Back to School for Me

Wow! What a crazy last two weeks it has been. I am definitely ready for my schedule to get back to "normal." Last week Brayden spent the week having fun at my parents house while I started back at school. He went fishing a few times, played in the sprinkler, baked cookies, and TONS of other fun activities. While I on the other hand, had a week full of meetings and spent a TON of time preparing/decorating my classroom. Strangely, I have always worked best "under pressure"...to some it may seem like "procrastination" but to me it's just waiting for my creativity to be in it's prime state. Usually I work best this way in all aspects of my life...whether it's cleaning my house right before someone comes to visit, starting a 12 page paper the day it's due, shopping at Target an hour before they close to every August waiting until the week we have to be at school to start preparing my classroom instead of working on it all summer like many others do. Not sure why, but it's what has always worked for me. Although there is one side effect: late nights. Luckily I'm a night owl to the extreme so it doesnt't bother me. It did take me awhile to get off of my "summer schedule" of staying up super late. Each night I stayed up at school until midnight and then once I got home I would work an additional 2 to 3 hours week...so I was working on about 3-4 hours of sleep each night. Here are a few pictures of Brayden having fun at my parents house as I slaved over decorating my classroom:
He didn't like the water getting in his eyes, but didn't have any goggles at grandma's house..so he went for the next best thing: his silly glasses.=)



Well, this week I definitely paid for all my late nights last week. I have just been extremely exhausted as early as 7pm. I think a couple of nights I actually fell asleep before Brayden did. =) You would think going to bed so early, I would miraculously turn into a "morning person." - but NOT at all! Mornings are still rough. On the bright side, my class of 23 (thats right, 23 not 22) students have been WONDERFUL! To be honest, I was a little worried after the first day...they were extremely social for the first day. Luckily by the end of the week we got most of that undercontrol (with the exception of a few transition times), but I know after a few weeks they will get trained just the way I like them to be. =) This week has been extremely busy we had our Parent Information Meeting on Thursday night so it made for a very long day. Seeing the excited little faces of my students each day makes all the "busyness" totally worth it. I also started another master's course on Monday with my first assignment due on Sunday night. I'm looking forward to the next 5 weeks to be over with and then I will get to take a break from taking a course for about a month since I doubled up over the summer. It will be a nice break to not have to worry about doing assignments and midterms/finals. Now for this weekend, I have a busy schedule of trying to get our house "back in order", making several returns to different stores of things I didn't end up needing for my classroom, grocery shopping, reading journal articles and working on my assignment, along with trying to get some rest/relaxation in as well. =)