Working my dream job

I am a numbers girl. Always have been. Always will be.

Math was my subject in school. I loved it. All the time. Loved math homework. Loved. Loved. Loved.

English Essays were, and still are, my arch-nemisis. I will do anything to avoid writing an essay. If somebody needed to torture me to get information out of me, all they would have to do is make me write an essay and I would spill my guts. I can't stand writing because it is so subjective. It depend on what kind of teacher you have, what kind of mood they are in when they read it, if it is the first essay they read or the last. There are just too many variables.

Not in math. I don't care how old you are, what grade you are in, what school you go to, who your teacher is, 2 plus 2 will always, and I mean always, equal 4. There is no subjectivity to it at all. It is the same no matter what. I love that!

I also love pushing buttons. No, not other people's buttons but buttons on machines, especially cash registers or adding machines. When I was little, I literally saved up my money to buy an adding machine similar to this one:

Oh man, I added til my little heart couldn't add any more. I played store, restaurant, library, whatever occupation I could think of that needed to have buttons pushed on this little machine. I was in heaven.

To this day, every time we go to Sam's Club or Costco and walk down the aisle with cash registers, Kurt will tease me. He always says that he will get me one for Christmas. I tell him we just need to switch to an occupation that requires one. They just aren't too practical in landscaping.

Well, this is the one week of the year where my dreams come true! 

The Scholastic Book Fair at the kids' school! 

Last year I signed up to help because it just sounded kind of fun and I needed to get some more volunteer hours logged. I had sooooo much fun that this year I signed up to help way more.

We get to decorate (something that I struggle with) and organize (something that I enjoy) and read to kids and watch them get so excited about books. It is just so fun!

Here are some snap shots I took the other day while working:

The teachers got to come in before the fair was actually open and stock pile their "wish baskets" so if parents want to donate books to their classroom, they can purchase right from the basket.

But the BEST part of all . . . .

I get to work a real cash register!!!! 

It has a little scanner gun and everything. It is so fun! Maybe I have a little too much fun. Yesterday Kurt brought me lunch and while we were eating, some girls came in during recess and wanted to purchase books and so I had to "ring them up." Kurt looked at me and smirked because he knew how much fun I was having. I got embarrassed or self conscience or something and started battling the giggles. It was funny.

I also volunteered to close every day and help balance the registers so get to use my mad math skills and add up all the money and make sure we balance to the exact penny. Oh, so fun!

Ok, so now you know exactly how weird I am but oh well. I am having a great week and loads of fun. Sure my house is falling apart and I haven't worked in the office all week but it's ok because for one week I get to totally work my dream job and I am going to enjoy every minute of it. It all ends tomorrow and I am sure that if I did this everyday, all day it wouldn't be any fun anymore but I don't so you gotta enjoy it while you got it!

And I am en-joy-ing it!

Our surprise room makeover!

So about the week before Christmas, I started having a lot of headaches, which I usually don't suffer from, and my neck had a kink in it and was really bothering me. I couldn't figure out what was causing it all but I was taking Tylenol a lot and I don't like to take meds so it was kind of driving me crazy. 

Well on New Years Eve I woke up with a really bad kink and finally realized that it was being caused by our horrible bed. Our mattress, while not that old, was horrible. Kurt and I both had our own "deep trench" that we slept in. We had tried a few years ago to get the company to warranty it but they said it wasn't "bad enough" so we continued to sleep on it. Well, on this morning, it was bad enough for me. I got up and mildly ranted (meaning I wasn't totally serious) to Kurt that I was never sleeping in that horrible bed again and that I wanted the guest bed from downstairs to be brought upstairs and that I would sleep on that bed. He just kind of looked at me and said "ok" (as in "ok, whatever") and went to work. 

(Just a info note: our guest bed was in the same room as our office downstairs. It was a rather crowded room, especially when Barbara, our office helper, was in there working)

I didn't think too much about it until later that day he started texting me pictures of cabinets. He called me and said "what if we take the guest bed out of the office and make it a real office with these cabinets?" I said "sure!"

A few hours later he showed up with a truck and trailer loaded with cabinets and a granite countertop. We spent the rest of the day tearing the office apart and painting. We stopped to go have dinner with some friends and then came home, put the kids to bed and continued to paint. We actually painted past midnight and were able to ring in the New Year at the correct time. That hasn't happened in a long time - usually we go to bed at 9 and wake up the next day and say "Happy New Year" but this year we made it! Woo Hoo! We might make painting a New Years tradition. Then New Years Day we put the office back together. It was a total room makeover with absolutely no preparation or thought put into it prior to starting. From idea to completion, 2 days. Kind of crazy. And a total surprise to us!

Here is the before picture. 

The table was serving as our desk. As you can see, there was no storage space, everything was on top of the table and if one person was sitting there, there was not any room for a 2nd worker. Usually when Barbara was working, I would have to use the bed as my desk. It was even worse than the table. The bed was to the left of where I am standing taking this picture and took up most of the space in the room.

Here are the cabinets brought in. And see the nicely painted walls?

Kayla and me cleaning the cabinets out.

And here it is almost finished.

We now have drawers to put things in and tons of storage! Plus there are 2 working stations! It is so awesome!

And here is the clean window corner. Ahhhh, so much better.

And here is where Kurt and I slept for a month. I never did sleep on that horrible mattress again. We literally slept on the mattress on the floor in the middle of the toy room for a month! And my neck got much better and my headaches went away.

Finally about 2 weeks ago we got our new mattress and started sleeping in our room again. A nice flat mattress that doesn't kink our necks. It is heavenly!

See, sometimes we don't always know best

At our school, they have mentors come in every Friday and teach a class to the kids. The mentors can be anybody in the community (they have to be finger printed and do the whole safety check thing) that has a hobby or a talent or whatever that they want to share with the students.

With the younger grades (5th and under) they can range from just 1 lesson to several, just depending on the mentor and what they have to share. For the older kids (6th-12th) they teach them for a semester. It is kind of like one of their electives.

For the 6th-12th graders, they give the kids the list of mentor classes available that semester and the students get to rate them (1 being the one they want the most and so on) and then they make the classes based on their choices. So last semester, Kayla's first choice was dog training, which would have been perfect for her because she LOVES dogs but she didn't get it. She got a history-type class. Bummer. It was a good experience because she learned that you don't always get what you want and you have to make the best of it, which she did. She actually really enjoyed it.

So this semester we were excited to find out what she got. They were a little late getting the class lists out and posted them on the Thursday afternoon before the Friday class. Her first choice this semester was interior design. I even wanted to take that class. I was hoping the teacher would need a helper or something so I could crash the course. But what did she get? Improv.

Yes, that's right. The child that fears public speaking got improv. Wonderful. To be honest, I was frustrated. First she didn't get her choice last semester and now she didn't get her choice this semester plus she got a class that deals with one of her biggest fears. Urgh! So that Thursday night I contemplated emailing the mentoring coach and saying "what's up with this?" but thankfully I don't like to react when I am frustrated because I don't want that frustration coming out in my email so I waited. She wasn't that upset about it but I figured she didn't really understand what improv entailed. I sent her to school Friday morning not knowing how the day would go. All day, I kept thinking about sending that email but then I would think that I just needed to wait and see how her day went. So I waited. And waited. And waited. It was a long Friday.

And guess what? She loved it! My public speaking phobic child loved improv and she continues to love it. Go figure. I am so thankful that I didn't react right away and ask for a different class for her.

Then last week Kurt was at the school working on some landscaping projects and a friend that he knew a long time ago happened to be there. She has always home-schooled her kids and runs a theater club type program. Her theater group was at the school that day performing for the 4th-5th graders. They started talking and Kurt told her how Kayla got this improv class and she told him that they program they use to teach this improv class is really great for people who have a fear of public speaking and that battle with anxiety. Wow - it is almost like a class designed just for Kayla. Amazing.

So see, sometimes we don't always know what's best. I would have thought this class would be horrible for her and, come to find out, it is probably exactly what she needs. Amazing. It's kind of like there is someone who can see the bigger picture and knows exactly what each of us needs. Truly amazing!

Oh how I miss the curls

Trevor's hair was getting out of control. It was getting so long but it was so curly that it would spring up on top of his head. But see how long it was:

I just love this curl that would hang on his forehead.

 So cute but a little crazy.

So we decided to cut it. Give the boy a sucker and you can do just about anything to him. He sat in a trance the whole time.

It was the first time he had ever watched Thomas on tv so maybe that helped to distract him too.

And the curls were gone although it still had a curve to it.

Big boy hair cut.

So cute but I miss the curls. He got his hair cut a few weeks ago so it is starting to get longer again . . . and I think the curls are coming back! Yippee!!