Moving Down

Tomorrow is my first "official" day back at school. I am now a 1st grade teacher! For the last 4 years, I've been teaching 2nd grade and loving it. But due to some changes being made at my school, I was given the choice of moving to 1st grade or doing a 1st/2nd split. The decision was pretty obvious to me!I spent the last month packing up my old room and moving to my new one. I'm a very slow cleaner & organizer-- but luckily Brian came with me today and gave me time limits to finish cleaning. Anything I didn't file or put away in it's place before my time was up, he actually threw away! That was pretty motivating! I'll have to have him come in regularly to keep me from piling things up!

Our back-to-school theme is from the book, "If you give a mouse a cookie." I had so much fun making my bulletin board-- the decorating is one of my favorite parts of teaching. At back to school night, I'm going to have a treat table with milk & cookies. So much fun!!

The Suite Life

Yesterday, I went shopping with my mother-in-law, Bev, and my niece, Kaylee.

Bev told me that as they were driving up to my condo to pick me up, Kaylee said in amazement, "Brian and Dana still live in this hotel?" I can't decide if she was thinking we were too pathetic to buy a house or too cool to move out of our hotel suite!

(this was the only pic i could find to show off our 3-story condo/hotel)

I tagged along as Bev took Kaylee to Build-A-Bear to celebrate her upcoming birthday. This was my very first time seeing this store. It was amazing! Being pregnant, I couldn't help comparing the Build-A-Bear shop to my own Build-A-Baby experience. The biggest difference I could see is that the kids are happy and energetic as they build their bears. I, on the other hand, get to feel nausea, fatigue, sore muscles, dehydration, emotional breakdowns, and weight-gain as my baby is being "built." Oh, and of course there's that small difference where a baby is way better than a bear! =)After Build-A-Bear we got some lunch and did a little shopping. I got a couple new maternity outfits to start the school year off. Who says you're ever too old to shop for new school clothes?! Kaylee and I were both spoiled-- thank you Bev!