and got take communion with Casey and his family for the first time- what a great day! After church we came back to the house and grilled some hamburgers and hung out and now my dad and I are hanging out on the couch and napping intermittently.

This week I am going to start a new diet and work out regime - pray for me to have some self control when it comes to eating sweets and snacking at work and also to get my butt in gear and lose the extra 10 lbs I've put on this past year and a half.

More later - hope everyone has a great week!

Being sick stinks!

So I have been horribly ill since Monday morning and I am still fighting it off. Apparenlty the first time you work around kids most people get really sick. I am one of those people. I have had the following symptoms: Sneezing, stuffy nose, running nose, coughing, hacking, wheezing, daily sinus headaches, disgusting drainage, and achy soreness all over. Oh and I'm pretty much deaf. The kids have to get right up next to me or else I can't hear them. Good times. Luckily I haven't had a fever so I assume it's just a sinus infection and not contagious to the kids. **UPDATE: Casey is now sick and I the funny thing is I have the same symptoms as SWINE FLU! Luckily Swine Flu is just the flu, so I'm sure I'll be better in a few days - let's just hope Casey feels better too!**

On Tuesday we got to go on our very first field trip - I will post pictures when I get home. We went to King's Orchard in Plantersville, TX (right next to the Renaissance Faire!) and got to pick blackberries, blueberries, and a couple of strawberries that were leftover from strawberry season. The kids had a blast and so did I and we picked a TOOOOOON of berries. Funny kid story: On the way up to the orchard one of the kids saw a sign at a Jack in the Box that said "Chicken Club". He started laughing hysterically and told all the kids to look at the sign. He was heartbroken when I told him that a Chicken Club was a sandwich and not an actual club for chickens. HAHAHAHAHA! I love working with kids!! Oh and yesterday we had barbeque sandwiches for lunch and one of the kids starting calling it a Barbe-Joe (like Sloppy Joe)- kids are hilarous. On the bus ride home from the orchard 2 of the kids spilled their buckets of berries so that was unpleasant, but we got everything worked out.

Here are some pics from the field trip!

Some of the berries I picked - YUM!!

My kiddos trying to pick strawberries- they were a bit out of season so it was definitely a hunt!

My class - 6-9 year olds.

Me and Zachary on the bus - he refused to smile so I tickled him. I love this picture!

Today is Kelli Flanagan's birthday - so HAPPY BIRTHDAY KELLI!!! Hopefully I will be better before tomorrow night because we are all going out. YAY!!!

More later - gotta go teach the kids some French!!