Obamaaaaaah!

Wait! One more post!

I went searching on youtube for a video I saw on Molly's facebook page about a baby chanting Obama at a rally.

But while I was looking for it, I found a whole lot of videos of babies who are big supporters of Obama. In fact, there's a whole "Babies for Obama" world out there.

Here's one of my favorites.




Followed closely behind by this one:

Getting the little people pumped up

Have I mentioned recently how excited I am that Halloween is so soon? Most teachers dread Halloween, but I'm really looking forward to it for a few reasons.
1) I've spent two years teaching at a school where Halloween wasn't celebrated or recognized. I wore my Halloween socks to school the second year when I was feeling braver, but hid them under my longest pair of pants.
2)I love the holiday, so I love that my kids are excited! I'm kind of feeding into it by reading Halloween poems with them on Friday, and buying them Halloween pencils for a special treat. We're not allowed to have food in the classrooms, and pencils are a hot commodity for some reason (they get stolen constantly), so I figured some ghost pencils would be really fun.
3)We're having a pumpkin contest at school! My school has some of the lowest test scores in the state so we don't get to deviate much from the curriculum and do fun stuff, so I'm happy that I get to do something that helps make school fun. Granted, we'll be staying inside during recess to decorate our pumpkin and write a biography, but it's kind of chilly this week anyway. But the biggest reason is...
4)Halloween is a Friday night. I won't have to see my kids until 60 hours after the initial candy rush.

Pilgrims and Pirates

My monday got off to a funny start. I was teaching writing to all 46 kids, and surprisingly had a good conversation going about writing captions to go with pictures in non-fiction. We were looking at a picture of a Pilgrim family having a meal, and we were brainstorming ideas to write for the caption. The end of conversation went something like this.
Boy #1: "The family is eating dinner."
Me: "We need to be specific. Look closely, what are they eating?"
Boy #2: "Turkey!"
Girl #1: "There's pie!"
Girl #2: "The Pilgrims are eating guacamole!"

I had a hard time not laughing. Sometimes I forget that almost the entire class comes from a family from Central & South America, until one suggests that the Pilgrims feasted on guac.


Thank you god for Squanto, and for our tortilla chips and guacamole.


Last week I changed my mind about my Halloween costume. I was really, really excited about the mummy idea. But then Kate told me it's going to look bad. And since Kate clearly knows all there is to know about Halloween, I decided to look for something different.

I headed out to iParty. The costumes there are ridiculous. The women's costumes were so slutty (I didn't really want to be a sexy convict in an orange mini-skirt), and the men's costumes were just rauncy. I actually looked in the teen section thinking they might be a little better, but they weren't. I don't think costumes were this bad when I was little, but maybe I don't remember. My mom made all of our costumes (the best was the year when my brother and I were a frog and a penguin), and once I got too old for full-body costumes to look cute, I still made my costumes by piecing together stuff I already owned or buying individual parts.

Anyway, I eventually found a pirate costume I liked. Except they had it in two sizes, and both seemed like they'd be too big. So I continued wandering, until I found the same costume in the girl's section, right between two costumes from High School Musical. Minus the fact that it shows a bit more of my belly than I'd like if I'm not at the beach, the costume is great. I headed over to target and picked up a "pirate pack," which includes a hook hand, sword, earring, and eye patch. Now the question is, do I bring the hook or the sword? I'll need one hand for a beer.

Dilemma

Every once in awhile I see stories on the news of those bad, bad teachers who have bad, bad relationships with students. Now with Facebook and Myspace and everything, it gets even trickier because teachers are friends with their students on those sites, and lines get all blurry. Everytime I see those stories I feel thankful that I am never planning on teaching people older than 12, and should therefore never run into this problem.

But yesterday I got a Facebook 'friend request' and then a follow-up message from a name that sounded familiar. I then realized it was a former summer school student. This student is on the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum, and was 13 when I taught him 6 summers ago. This past summer, he attended a summer program at the school where I was teaching summer school. I recognized him immediately, but didn't know if he'd recognize me until he walked right up to me and said, "Hey Stace!" He has an incredible memory, so it shouldn't have been that surprising.

So. Yesterday he sent a nice facebook message telling me how he graduated from high school, and about the lifeskills program he's attending now, and how he enjoyed summer school. I'm certainly not going to accept his friend request, but I can't decide whether or not to send him a message back. I want to tell him that I'm happy to hear that he's doing so well, but I don't want to cross that line by sending an email to a former student, even though I know there's no chance of being his teacher again. Can you do that? Is it a bad idea? Am I better off ignoring him, or is it harmless to send a message back?

Costumes

I love love LOOOVVVVE Halloween. And I don't understand people who don't like the holiday. You get to eat lots of candy for weeks before and after the date, you wear costumes, and you have fun, crazy decorations like spider webs. Also, you can do the "fun" kind of scary things, like the Simpsons Halloween special, which is scary but not really scary, so you can still fall asleep at night and not worry about someone climbing in through your window to get you.

However, when I reached the age of adult Halloween parties, I realized that I never got the memo that girls are supposed to dress...differently. I finally got the hint when I watched "Mean Girls" a few years back, and Lindsay Lohan set me straight. Even so, I've spent the past two years arriving at Halloween parties and then realizing that I had the most clothes on our of all of the girls there, with th exception of Caitlin, because she and I had planned our costumes together. There was a few years of dressing up in a gigantic whoopie cushion costume, then my 4th/5th grade girl scout uniform, and then last year I topped it all by being a nun.




Yes, I'm standing with an abortion doctor in the 3rd picture.

So last November 1st, I decided that my goal for the next Halloween would be to wear less clothing. I stressed out all Sunday trying to think of something good, and I think I came up with it. I'm going to be a mummy, but not one of those mummies that's wrapped up head to toe. I got what I think is a good idea here:



I like it because hopefully I'll be the only mummy at the party (I had been planning for months to be Sarah Palin, until I heard there was going to be another Sarah Palin there, and that the girl had dressed up as Tina Fey last year). And I think I can make the whole costume for $20 or less, depending on what I find for a skirt/shirt to go underneath the wraps. Oh, and I get to use a glue gun to make my costume!

What do you think? Any other ideas???

I'm bad with this blog thing lately. By lately, I mean the last year and a half.

But I'm writing because I have big news. You know how some people all of a sudden have a huge enlightening religious moment? Like, someone accepts Jesus? Well, last week, I reached my own enlightening moment. I accepted fall into my life. I spent almost 26.5 years (yikes...someone asked how old I was the other day and I said 23) thinking that I hated fall. And I did. I hated that summer was over. I hated to put away summer clothes. I hated being cold all the time for about 6 months, and having numbs hands and feet constantly. I hate when the leaves change color because it means they're just going to fall off. I hate that summer vacation ends. I hated saying goodbye to flipflops.

But last Friday, I walked to downtown to meet up with Caitlin and Jeff for drinks and Sox. I liked that it was cool, but not too cold and I was comfy in my fleece and not getting sweaty for once as I walked over the Charlestown bridge like I did all summer. And I was thinking about the fact that I had just bought pumpkin muffin mix, and had a bunch of apples to make applesauce with. And, I was excited that I was heading the next day to Philadelphia to essentially kick off Halloween season by going to Molly's sister-in-law's birthday costume party. I had also just bought a lot of candy corn and broke out the Halloween candy bowls. And, I was really excited that I was going to watch the Sox in a playoff game. There's something especially cozy about seeing sox fans all bundled up at Fenway like they're getting ready to hibernate after a hot season. Plus, if Sox fans are all bundled up, it means good things for the Sox and the length of their playoff run. All of a sudden I though, "Wait, I like fall!" I was excited about lots of things happening, and not freezing, and I decided that fall isn't so bad.

It also helps that it got into the 70s today. I'm off to watch game 1 of the ALCS...go Sox.