perfect day

What a perfect day! I slept in (a little), then called my aunt. My Aunt Sue, Alison and I then went

The beach! Nahant beach to be specific, where we had a great time swimming, playing frisbee, catching some sun and

Ali drew a picture of her daddy in the sand. What a sweet girl.

We had to head back from the beach fairly early because Aunt Sue had to take Uncle Bruce to the train station so he could get to work. Back at home, Ali played in her pool while I did some work around the yard. Then I stretched out on what is one of the best yard sale finds I have ever made

A hammock. We LOVE our hammock. I have been working on the yard this summer, I made a brick patio (not real even like a professional one, but still great), got some chairs and made the table you can see in the background to put the herbs on (so the groundhog doesn't eat them) and hang flowers under. This hammock made the area complete.

But I digress....

I was laying on the hammock reading a book and talking to Alison, when I looked up and saw this
And this

Our neighbors were eating outside, they had music on quietly, it had a nice beat to it, down the street some kids were out playing, the birds were chirping and every time the breeze blew, my wind chimes around the yard made music. I realized it was a perfect day.

This was the first blog entry that I didn't publish

Ohhh... My first blog entry. I have wanted a blog forever, but Deborah's blog has driven me even more. Although she lives half a country away, I feel like she is still right around the corner. Each day (more or less) and I can sign on and read what she and her family have been up to. Since I have friends and family all over, I thought this is definitely the perfect idea for me! Of course, the Julie started a blog to chronicle her pregnancy and I was green with envy. Actually it was a good thing, it pushed me even harder to stop thinking about it and DO it!

I am at a total loss as to what I am going to do this week with the boys. With the weather hot and no AC in my classroom, I have to keep it very interesting and preferably make it so they don't realize they are learning anything new. I want to do this great lesson plan I read about using toys from then they were growing up. You spend a class period letting them play with the toys the have them write an essay (five paragraph, probably narrative) about the toy they like the best. Unfortunately that entails getting the toys from when they were younger, which means going on eBay, so that is going to take some time. I have been bouncing around an idea of having them make some sort of advertising campaign for different parts of speech. For my higher-level students I may have them come up with a campaign for grammar rules. That would definitely help them grasp the different rules and parts of speech. It would also segway nicely into another lesson plan I have been forming in my head about grammar. I would like to take songs they know, print out the lyrics and have them go through and edit them to make them grammatically correct. That would be so much fun.

Doing the weight-loss thing

I am doing the weight loss thing. I know how to do it, I just needed the motivation. Well, the company that owns the place where I work is sponsering a "Summer Weight Loss Challenge," so it is on! I had to first check and make sure I could join the team since I don't actually work for that company, but after the OK, I signed up. The weigh-in was Thursday, *ouch* I have let myself go. But hey, it just means it will make it easier for my team to win. The finaly weigh in is in December and the prize is a $50.00 gift certificate for each member. I started right back up with the way I did it last time, journaling everything I put in mouth and measuring amounts. Today I signed up on fitday.com for a journal and journaled yesterday and today, and I was pretty impressed with how I did. I have also started working out with dumbells and doing crunches as well as going on bike rides. Hopefully I will see an improvement! I have a feeling I will lose a bunch at first, then even off, then lose slowly.