My mom wanted me to help her with some decorations for her office. She wrote these poems, I decorated for her.

I am trying to figure out what this says about me: A scrapper posted on my blog that she is moving to the area and I emailed her back telling her about how much I love the local coffee shop that makes their chocolate milk with real chocolate instead of syrup.

Two of my favorite Haikus from second grade last year:

I am tired of Math
I do not like it one bit
I lay on my desk

I saw a tiger
It was about to attack
So I ran away

more animals

Anyone going to CKC in Hartford this year? I'll be working at the Dollar Scrapbooking booth on Friday - come by and visit me! I'll be shopping on Saturday.

When I was a child, I was obsessed with the musical "Annie," and tonight I got to take Esme to see it. It was her first play and this production was paced very s l o w l y but I think she still enjoyed it. Now that she's seen the play we're going to watch the movie together on DVD.

Being Esme's mother has been wearing me out lately! She is involved in many activities, some of which I have to coordinate and run, like Girl Scouts and some homeschooling events. Speaking of homeschooling, that takes quite a bit of effort too. We love it though, and are definitely glad we made the decision to go forward with it.

I recently discovered Hulu.com and have had fun watching Arrested Development with Ethan, and a show that seems so old now, Chicago Hope. When Chicago Hope and ER debuted the same year, I was a die-hard Hope fan. No ER for me. Now that I've watched 9 seasons of ER and I'm revisiting Hope, I am wondering what the heck my problem was. Not that I'm not enjoying Chicago Hope, ER is just so much faster paced and exciting. Plus come on, George Clooney! And Noah Wylie too!

It's not exactly "breaking the CK barrier," but I was very excited to have a little something in the In Your Words column in Creating Keepsakes this month. I wrote about my substitute teaching experience from October to January this past school year. Now I just have to make sure everyone at school sees it so I get all the good gigs!!

I can take one class for free every semester at an Ivy League college. I am super bummed that yet again this semester, I cannot find a class to take. Classes are geared toward people who live on campus which is understandable, but I am bummed that there is nothing that I could remotely apply to my life offered in the evening that isn't filled immediately. It seems like such a waste not to take advantage of this opportunity, but at this moment the only thing I could take would be Riding I. Not sure this is the perfect time in my life to start horseback riding with no prior experience. I so want to go back to school, and there are many things I would like to take including environmental science, sociology, education, religion, etc. It's sad that I can't make this work!

This layout is soooo old! I'm not even sure which summer these photos were taken. I remember it being a super fun day, and that I was so excited to scrap it right away. Then when I got home I printed the pics, got the layout about half done, and put it in a drawer. Over time I have slowly added additional elements, making it a strange mix of my old and more developed styles. It's finally done! (Except I still have to go back and look for that date!)

I can't wait to go camping!! We have only been on one trip this year but we have a couple more trips planned. Esme and I are pretty much obsessed with Mexican food so we made a new breakfast burrito recipe to eat a camp. We make it for her sans egg. We start with marinated chicken the night before, and use the leftovers. You need:

1 medium flour tortilla per person
1 egg per person
the leftover chicken
shredded cheese of your choice
rice (we like to use boil in a bag while we're camping)
taco sauce or salsa (optional)

Wrap the tortillas in foil and heat til they're warm. Heat up the chicken in the skillet, and boil the rice. Scramble the eggs, and they layer all ingredients in the tortilla, folding up the sides and wrapping the whole thing together. Serve with fruit. This is a hearty breakfast without too much cleanup.

The Project Learning Tree workshop was amazing!! I am so thankful that I got to go! If you haven't heard of this program, check it out here. I highly recommend that anyone who works with children and is interested in nature and the environment try to find a class.

One of the things I learned was how to teach children to classify trees. In the beginning, the names of the trees aren't even important. It's important that they observe what makes each tree unique and different from the others. I never realized how many important features of leaves there are! I learned to identify 2 new kinds of trees myself.

Another thing I learned about was observing changes in a natural setting. The instructor talked about finding a "sitspot" - a place you return to over and over and observe the changes from season to season, year to year, and make your own special place in the world.

My mom requested an altered monogram for her birthday - I made another version but I wasn't happy with it so I decided to give it another go.

Did this page as part of tonight's cyber crop with Lisa - it's a scraplift of a Vicki Boutin layout you can see here. I love doing layouts with blocks like this.

I am WICKED excited. I just found out about some ultra cool educator workshops through Project Wild and Project Learning Tree. Theoretically I am going to learn so I can teach Esme and perhaps a group of homeschoolers or my Girl Scouts, but I am just excited that **I** get to go learn new stuff!!

I am suffering from a bit of apathy when it comes to my MMM entry. I really want to enter but I'm having trouble finding the motivation when my scrap area is such a mess. I want totally rearrange my entire house.

We rarely have the opportunity to go to the movies, and we were so glad we went to see "The Fall" this past Sunday. We hadn't heard much about it until we read what was playing at Amherst Cinema, but we watched the trailer and decided to give it a try. This was one of the most visually beautiful movies I have ever seen. The scenery and the costumes were unbelievable! I don't know why she isn't pictured on the poster, but the true lead in this movie was a little girl around 5 years old. Ethan and I were so impressed with her acting abilities. The movie has two stories intertwined, one about the little girl and a stunt man who meet in a hospital, and the other story he tells the little girl, filmed as she imagines it. We would highly recommend this movie!

Today was my last day of school. I left school and went to pick Esme up at the library. When I got out of the car it was just starting to rain. I went into the chapel and said a prayer for all the students I've taught this year, and asked God to specially protect and guide 2 or 3 that were struggling. Then I walked out into the rain, and into the middle of a field so that it could pour down on me and wash away all the stress and tension of the last year, and leave me ready to start my summer. While I was in the rain I felt overwhelmed and grateful for my wonderful family that I was about to go inside to see, and so thankful for the opportunity to have this summer with Esme. When I went inside Ethan's whole desk was covered with Polly Pocket paraphernalia.

One of our new favorite things to do is letterboxing. We find clues at www.letterboxing.org and have successfully found two. I took my class letterboxing and planted two along the way.

I recently finished reading The Screwtape Letters for the first time. I loved this book! It's written by a demon who is training his nephew to pull people away from God ("the Enemy") and how they use the trappings of this life to try to separate us from Him. Each chapter contains at least one lesson, and this book really made me think about my relationship with God and how to be closer to Him in ways that I hadn't before. C. S. Lewis has opened my eyes in other books as well, and if you were touched by the messages in the Chronicles of Narnia, you would probably enjoy this book as well.

I can't believe how much I fit into my day yesterday!

• taught 21 second graders for a full day
• shopped around for a lawn mower
• mowed a quarter of my lawn before the new mower stopped working
  
• payed my electric bill
• went to the post office
• returned a call for a job interview
• endeavored to get mower fixed, but shop was closed
• made meatballs from scratch for dinner

Then I relaxed and watched the second half of "The Empire Strikes Back" with Ethan and Esme, talked to Lisa for a bit, and went to bed!