We visited adoptable dogs today, which was a huge mistake. Dan and I fell in love with the dog pictured here. Her name was Marley, and she's probably meant for us, and now we can't get her because of "clear expectations" and "follow-through."

In other news, this challenge has been sublime. I've loved it a lot. Thanks, blog BFFs!!

p.s. photo by pronto, best husband in the world.

After school I took the kids to the local dog park to hang out with the dogs. Turns out this was a really fun activity that we will definitely repeat. There were some absolutely adorable dogs at the park, and some handsome ones as well.

In class today, I had an occasion to tell the story about when Shef used to hit me with his rhythm sticks at music class.

Remember that? It was so embarrassing!

Anyway, I got to thinking about how old he was he did that and what he looked like. Luckily, I have a photo from this blog taken and posted on that VERY DAY!



It turns out he was just about exactly as old as Mac is now. Mac never beats me in public. I wonder if he'll start soon?

Shef reads tons of books every week. And of course this pleases me immensely. His latest series is Wimpy Kid, which seems like it might not be appropriate for first grade? But here's an important lesson I learned from my mother: censoring literature is a bad idea. That's why she let me read Clan of the Cave Bear when I was ten.

This image challenge has been great. This is the last week. I did Bowser today, and it was insanely hard. I started too high and I didn't have room for the mace. Sorry, guys.

I realized in the nick of time that I had almost forgotten to blog. Then, I remembered but I couldn't think of anything to say. Not a single thing.

Finally, I decided to write about the trials of teaching seniors in sixth hour in the spring.

So, I googled "sixth hour seniors," pressed images, and MY OWN PICTURE came up on the first row! Holy cow! This happened because of a tweet I sent from my teacher twitter account. Or magic.



Probably I could also use some make-up on MY FACE in this pic, but my self-esteem is fine even without it.

My grandmother gave me this purple flower headband for Easter. THANKS, Grandma!

She also suggested that in order to make a better professional impression, I should "put some makeup on [my] FACE."

I've never been a huge make-up wearer, but I'm actually wearing some here. I guess maybe I should be a little bolder with the colors?

When they called our names to sing, Rachel ran up to the mic. She actually jogged up there! Then she told Kari and me, "Don't be afraid to sing directly IN to the microphone."

I hadn't actually heard this song in awhile, so I wasn't so strong on the verses. On the chorus, though, I totally rocked.

** The video is sideways because for some reason, if you take a video while holding the camera the long way, it won't rotate automatically when you upload it.

Rachel is 29 weeks pregnant, and the rest of us are finished having babies. I guess her pregnancy makes us wistful because an awful lot of belly rubbing goes on at English department meetings

I had to work on Baby Mario over two nights. Shef wanted a turn on the iPad, but I had to say no.

Doesn't Lina look cute and happy in her USB mic and headset? She wasn't so happy after her movie failed to save for the third time and didn't upload to YouTube.

Sorry, Lina. That's just what happens at school sometimes.

I have sustained a potentially serious hand injury. The photo isn't doing it justice. What happened was I was trying to enhance my mood by doing a little sashay down the hallway and then I accidentally bashed my hand into a doorframe during an arm flourish.

Dan accused me of not taking the icing seriously enough and also seemed to think dancing in the hallway was dumb.

This is one of Molly's classic looks.

We've been friends forever - pals, roommates, and running partners at various times since I was fourteen.

For some reason at some point, I started calling her "Ballsac." It started with Bolly, rhyming with Molly, and then morphed to Ballsac. And here we are in our mid-thirties and I just call her that.

Here's the latest in my Mario series. I'm pretty proud of how well I did on following the "How to Draw Yoshi" directions.

Tonight famous blogger Gina came to visit.

Well, to be fair she came to pick up my sister (also pictured), and then we forced her to hang out with us.

Thanks, Gina!! gr8 night!!

Have you seen the site Damn You Autocorrect? I laugh my head off at that site from time to time.

Yesterday I had my own DYA moment when I was trying to complain to Rachel about the sleeping situation I've mentioned previously.

After he got out of the bathtub, Shef told me he "didn't want to be one of those guys with the big nipples." So, I didn't ask too many questions about that.

Later, when Mac got out of the bath, we took this picture:



See those dark circles under my eyes? That means somebody still isn't getting stamps on his dog chart. COME ON, MAC! Think of the puppies!

Hey, so day two of testing. I was a proctor yesterday, but today I was "miscellaneous helper." That meant that I went to rooms and escorted kids to the bathroom. They're not allowed to go by themselves during testing because of "security."

Let's just say that picking up 17 year-old boys from their testing rooms, walking them to the restroom, and then waiting outside for them to finish their business is probably NOT a good use of my master's degree.

You can probably tell by looking at this image that my friend Elizabeth felt troubled about being forced into her role as Agent of No Child Left Behind.

I always feel terrible about administering those ridiculous high stakes tests, especially since we're randomly assigned to a group of kids who have never seen us before ever in their lives and then we hand them a test which they must pass or else not graduate.

I sure am disappointed in Obama for not only NOT reforming NCLB, but rather ramping it up with the stupid Race to the Top program. In fact, I'm so surprised that Obama turned out to be a republican. As a result of the realization that he actually doesn't believe in change, I've become more disillusioned with the political system.

After school, I grocery shopped, picked up Mac, stopped by home to pack the swim stuff and meet Dan, picked up Shef from Extended Day where he went after Chess Club, and fed us all at Panera.

In between Chess Club and Swimming Lessons, Shef ate this for dinner.

I tried to do an iPad painting of the Mario character, Princess Peach.

iPad painting is just as hard as I'd thought it would be. I have some practicing to do. I need practice with both the iPad art AND with my Nikon Coolpix. I transferred a bunch of pics from that to my computer tonight, and the best one was taken by the guy we asked to photograph the four of us on vacation.

Everyone has areas in which they can improve.

So, we hosted Shef's birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese's today. We threw tokens at the kids and whooed loudly when the person in the Chuck E. costume came out to pose for pictures. One girl sat far, far away from Chuck E. because apparently she finds him to be terrifying.

"Usually my mom has me sit over there when Chuck E. comes out," she explained, gesturing toward a rear corner of the food room.

Shef had this sheet in his Friday Folder. As you can see, he was supposed to list some things that are NEVER green, and he did a great job.

I thought it was very creative of him to list exotic goat cheese and mimosas. I probably wouldn't have thought about those things when listing not-green items; however, I think we can all agree those things, along with giraffes and oranges, are indeed NEVER green.

Shef took a video of me driving my minivan today. He did it by convincing me to hand him my phone so that he could "play Angry Birds." I took this still from the video.

For the record, the minivan is my favorite car ever. I love driving it. It makes me feel amazing every time I get behind the wheel. When I was on vacation, I missed this fine automobile.

You've seen Rebecca Black's Friday video, right? My students are obsessed with its ridiculousness, especially the inexplicable musical bridge that reviews the days of the week and reminds us that "we so excited."

Anyway, I played the video for Shef and Mac last night, and Mac really took to it. Here's Mac's rendition, complete with break dancing.

Dan's brother John sent me this totally awesome tote bag featuring my blog title and URL.

OMG, it makes me feel like a rockstar; although, I'll never be as much of a rockstar as John. He hand-coded his own blog, has his own domain, and writes stuff professionally.

I'm just pleased I made his new link list under the category "etc."

Miss u, John! Why don't you come home and let me beat you in this year's Easter Egg Festivities?

Tonight I had a meeting of my mother-daughter book club. It's an excellent group with some great high school friends and their mom. (The friends are sisters, so I didn't just have an agreement problem in that last sentence, fyi.)

This time around we read Room by Emma Donoghue. It was a book I could not stop reading, and subsequently could not stop thinking about. It's narrated by a five year-old boy who is the son of a woman who was kidnapped years ago and is being held in a shed. The two of them live there trying to be as normal as possible. That's just the beginning.

As Lee would say, if you want to read this book, you should.

Here's a video blog about a strategy we're trying in our house. This is only one of hundreds of strategies we've employed in the last seven years. In all of that time and through all of those trials, only one other strategy has worked: a doctor-recommended goodie we like to call, "If you sleep, we'll pay you money."

Mac is too young to understand about money; however, so we're trying something more tangible.

The problem with having a seven (SEVEN!!) year-old who thinks he's fourteen is that I then have an almost-three year-old who also thinks he's fourteen.

After hours of his hassling and complaining, we agreed to take Shef through some trees in the back bowls of Vail.

I made sure he knew I was doing this only for him. "Look," I said, "I don't want to go on this run and neither does Dad, but we're doing it
anyway. For you. So don't ask any more times about double black diamonds or trees."

That deal didn't work at all, FYI



P.s. Thanks to Pronto for figuring out how to do photos from our phones. He's feeling smug, as you can imagine.

So, I'm really bummed. It's the first day of the blogging challenge, and my laptop won't connect to the Internet. Further, I can't figure out how to add a photo to blogger on my iPad. Probably Blogger needs an iPad ap, but why would Google cooperate with Apple??

So, you're going to have to click on my twitpics in the left sidebar to see today's images. I skied in the trees as promised. I only fell once.

It was a great vacation, and we're all looking forward to getting home and back into the routine. The rest of my images are going to be awesome, I promise.