Short week = great week

Man, work weeks that begin on Tuesday always seem to fly by don't they? No more three day weekends until Spring Break. Boo.

Here are my top 5 for this week:

Source: teachingwithmoxie.blogspot.com via Nilda on Pinterest

1. I finished my lesson plans today at work. Which means a weekend of relaxing! Woot!

Source: someecards.com via Jennifer on Pinterest

2. I received my observation rubric. I received 7 Highly Effectives and the rest Effective! Double woot!


3. Received my awesome Carabox from Amy over at Life's Little Adventures. Can't wait to share it with all of you on Monday!

Source: mystylepill.com via Nilda on Pinterest

4. While this isn't the EXACT outfit I wore, I did rock my red blazer at work and got a million compliments. I might need to break it out of the closet more often!

Source: seattlesouthside.com via Seattle Southside on Pinterest

5. Dinner is Cheesecake Factory tonight! YUMMO! J said we could go out celebrate my awesome eval. He said no cheesecake, but I'm hoping he'll change his mind!

Have a fabulous weekend everyone!

As always, linking up with Lauren at From My Grey Desk Blog

From the mouth of babes...

I love the things little kids say. That is always one of my answers to the question "What do you love about teaching?"

For Valentine's Day, I had my firsties write down their definition of love. I finally got a chance to sit down and read some of them today, and these were my favorites (and almost all of them were along this same theme).

I love the picture on this one. You can tell everyone is having fun together!

Nothing is more important than family, right?

Friends are just as important too! Love the picture of the kids on the playground. 

Can't forget to have fun in life. Fun is definitely important. 

This one touched my heart, mostly because of the thought bubbles. 

I hope this put a smile on your face the way that it put one on mine. Life would be a simpler world if we just thought like kids sometimes, ya know?

Days off...

When I get a day off (not including weekends) I try and tackle it one of two ways:

• Go, go, go! Meaning taking care of business, cleaning, finishing plans, whatever. When I am in GO! mode, I like to stay busy.
• Chill and relax. When I'm in this mode, I still take care of things, but I also lounge and read. Catch up on my shows. Take a nap.

I used to think the latter was not as good as the former. But you need some chill days sometimes, ya know? You need days when you spend time just not stressing about life. 

Source: luulla.com via Jana on Pinterest

This quote is the opposite of so many that I see about living life today, but sometimes a way to live life is to just relax.

I don't regret relaxing today. I finished lesson plans, delivered a birthday gift and came home. Once home, I stayed in my comfortable sweats (it's still freezing!) and watched Top Chef, Pretty Little Liars and Revenge, all while cuddling my cat. Now I'm waiting for J to arrive so we can go to church to meet with our coordinator.

All in all, a great day. Hope you had a great day as well!

Linking up with Carly and Molly for YOLOMondays. 

All About the Valentine's

I haven't done a Sunday Social in awhile, but the questions this week are fun. Hit it!

1. What was the best Valentine's Day you ever had?
There's a tie for this answer. My junior and senior year of high school. Looking back, I had an amazing high school sweetheart. Junior year, his bus was late. I'm sitting in my first morning class waiting for it to start. In he walks with a huge bouquet of flowers and a balloon. This was important, because he couldn't stand my classmates (I was in a special high school program for overachievers). He came in anyways! Later in my locker, I found a huge stuffed panda bear.
Senior year, I opened my locker to find a copy of Sweet Home Alabama. When I shut the door, he was standing next to me with a bouquet of roses. Apparently he hid behind the door near my locker, waiting to surprise me.
Like I said, in high school I was spoiled!

2. What was the worst Valentine's Day you've ever had?
 Easy. In 2010, I got dumped two weeks before Valentine's Day by my boyfriend of 2 years. Yep. Totally awful. The only positive thing about that Valentine's Day were my students. They knew I was sad about something and they gave me a huge amount of flowers, candy and cards. I have to say, if you have to be single, be a teacher. You will ALWAYS get something for Valentine's Day.

3. What did you do for Valentine's Day this year?
J and I bought all the fixin's for sliders and he came up with the idea to have bacon wrapped shrimp! It was a SUPER yummy dinner. For dessert, I swiped an amazing red velvet cupcake from the Valentine's Day luncheon at school. J sent me flowers as usual too:

4. What is your best Valentine's Day idea if you're single?
Grab a group of your girlfriends and go out to dinner and drinks together! One of my favorite college memories is this Valentine's Day dinner with 6 of my closest college friends. We went to a Japanese restaurant and had a total blast!

5. What is your favorite Valentine's Day candy?
Not candy hearts, I can tell you that! I have to say white chocolate covered ANYTHING! Last year, one of my students bought me this set from Peterbooke, this AMAZING candy store here in Jax. It had white chocolate covered pretzels, popcorn, Oreos, and graham crackers. Most delicious thing I've tasted!

6. Favorite Valentine's memory from your childhood?
Hmm. I don't have one. My mom loves holidays but never made a big deal about this one. We did always get a card and a bag of candy from her though!

It's Friday!

Whoa, ya'll. This was ONE hectic week. Here's the breakdown:

• Tuesday, had one of my newbie teachers observe me all day.
• WEdnesday, had my official observation with my new principal
• Thursday, had another new teacher observe me all day. Plus had my post-observation conference with my principal.(It went GREAT! YAY!)
• Valentine's Day with 24 hyped up firsties... 'nuff said. 

It was still a great week though. As usual, here are my top five from this week!

1. Valentine's Day dinner: homemade sliders and bacon wrapped shrimp. It was HEAVENLY!
2. Gorgeous flowers from J delivered to my school. Loved the different flowers in this one. 
3. Found these make-up wipes at Ulta. I find them HILARIOUS. Why? My younger brother's name is Jean-Pierre aka J.P. 
4. I've become obsessed with making Moose Munch. It's so yummy. I'm making a batch for our dessert potluck on Wednesday. Check the recipe out here. 
5. I am LOVING my new purse/tote from Target. Love the mint and love the polka dots!

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend. I get Monday off. Last holiday until Spring Break! I'm definitely going to enjoy it!

Linking up with Lauren at From My Grey Desk Blog!

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This is a first... Confidence

It's the night before my big annual observation. My observation with my new principal. Normally this would have me COMPLETELY freaked out. I would have stayed at work until late, cleaning every nook and cranny and going over each step of my plan.

But I didn't do that. I left at 4:00. I felt confident discussing my students with my principal. I'm not worried. Will I still sweat every little thing when he walks in? Of course. I'm an overachiever. It's in my blood. At the same time, I'm calm.

Is this what feeling confident is all about? Knowing that my kids are great and I've prepared them wonderfully and that there's nothing else I can do? Enjoying my Chinese food and not imagining the things that can go wrong?

People tell me I'm great and I don't know why I don't believe them. I need to feel the way I do right now all the time. Not question everything.

Anyone ever felt like this? Anyone ever had an AHA moment when they realize the feeling that they have is one of confidence? It's interesting, isn't it?

Random things...

 I'm feeling random tonight. I realized I haven't blogged in awhile, so why not put all those thoughts into one blog post? So here goes!

-Apparently my cat is freaked out by plastic bags. I adopted her almost three years ago. She's seen plenty of  plastic bags. But tonight, she keeps stalking the plastic bags in my room. It's funny, yet creepy at the same time.

-J surprises me constantly. When I saw this post on the The Six Sisters blog about 14 days of Valentine's gifts, I thought I'd give it a shot. It seemed like an affordable idea and a cute one at that. I thought that J would give me a hard time about it being to cheesy, but he's been LOVING all the gifts. He's been asking me every day about his next one. So thanks Six Sisters for making this such a fun Valentine's!

These are a few of my gifts to J. He's really enjoyed them!

-My observation is this Wednesday. I've been frustrated at work lately because people on my team are getting credit for my ideas. But I realized I shouldn't be mad at that; I should be flattered that my ideas have helped them. I'm only slightly nervous about my observation; the topic is something familiar and my kids are awesome, so I think everything will go okay.

-My newest food obsession are onion rings. Why? Who knows? I went to my friend's house last weekend for dinner and she served these awesome baked onion rings. On Friday, J and I went to Mojo's BBQ, this amazing BBQ place in Jacksonville Beach. We ordered onion rings and these are what we got:

Aren't those the BIGGEST onion rings you've ever seen? Needless to say, they were delicious, even as left overs!

-The Grammys have been fairly entertaining. Usually I've turned them off by now, but I'm really enjoying the performances. I think I liked the performances by Justin Timberlake, fun. and Miranda Lambert the best so far.

-On Tuesday, it will be exactly five months until my wedding. AH! So crazy. I really can't wait, but at the same time I'm trying to enjoy my engagement as much as possible.

End of my random post. I hope Monday treats everyone well!