Awesome Geography!

Today at school we did the coolest activity ever for learning the continents of the world! I noticed that my kids (all but 2) did not know the continents at all and were having a hard time remembering how to locate them on a world map. So last night I printed 30 pictures of things that exist pretty much only in each specific continent. The pictures were photo paper that is also a post-it note. It's called Post-It picture paper. You can get it at Staples or any office supply store. So anyway today we talked about each picture and where you would find it in the world. Then the kids would stick the picture right on to the map until the map was covered with pictures. It's cool because you now can't see the lines on the continents, instead you just see pictures where the continent is, so the kids have something meaningful to attach the word "Africa" or "South America" to. Now when they hear "Australia" they think of "kangaroo, platypus, koala".

The coolest thing was when later there were 2 kids that weren't finished completing a world map at their desks. They were kids that still didn't know the continents very well. So my student teacher sat with them out in the hall to help them. She asked one, "Okay do you know where Europe is?" And he said, "Europe...OH!! That's where all the castles are! Europe's right here!" And then the other one had to find Australia and he said, "Oh yeah! That's where that little furry guy swims with the flat nose... I can't remember what he's called! It's right here!" When she told me about that, I was like, "YES!" It totally worked!

And then something funny happened tonight at my Spanish class I'm taking at PVCC. We had to find somebody in the room and ask them how many continents are in the world in Spanish. So the guy I asked said, "um...5? no wait - 6! ...no...8? wait...is England a continent? What about Europe?" I started laughing uncontrollably and said, "SERIOUSLY??? You really don't know how many continents there are????" He thought it was quite funny too.

Oh yeah and one more thing. My kids are convinced there are coyotes outside at recess. Every day they stand at the edge of the field, peering through the fence, desperate to catch a glimpse of the coyotes they "hear" running in the woods. They're so weird.

a bite of wood

So last night I finally figured out why people on low-fat diets lose weight so fast.

Because the food tastes like crap! They don't want to eat any of it. I was at the grocery store since I haven't been in like 6 weeks, and I had this random, "I should eat healthier" thought. Don't know where it came from. So everything I bought was like "fat free" or "reduced fat" or some such nonsense as that.

Well I got home and was hungry from looking at all that food so I decided to cook me up a whole wheat bagel with some fat free cream cheese. It looked delicious. It smelled delicious. The label on the bagel bag said that one bagel is equal to THREE servings of whole grain food. That's gotta be good right? So I looked admiringly at my bagel, opened my mouth, and took a big bite...

and it tasted like wood. I was essentially eating a tree. Probably the bark from a tree. They mixed bark in with the wheat I'm sure. I'm thinking of writing a letter to the bagel company asking them which tree they pulled the bark off of to make their bagels.

Blech.

Third Day Came to C'ville!

Can you believe it? Third Day came to Charlottesville last night! They played at the Pavilion downtown and my church, Portico, got to serve at the concert! Our mission was the drink booths, like usual! (We serve at the Pavilion twice per month.) It's fun because we all wear our Portico shirts and everyone's always like, "What's por-tee-co?" Then we get to tell them all about our church!

In the middle of the concert it started raining, and I mean POURING! As you can see from the pictures, we got soaked (even with the ponchos). Well actually, everyone got soaked except Jenn and I. We sort of conveniently climbed into this big hole in a wall and stayed dry in there. See us? Not a wet drop anywhere! Everyone laughed, but hey, we weren't the ones who were wet for the rest of the concert!

The rain put a hold on the concert for about 45 minutes because they had to mop the stage to get rid of the two inches of rain water that dropped out of the sky. But then they started back up and played for the full time! The Pavilion was PACKED too...the rain didn't scare anybody away at all! The concert was great, of course, I mean HELLO, it's Third Day! But for me, the highlight of the night was meeting the Chic-Fil-A mascot, Mr. Cow. I was really in to the cow. He had really soft fur and nice floppy ears and he was exceptionally quiet, but then he usually is. I told him what a big fan I am of his restaurant! He was going to give me a little cow to keep but I told him there was probably a little kid who needed it more than me. It was a big sacrifice, I know...

Oh yeah and the booth right next to us was Spring Hill Baptist Church and they gave out free chocolate bars all night and then ordered Kentucky Fried Chicken and gave all of us Portico people free dinner!

Chic-fil-a cows, free dinner and chocolate, and Third Day! I'd do that night again any time!

I'm Prancer!!!

You Are Prancer

You are the perfect reindeer, with perfect hooves and perfect flying form. Why You're Naughty: Because you're Santa's pet, and you won't let anyone show you up. Why You're Nice: You have the softest fur and the sweetest carrot breath.

Which of Santa's Reindeer Are You?

First Day of School!

So today was the first day of school! My class seems really cool! I have really nice kids, some with a lot of energy, but I love kids with energy! They have so much enthusiasm for learning! It's going to be a good year. But now I'm exhausted. I'm going to take a nap...

later.

poor little Mouse King

Tonight I am exceptionally sad. My good, little...no wait...my favorite, little...no...THE BESTEST LITTLE hamster in the world died tonight. Mouse King is gone. I came home and he had died in his cage. He was only 10 months old. He was such a good hamster because he wasn't like the boring, sleep-all-day-and-bite-you kind of hamsters. He was very active, running all the time in his ball and in his wheel. He loved being held and being picked up by all my kids. Everyone in the school knew him and the first graders called him "Mr. King". In the hall, as we carried Mouse King in his ball to PE, the kids would ask, "Could I pet Mr. King?" I even registered Mouse King for kindergarten at Cale. Mouse King taught my kids how to focus last year and he was loved by everybody. He's the kind of hamster that makes everyone want a hamster. There's no other like him.

my new nephew is born!

Last night at 8:35 PM, the world welcomed my very first nephew into the world! His name is Leland and he weighs 7 pounds. He's 21 inches long. He's absolutely beautiful and the doctor said he's the healthiest baby she's seen in 6 months! I went to meet him for the first time tonight and I can tell already that's he's gonna be one cool kid! Here are pictures of him with his new mom and dad! Welcome to the world, Leland!

Great week!

This was such a great week! Not only because I got to see my first MLS game and David Beckham! Also this week I was skateboarding at the skatepark with my friend, Ben, and I completed an ollie off of a ledge for the first time! Then today I went to the baseball card store to buy a pack of soccer cards. (I told you I'm in to soccer now!) In the very first pack I opened, I got a David Beckham card!!! I was so happy! Yay for soccer and skateboarding!

DC United WINS!

Last night was probably one of the best nights I've had in my life! It was completely orchestrated by God! If you're interested in just reading the short version, here it is: I went to see the DC United vs. LA Galaxy game last night in Washington. DC United won. David Beckham and Carlos Pavon played! The end.

Here are the details and how this trip was completely set up by God!

#1: Do you recall the dream I had about this game? If not, scroll down to the post called "Soccer Crazy" and you'll find out about it there. So I had this dream about the game and when I told this kid named Wilson about it, he went crazy because he's never been to a MLS game and the boy LIVES FOR SOCCER. There's a player for Galaxy named Carlos Pavon who is from Honduras and Wilson is also from Honduras so he desperately wanted to see Pavon play, and of course he equally desperately wanted to see Beckham play. So I decided to get tickets and take Wilson to the game.

#2: Four of us ended up going, me, Wilson, another soccer kid named Marcie, and a friend who works at my school named Samantha. When we got in my car (which does not have air conditioning), it was about 100 degrees outside. We were dying before we even left C'ville. I said out loud, "If only it was 5 degrees cooler." Samantha said, "If only it was 10 degrees cooler." Then I said, "Hey, how about 15 degrees cooler!" Within one minute, the sky clouded over, a cool breeze started blowing and the temperature dropped. And guess what the temperature ended up being for the rest of the night. 85 degrees. (Go back up and look at what it started as!) Don't believe me? Go on dcunited.com and check the game details. It says the weather conditions.

#3: I was worried about our seats because our tickets were for the very top section, almost the very top row. I thought maybe it would be too far away for us to see the game well. In fact though, they ended up being the most perfect seats because we could see the whole field (we had mid-field seats), we could watch David Beckham when he started warming up right in front of us, and it wasn't even that high. Just look at the pictures! It wasn't bad at all! And the other great thing was that it started raining in the second half and our top rows were the only rows that were covered! We didn't get wet at all! Hahahahaha God is so great!

#4: The night before the game, I checked the injured list for LA Galaxy so I could check on David Beckham's status. I was a little disappointed because it said there was only a "slight possibility" he would get to play, and I was very sad for Wilson because the Honduras player, Carlos Pavon, was also on the injured list. Wilson was very disappointed to find this out. But then Beckham started warming up on the sidelines and we started getting our hopes up! Then in the 72nd minute he went in to play the final 20 minutes of the game! And as if that wasn't enough, guess who went in at the 77th minute! CARLOS PAVON!!! Wilson was jumping up and down, he was so excited! And Carlos Pavon and Beckham both almost scored!

#5: Wilson and Marcie have to be the most fun kids to travel with ever. They loved every minute of the trip, from riding the Metro in Washington to using the binoculars to see the players so close they could even see which players had earrings! When the Metro went underground, Wilson was convinced we were under water and Marcie kept pointing out invisible sea turtles, which Wilson pretended to be terrified of. He would hide under the seat every time Marcie called out, "WATCH OUT! There's a sea turtle!" And when the train doors opened at the stops, the boys would hold their breath so the "water" wouldn't drown them.

On the way home, Marcie fell right to sleep, but Wilson was wired. He stayed awake, making us laugh all the way until we got home at 1:30 AM. He was so excited about the game. Here were some of his hilarious comments:

"I'm probably going to fall out of my bed tonight because I got to see David Beckham and Carlos Pavon!"

"Miss Tice, you need to pinch yourself right now! You might be dreaming because YOU JUST GOT TO SEE DAVID BECKHAM!!!"

"I'm going to call my grandma right now and tell her I got to see Carlos Pavon! Wait I don't have a cellphone. Well I'll call her when I get home. Wait she might be asleep. I don't care - I'm going to wake her up to tell her I SAW CARLOS PAVON!"

"We should make David Beckham our pet."

"Nobody's going to believe me that I saw David Beckham and Carlos Pavon! I'm going to write about it on the first day of school. Here's what I'll write: This summer I went to a soccer game and I saw David Beckham and Carlos Pavon. And I wanted David Beckham to sign my chicken nugget."

And this one, of course, was the one that made all the cost worth it: "This is the very best day of my whole life right now! I got to see David Beckham!"

I GOT TO SEE BECKHAM!!!!

Here are pictures of David Beckham playing in his first ever MLS regular season game! Because of his hurt ankle, he's been unable to play until now. Everyone's been guessing, "When will Beckham get to play?" and "Who will see Beckham play in his first MLS game?" Answer: ME!!! It was cool to see how supportive the DC United fans were in honoring his debut, even though they can be intense! Even the DC United players said they had to take a moment to just say WOW, and then they got back to the game. What an awesome game!

Here's David Beckham warming up and waiting to go in the game.

New Driver - beware!

Guess what everybody! I paid off my car! It officially belongs to me now! But now Mouse King has a new car payment because he just got his driver's license. He test drove two new cars last night and although the off-road 4x4 to the left showed a lot of promise, he finally decided on the green Nitro Speeder above.

Summertime

Here are two songs that sort of explain why summer, for teachers AND kids, is a gift from God!

"I've been working real hard
For just one reason
I've been waiting all year
For just one season
The season that reminds me of palm trees
The smell, the ocean breeze
And the sense of bein' free

Take in the scenery
The mood is fine
Nobody's wearin their watches
Nobody's checkin the time
There is only one thing that's on everybody's mind
Thats the summer, the summer, the SUMMERTIME"
-from "Summertime"

"Reason one that summer rules
We don't have to go to school
From the beach to the pool
Looking hot and keeping cool
Open toes t's and vans
Working on the perfect tan

Volleyball and catching rays
Now it's time to hit the waves
At the mall window shopping
Dreaming up a look that's poppin
Summertime jams droppin
Summertime is never stopping"
-from "No Sleep Till Summertime"

Championship Party

So remember how I told you that my baseball team won the city league championship? Well we had our team party to celebrate it last night! Pretty much our whole team was there and we played basketball, walked down to a beautiful lake where lots of beavers live, and ate cake and tons of cheeseburgers and hot dogs on the grill! It was awesome because we probably won't see each other again until next spring when the season starts again. I got to play basketball with this really great kid named Joel who's going in to 9th grade this year. He's probably the nicest high school kid on the planet! When I eventually have a kid, I hope he's just like Joel when he gets to be a teenager!

Castle Legos

Last summer I bought a bunch of Lego sets on sale at the Lego store. They've been just sitting in my house waiting to be built. I finally had time to build them, so I put together all the castle Legos that I had. I filled up the empty display case that is in my dining room! I also built that bright green car on the bottom shelf of the display case last night. Man I love Legos!

World Cup Camp Highlights

At the end of a great week of soccer at the World Cup Camp, here are some pictures that highlight the great fun and exciting moments the kids had!

Soccer Crazy

So to all of you soccer fans out there (a.k.a. Niklas and Katie), I am really sorry to say this, but I'm just not really in to soccer. Or at least I wasn't until about a week ago. Now, however, it's a completely different story. I started reading about Beckham last week and that got me interested. Then on Friday night I had a creepy dream. Keep in mind that as of a week ago, I could not even name one major league soccer team in America. Sad, I know, but true. So Friday night I had this dream that DC United was playing LA Galaxy on August 9th at 7:00 PM. I woke up thinking, "Okay that was weird..." and then the thought crossed my mind to check the DC United schedule. So I did and I'm sure you can figure out the rest. DC United does, in fact, have a game against LA Galaxy at 7 PM on August 9th. So now I'm trying to get tickets to it.

Meanwhile the local soccer organization, SOCA, is hosting their annual World Cup Soccer Camp this week. I signed up three of my kids to do it. The kids are so excited because they LOVE soccer. Two of them have never played organized soccer ever. We signed them up to play in the fall too. So each night I pick the kids up and take them to camp. The kids absolutely love every minute of it! Watching the kids play makes me want to play! So now I'm going soccer crazy!