We've taken on a lot, and somehow managed to stay in tact. Living life now as a family of 4!

That's pretty much all I wanted to say. And also that today after work I sat in front of the fire again - for a while with Jake and for a while with Kerry, and it was glorious. All the more so because Kerry and I ate vanilla ice cream with roasted, salted peanuts which is my new favourite snack and is also the reason that after this ice cream is gone, we can not buy any more. Vaguely related question: where do you think we could find men's summery, light-in-colour-and-material pants for Jakerella? He's gonna need some for our vacay because we are going to a place that is about 4 stars above our personal swank-level. I wore sweats and an old t-shirt from value village to work today, for reference. In my defense, I did teach gym. FRIDAY!!!!  I LOVE YOU!!!

Is it too soon to start another count down? Yesterday was Jaker's birthday and what he wanted was to sit by the fire and have wine and cheese, followed by a nice dinner at home. Twist my rubber arm! We recently moved the chairs from the upstairs sunroom down (initially for movie day) to the parlour where the fireplace is, and while those particular chairs aren't the best for the space design-wise, the temporary placement is working out just fine. Yesterday was also a doozy at work - one kid in such crisis that she was threw a juice box, granola bar, 2 tables at 2 different times, knocked everything she could off the counter and ripped one mailbox/folder holder off a door. She was 1 of 5 I dealt with yesterday (no exaggerating!), all grade 8 girls, all in various states of absolute melt-down mode. I know that the scientific world mostly agrees that there is no real correlation between the phases of the moon and people's behaviour, but I think anyone who works in a schoo...

Well, this was the best weekend I've had in a long time. An excellent balance of junk food and activity. Except a little more on the junkfood side. First, a few pics from the movie extravaganza yesterday that I didn't include in my initial post:  The idea was to have sugar cereal during the first movie (breakfast!). I found the KRAVE. It's chocolate-filled chocolate puffs. The first ingredient is 'chocolate filling', whose first ingredient is sugar. It was delicious. Not that I ate it with milk, that would be gross. But it's pretty good as finger food, even if it does look a little like dog food. Also, we had pistachios and chips, naturally. As well as popcorn, farmer sausage, vietnamese food, pizza, pie, and ice cream. Not all at the same time.  It was snowing yesterday and Jake conned Scott into shovelling our deck by asking him to fill the cooler.  So obviously, we were all feeling more than a little gross by the time that last movie had ended a...

Yesterday I got home and just did not feel like writing. Even though in hindsight I had plenty of material I could have turned into something worth reading. So to make up for it, today I am posting pictures! Ones taken especially for the blog! Jake's volleyball season finished yesterday night, which is a huge weight off his shoulders. I would hazard a guess that this was the hardest season he has ever coached - not because of his players, but because he was so exhausted from our adventures in summer and fall he could barely drag himself to work and back, let alone 3 Saturday tournaments in 3 weeks plus regular games and practices. Today he's making up for all that activity and 'doing' with a day of delightful sloth-like-behaviour, which obviously I am all for, as I am still lazy-to-the-max. Right now the weather outside looks like this (taken from the upstairs sunroom), except with varying amounts blustery-ness. So we're gonna watch movies ALL DAY.  ...

You know what's kind of amazing about blogging every day is how much of your life you record, but how much MORE of your life you leave out. This sort of blows me away, actually. I've been writing every day, but what makes it on here is such a teeny tiny snippet of life. Now it sounds like I'm hiding something. I'm not, but I easily could be! *wink wink* Today I dealt with a diffused-but-not-over situation between a former student who has so much potential that we sent her to a private school on a scholarship - and this is a really good school with a really good program to help equalize the playing field between inner-city kids and other kids - it is a big deal - and a current student. The former student wanted to fight the current student, for no reason the current student could figure out. Now, of course, trying to unravel the intricacies of teenage girl drama is one of THE MOST FRUSTRATING tasks one could ever engage in, but mostly what it boils down to is I a...

Got nothing to say. For real. I know it's surprising, and I probably should be working harder to come with something worth reading. But I've got nothing! I bought stamps today. Work is settling down a tiny bit. I discovered this week that me (along with other people, but also me) dropped the ball in a BIG way on a couple of kids who have some very serious and real problems and who we need to figure out before they hit grade 10. Feel pretty shitty about that. Christmas break isn't that far away and I could not be more excited about that. Jake and I going to go away to somewhere warm where we can have a week of summer break. so. Hopefully I come up with more inspiration tomorrow. Gonna be at work till 7:30, so it's a toss-up really.

Was anyone wondering what Jake did while I read and napped on Sunday afternoon? An educated guesser might have gone with 'organized trim' or 'cleaned up the garage' - in fact that's what I thought he was doing. But nope. Instead, he was taking advantage of the weather in a somewhat grandiose fashion.