Student Teaching is Complete!

Last night I had my exit interview for student teaching. This means I had to turn in a bunch of work from the whole student teaching experience and get interviewed about how I met all of the standards for teaching. Whew. Completion of this interview was the very last step in the student teaching process, so I'm OFFICIALLY DONE! Student teaching sure was a lot of work. I'm sure Peter and Sam will be happy to have their wife and mother available to hang out with them on weekends again!

Below are a few pictures of my students at the middle school, though I forgot to get the camera out in my morning class, so I just have my afternoon kiddos. Though middle school is definitely more challenging to deal with behavior wise, these kids were awesome and a joy to work with, and I will miss them!

Happy Second Birthday, Samuel!

So sweet....

Every time I put Sam down to sleep, the last thing I do before I leave the room is wave from the door and say "Sam, I love you". Once in awhile, he says "love you" back. I just put him down for his afternoon nap, and before I got to the door he said, "Mama," and as I turned to look at him, he said "love you". Awww! I think that is the first unsolicited "love you" - definitely one for the baby book:-)

Congratulations!!!

We are excited to announce that Reed (my baby brother), and Chelsea are engaged! They are such a great couple and so good for each other. We can't wait to have her as part of our family, and Sam is even calling her Auntie Chelsea already!

Almost done!

I have just TWO days left of student teaching! Just like in my first placement, I'll be happy to be done, but sad to say goodbye to the kids. Middle school has proved (as I anticipated) to be much more challenging in dealing with behavior, but the kids are still really great kids. Middle school is just a tough age. I certainly don't want to relive it! So, now the job search continues. Hopefully, I'll find something soon for the fall and can enjoy the summer a bit. If anyone hears of a need for an ESL teacher, let me know!

Sam will be two on Monday. TWO! I can't believe it. Watch in the next couple of days for a video of Sam reciting the alphabet. Too cute!

Sam in Daddy's glasses

Race for the Cure

My sisters and I did the annual Race for the Cure on Mother's Day. We had two great women to celebrate, and several to remember. As usual, it was a moving and magnificent way to raise money for a great cause.

I thought this couple walking in front of us was so sweet (I hope they don't mind that I took their picture). His shirt said he was walking in celebration of "My Best Friend, My Sweetheart, My Wife, Jan".

And this was the best sign we saw all day:-)

A Visit from Grandpa and Grandma

A few weeks ago (I'm a little behind in my posts), Peter's parents got back from Florida and spent the weekend with us! Sam warmed right up to them even though he hadn't seen them since Christmas. He was happy to have Grandpa and Grandma to play with all weekend long. He also loved their dog, Splash. Oscar is only interested in playing with Sam on his terms and usually won't let Sam touch him. Splash, on the other hand, didn't mind at all, and Sam was petting her and giggling the whole weekend. We are glad that Gary and Peach are home now for the summer and look forward to seeing them soon for Sam's birthday party!

We wanted Peter's mom to take a picture of the three of us, but Sam INSISTED on wearing his Mr. Potato Head glasses....so here you go!

Watching the world go by...

Daddy, sing it again.

We are impressed every single day at Sam's ability to use language. I know that all of us eventually learn to talk, but it's just so cool to watch such a tiny little guy add word after word into his vocabulary. Of course, we expect kids to learn words such as baba, mama, dada, etc. because we try and try to teach those words, but now Sam is at the point where words just spill out of his mouth that we didn't explicitly teach, he instead just picked up on them. So cool.

Anyway, the title of this post "Daddy, sing it again" was something Sam said tonight after Peter finished reciting the ABCs. It probably doesn't seem like much to most people, but we were really impressed because we think it is the longest complete sentence he's actually spoken. He has lots of strings of words such as "baba, fridge, get it", which is what he says to me EVERY morning when I go to get him out of his crib. He doesn't quite understand yet that this doesn't exactly sound very polite, but we'll get there:-)