The girls go to school...

The last day of school fell on Thursday May 28th and I left in a hurry that day because a group of us went to Goose Loonies for a goodbye lunch. However summer school was scheduled to start the following Monday and I wasn't ready with lesson plans etc...so I'd planned to go back on Friday to get my classroom cleaned, organized and make lesson plans for the following week. I only wanted to stay for an hour or two but in the back of my head I knew I'd never have everything perfect by then! I knew only the front office staff would be on campus and even they'd be on a skeleton crew so I decided to take the girls with me so I didn't feel that need to get home quickly. Besides, with them in my classroom it felt less like work (or punishment) to be working and not getting paid! They did really good and only barked and a few strange noises that the janitors made in the room next door...only a few other teachers from the SPED department popped by my room and the girls got excited but never jumped up on anyone!

Sugar & Spice and Everything Nice!

On the last week of school Me and a few other co-workers planned a little baby shower for Kim (the new teacher in the Deaf Ed. Dept.). She is actually due at the end of May...but we, at work watched her belly grow since the beginning and wanted to honor that before we all left for summer vacation. I was able to collect a few dollars from most of the people in the SPED dept. and turned that into a $100 gift card for Babies-R-Us and then got a some decorations, punch, and a photo cake that featured her 4-D sonogram photo. Kim's cousin, Katie also works in the SPED department and she has a special cake lady she goes to...so she ordered a super rich (expensive) chocolate cake that was decorated to match the invitations I sent out. I didn't think a 9x9 inch cake would be enough to serve 30-ish people so I felt more comfortable having too much cake than not enough! I've gotta admit, it was a good cake but had everyone who contributed come to the party we would've had to cut into the cake I bought as well. Cake issues aside, the best part for me was the onesies! I wanted to have a couple white onesies printed with a Highland High School logo and then sew on some bootie ruffles to make them a bit more "girlie" considering our colors are blue and green. When I got to work a co-worker named Jefferi saw the onesies on my desk and told me she'd already put in an order to have some printed...but she loved my idea to add ruffles so a perfect compromise was made and a super cute product was created! When I found out that they hadn't been printed yet Kacey (an interpreter and super creative friend) and I went up and started snooping around to see what we could create! We had to cut some of the bigger designs to get them to fit on a tiny onesie...but when we were done they were perfect! I then took everything home and stayed up until midnight sewing ruffles (which I'd never done before). I messed up on two because the cotton fabric on a onesie is so soft it tears easily...ultimately I made 4 complete ruffled bootie onesies and then picked the two that came out the most perfect. They were a hit at the party and I was pretty proud considering the process began by ripping out the sides of perfectly good onesies then relying on my novice sewing skills to put "humpty-dumpty" together again! So just as soon as I got everything ready for the work shower I had to get started rolling diapers to create the diaper cake gift for Kim's actual baby shower that was the following Sunday on May 31st. I stopped counting somewhere after 100 diapers...then comes the making of the cake form and then finally adding the decorations. I made sure to chose some of the baby necessities off of her registry and then whatever else I could use to fill in the gaps! It wasn't as good as I wanted it because I'd envisioned ruffles on every layer but I ran out and didn't have time to get back to the store before the shower...but no one could've known that if I'd've kept it a secret! O-well, I was satisfied and it was cute either way...enjoy the photos!

Bringing in the Heavy Metal...

So for the longest time I have lived without trees in my back yard, thanks to Ginger channeling the spirit of a Beaver and eating through their trunks until they fell over! She also enjoyed chewing on the plastic sprinklers that were in the planters...I literally replaced the sprinklers once a week and most of the time I just had to turn them off because there were always new geysers shooting up all over the back yard. I had bought some brass topped sprinkler heads and that helped but she was STILL chewing on the plastic parts! I was venting to my brother one day when he mentioned that I could replace all the plastic with galvanized steel risers and brass tops...so the next time he came to town he helped me convert the whole above ground sprinkler system to metal. We even encased the grass pop-ups with metal grates made for trapping leaves in rain gutters...but they have seemed to do the trick! I am happy to report that it has been nearly 2 months and ALL of my sprinklers are still intact and working...GO METAL!!!! Now that I had reliable sprinklers...it was time to get new trees! I didn't mess around with small ones this time! I saved up some money and went out to my favorite nursery (cheap and reliable...San Antonio off of Houton Road) and picked out five 25 gallon palm trees! I then took the following Monday off of work and spent the day getting a sunburn (even though I was wearing 45 sunblock!) and digging out what was left of the trunks and root balls from the old mangled palms to get the holes ready for the new ones that the guys were bringing around 4pm to plant for me! I couldn't believe how easy they make planting such big heavy trees look...I swear they were done in about an hour (of-course I helped by pre-digging most of the holes!). So...after they were done getting the trees in the ground mom helped me start the 2 hour process of staking out and wrapping each tree in SERIOUS 4 foot tall chicken wire! It has now been a couple weeks and yes my backyard has more metal in it that most but my trees and sprinklers are all still in mint condition--a HUGE success!!!!