PJ Party

On Friday we had our PJ party at school. I just woke up and went to work and we made pancakes and watched movies it was awesome. Its been a really rough week with the kids becasue the children were wild because of the changing weather and we had not staff. I think I was the only one that showed up every day this week. We had one day where there was three subs and only two teachers. Sigh.. I wish people would show up if they are suppose too..

On the other hand my mom and dad are gone to calgary this weekend for my dad's Christmas Party and we have the house to ourselves. Its been fun. I don't remember if I told you about my Christmas party but it was fun. I took Michelle as my date and we went to the dinner theatre. It was amazing. It was a spoff of Pirates of the Carribeen and the main character looks exactly like Jack it was amazing. The food was pretty good and the company was not to bad.

On monday I am going to a Mary-Kay foot spa party. Michelle's friend she went to Peru with is going on a mission with her church for a year and a half so we are going to see her for the last time and play dutch blitz with her. She won't be able to phone or email or text anybody while she's gone and the only form of communicate she is allowed is letter writing so hopeful Michelle will keep contact with her.

So thats my weekly news. Bye bye Y'all

Potluck

Tonight is our fall potluck that we have before the congragational meeting. It should be fun we are having a person from the Pregnancy Councelling Centre coming in to talk to us about all they do to help mothers and babies. I am just waiting for the potatoes to finish cooking so I can finish the shepards pie I am making. It smells so good I can't wait to dig into it!

We carved "reformation day" pumpkins last wednesday. We had been waiting for all of us to be together to do it but our schedules never allow us to be together at the same time so just Amanda and I carved the pumpkins. I did a lovely little bird and Amanda did some feathers around her pumpkin. Both turned out very well but I can't show you the pictures because it is taking to long to download them onto the computer. Michelle has drawn out her picture but she just has to carve it. She is doing Martin Luther's house :-P

On Sunday I got a surprise. I learned that the Christmas concert for the children is going to be on Dec. the 5th. We hadn't even started the planning and now we have to get the children to memorize the songs in under 3 weeks. Yikes. So we took out a video of the first ever Christmas concert and watched it to get ideas and I must say we are soooo cute. It takes place in 1994 and Shauna is the youngest person there and she is 2. All she does is stand there and look super cute (for once in her life). She is like 10 steps behind every one in the actions and little Jermeny Vankampen kept giving her the dirtiest looks. It was really cool to see all the people in our youth group look so cute and what our parents looked like from back then. We really wanted to show clips of the video for the people to see everyone 15 years ago but I don't think we would be able too. I think that we are going to video tape ours and put it in the church library so that when these kids grow up they can see how cute they are.

Anyway so I have a lot of typing and photocopying to do and I have to get a hold of a lot of people about the Christmas concert so I better get going. Hopefully I can pull this off! TTYA later!!

Rain Rain Go Away

It hasn't snowe here in Edmonton yet but we are just holding our breath waiting for the first snowflakes to grace us with there appearance. Instead today it rained, which I almost think is worse. Luckily it cleared up enough for us all to out for recess today so the kids could burn off a little energy. I started to attempt to crochet but I really have to keep practicing, I'm not very good. Hopefully I willbe able to make a blanket or something cool like that one day. Every tuesday our church has a volleyball game and I was really looking forwards to going this week but it turns out I have to work which really sucks. Anyway this was just a short blog to make Jolene happy. hahaha. Just joshing. I need the reminders Jo otherwise I would never remember to do it. I will do a better post later!

Flu Shots

Today at school all the children got there flu shot. They had one hour to do them in and about 100 children to do so it was a little choatic. The children once they saw the needle absoultely freaked out and sometimes it took up to 4 staff members to hold one child down enough to give the needle. The rest of the day was spent trying to comfort the children and trying to prevent them from bursting into tears on whim. The day was so stressful. I'm glad it only happens once a year!

A Fall Walk

Today my class at school sent for a beautiful fall walk. It turned out better then expected as the weather has been at an unusual high the past couple days almost reaching 30 degrees each day. It has been gorgeous. The air smelled like fall and the colorful leaves showered down on us from the trees above. The children were all really well behaved and held our hands the entire time with out a struggle. They really enjoyed crunching the leaves beneath their feet. The highlight of the trip was a cute bunny that hopped past us. We told the children to be really quiet and the bunny just hopped right up to us and stopped for a second before continuing on its journey. It was the highlight of the trip. It was actually a fun time.

We also had a scavengar hunt this past saturday night. I will post pictures as soon as I can but they won't upload.. Sorry!

A Busy Couple Days

There was a young autistic child in our school program that wasn't doing to well in his class. There was another child in his class that was bullying to the point that the teacher no longer had control of the class. It was horrible. So we traded a good child in our class who only acted up occasionally for this autistic child. Well as you may or may not know, autistic children do not adapt well to change and for the first day he just laid by the door screaming, "Frank is lost, Frank need to go back his class room, please help me" At the top of his lungs, trying to get back to his class room. Its gotten better as the week has progressed though and he is finally getting the ropes of things. He is thriving in this class and all the kids accept him as normal and he is a very cute kid.

Today we had a no kids day which we have every second friday, and you pretty much need it to keep your sanity. On these days we just socialize and plan the next 2 weeks. The friday before thanksgiving we are going to make a big pot of soup for the kids and they will help us make it. They are going to cut vegetables with plastic knives then get to eat it later. it should be fun!!

We got a new employee for our class room. The previous one was fired because she only showed up when she felt like it. She has been making some very bad decision with her life and is now suffering the consquences. I feel very bad for here but she has put her self in this position.

Also, I am so excited for the vaca that Jolene, Michelle and I are going on. I'm not going to say much about it until its officially booked but I'm so excited I can barely wait for the 6 months till it happens. Maybe I will go to Mexico at Christmas time. Hahaha.. Probably not I don't have a boss that will help me pay for it :-p

My Aunty Jo is staying with us right now. She came down for the funeral and to help clean out my grandpa's house and to visit my Uncle who has recently come down with infection and was admitted to the hospital. He seems to be doing better but I'm not quite certain.

Also we might have a couple girls from Neerlandia stay at our house from saturday till sunday so we will have a full house. They are coming down for a photo scavengar hunt at WEM so it should be fun.

I have been taking lessons from Jolene and have got a planner to organize my appointments and stuff like that. We will have to see if it works or not.



Thats all for now, See you all later


PS Jolene write on your blog :-P

Internet Down

On Saturday Shauna, Amanda and I all went to one of Amanda's boss' rental houses and picked apples from his trees. We got four different kinds and have a huge basket full at home. Then we spent the rest of the day baking pies and apple sauce and apple crisp and any other applely delight we could think of and we have only made a small dent in the pile. We ended up missing the football game because we had to bake to try get ride of some apples. The seats were awesome ones to on the main level at the centre line so it was kind of sad they were wasted. We were going to give them to Jamie for working on our fence but he left before we could.

On Saturday Jamie and my dad started to rebuild our fence but when they were taking it down they realized they accidently cut the internet line so we don't have internet for two weeks until they get it fixed. So now we are internetless and fenceless because they haven't finished yet. Hope we get both soon!!

Happy Birthday To You........

The preparations began several days ago with the baking a cake. Today that same cake was iced, a special dinner is roasting in the oven and the house is decorated. Gifts purchased at an earlier date are gaily wrapped with colorful paper ready to be torn open and special birthday messages are waiting to be read in carefully picked cards. What is this all for?? It is for the celebration of Amanda's 23 anniversary on this earth. So Happy Birthday Amanda. This is for you.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOUUUUUUUUUUUU
HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR AMANDAAAAAAAAAAAAA
HAAAPPPYYY BBBIIRRTTHHDDAAYY TOOOOOOOO YOOOOOOOUUUUU!!!!

(imagine the loud off key singing)

Hope you have a great day!!

Whoops

Sorry I haven't updated my blog for a little while its been a pretty busy last week with starting my new job and stuff. So my first week was interesting... The kids I work with are not mentally disabled but rather have behavioural problems that need to be fixed before going on to regular school. They are constantly screaming and throwing tantrums over nothing and nothing seems to calm them down. We have on girl who tends to throw up when she's mad at you and 3 of our kids have lice out of the 7 in the one class so we are not allowed to hug them or anything. Last week I was in the one class and this week I am in the other. The class I'm in now makes the other class look good though so its really hard and it doesn't help that we are understaffed.

The other thing that happened was the soap box derby on Saturday it was so much fun. There was an awesome turn out of neighbourhood people and everything went smoothly and everyone had fun. In addition to racing the soap boxes there was also scavenger hunts, a giant bouncy thing, popcorn, hot dogs and hamburgers, a DJ that played music, and face painting. The planners went way out of there way and it was well thought out. I had fun until I got to my car and found out that somebody had broken into my car and stolen my purse. Luckily there was no damage to my car but I had a lot of stuff in there that was either irreplaceable or its going to be hard to replace. I have been running around trying to get a new license and I closed my old bank account and got a new one and stuff like that. I am really kicking myself for leaving it in there though. I know better but just this once I decided I didn't want to carry my purse around so I put it under my car seat thinking it will be alright because I has just going to be across the street. My car was in plan viewing sight from where I was so I don't know how nobody saw but I guess I know better now.

I applied at Save on Foods for a second job after teaching so I can save a lot of money for when I go to Africa and maybe for school if I go again so I figured I better be prepared and its better to have to much then run short. So I hope that works out. Anyway I hope I update soon. Bye.

Missions Trip

Today after the church service there was a meeting about an Missions oppurtunity in the Dominican Republic working to build a medical centre for an orphanage and working in the orphanage for anybody in our church who is high school age or older. I think it would be an excellant oppertunity and Pete Wright made sure to state that only those who were active in helping around the church are allowed to go. I was thankful for this because I have a feeling many people are interested because its in the tropics. I wish I could go but people thinks it will cost about 1500-2000 dollars and I don't think I could afford that. A couple of us were thinking that we could fundraise enough that we won't have to pay to much but I don't know how that will work out. I hope all goes well with the planning though!

New Classroom

So, as I have written before I am now offically an teaching assistant at Elves. I started last monday and have been introduced to Cathy (the teacher in the classroom), Ana, Debbie, and Brenda (all teaching assistants like me), and many other people including a girl who I new from my previous job at the tree farm. All week we have been busy trying to get the classroom ready for Tuesday when the children come in, I'm so nervous about meeting them, I've been reading files on them and they don't seem that bad. I have been told that this classroom has had reports of lice throughout the whole last year but the teachers say that as long as you have your hair tied back and use hairspray I won't get it.... I'm going out to buy hairspray now :-P

These are my pictures of one of my classrooms. This one is for the higher functioning students ready for kindergarden and the other classroom is for kindergarden age students who aren't quite ready for kindergarden yet.

Sorry, they may not be too clear I just took them with my cell phone and the classroom has not been decorated or cleaned yet.

On another note, last monday Michelle and I delivered fliers with some people from church. We are hosting a soap box derby on the road in front of our church for all the people in the neighbourhood and our church. Its going to be fun. Its our fourth one and they are always fun.

Note: In case you hadn't noticed this is my first attempt with the pictures on my blog and I hope they turn out :-)

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

Many things have happened over this weekend so I'm putting them in point form.

1) We have the BIG baseball tournment in Edmonton yesterday and I am happy say that Edmonton won by quite a bit. It ended up being loads of fun even though a bunch of the guys had to leave in the middle of the game to go play football. The weather was perfect to be playing and I forgot to wear sunscreen so now I'm burnt to crisp. After a couple of us went to the pool to cool off and then we watched Toy Story 2.

2) Yesterday and today they are redoing the roads in front of our house so the road has been blocked off in certain places. Right now asI write they are directly in front of our house so I hope they finish before its time to head to church

3) Today as Shauna and I were playing a card game Harley kept bugging us to play with us, or so I thought, when I looked down to grab his toy to throw it for him I saw they Harley had in fact used his super sweet hunting skills to kill a little mouse. This mouse has been taunting Harley for the last little while and he has been searching for it all weekend. Thanks Harley!

4) Yesterday I found out that Jenny is going to be the other Sunday school teacher with me and this year I get some of the cutest children in my class. It makes me so excited. I can't wait to decorate my class for sunday school.

So Thats all I have to say for right now. I'm starting my new job tomorrow so we will see how that goes

A Busy Day

So this morning started off on a very good note. I had an interview with the school and they said that they would most likely hire me, which was a relief to hear because I was so nervous. The principal of the school was very nice and told me that even though I was the first person she interviewed she was certain I would get the job and told me that my first day would be monday, its kind of a staff bonding day and training. I am going to be learning many new things at this job like lifts and transfers (which I already know how to do due to my schooling), how to do tube feedings and stuff like that. I am super stoked. I am going to be helping teaching 2 to 5 year olds so its a good age.

On Saturday I have another interview with the physio clinic as the receptionist for the evening, I'm not quite sure how that is going to work out though because I would have to start work after 4. Hopefully it will all work out because I think it will be an experience to work there.

I finally have my bed back!!! We moved my bed down on the main floor so my mom wouldn't have to scale the stairs everytime she had to go to bed and since then I have been sleeping on my floor in my bedroom or in the basement or on the trampoline or crashing on the couch, and even though I have been sleeping alright and have no complaints I am thankful that my mom is well enough she can go upstairs and I can have my bedroom back.

And last but not least, we have finished watching season 6 of Little House on the Prairie and I think that it has been my favorite season yet. Its the season the Laura meets and gets engaged to Almonzo and after watching it it puts a smile on my face that lasts a long long time. I thinks that Little House on the Prairie has become my all time favorite TV show.

So I have written a lot and I hope you haven't fallen asleep before finishing reading toady's entry!! Later

Cheers for the Classifieds

This morning when I was doing my daily looking through the classifieds this ad seemed to just pop right out of the page;

ELVES SPECIAL Needs Society requires F/T Teaching Assistants and P/T relief Teaching Assistants. Exp. w.medically-fragile special needs pre-school children.

I got so excited because I have really wanted to work with special needs children so I headed over there as soon as possible and before I even got home the principle at the had called my house to set up an interview. This has come at the perfect time because I was really getting down about not being able to find a job. So I now have an interview for Thursday and am super excited. I really hope I get the job.

Trial Run

So this is my first ever attempt at a blog and i'm not sure how awesome its going to be. I have been reading a lot of blogs lately and have finally had the inspiration to try it for myself. Hopefully i will be able to update this blog regularly and but I might need some people to remind me. So feel free to comment on any of my posts, it would be greatly appreciated so it doesn't feel like I'm writing to myself. Thanks Y'all. Later