The Beal/Cannon Family

We made it through the first full week of school. The kids and I feel like we've been back forever already. I feel like I can't catch up. Going from summer break back to teaching is just one extreme after the other. There's always more you can do, but at a certain point you just don't. I'm definitely not back in the swing of things. I went on a day trip with friends today, and I almost backed out because teaching is a lot. I'm glad I went but I'll probably be extra tired tomorrow, and it's back-to-school night, so I will be at work until 7:00. It's fine; everything is fine.

This year, the teachers had the option to paint their parking spot like the seniors do, and my friend Krista got me excited to do it, but I decided I didn't want to. I got some ideas in my head, though, and when I got to work, I decided to paint the inside of my door instead. A lot of the teachers have their doors painted. Some are AMAZING; they have students do them, but I just wanted to do something I could do myself. I painted light coats, but it took so many coats for the white to look good. 2 coats of primer and 8 coats of white paint, to be exact. I had my TA draw the sun, and then I taped the stripes. I bought 6 cheap paintbrushes at the dollar store so I could paint coats with all the colors at once. This approach helped me get the project done faster, but it doesn't look as good as it would have if I had painted one color at a time with a roller. I wanted to bust it out, so it was a no-go with the roller. It kind of bugs me that I can see my brush strokes, but I'm glad it's done, and overall it does look good. Not perfect, but pretty good, and it is cute, so...success!

There's not much to report with the kids. Corbin started his classes this past week. He was feeling pretty overwhelmed with work and homework, so he asked to cut back his hours. I'm glad his boss cut his hours. I'm hoping he can still handle working and going to school, but cutting back is a good idea. Gabby is in a lot of hard classes, including AP Calculus, yikes- but she's really smart, and she's a good student, so she should be fine. Piper and Ryan are happy to be back at Gem Prep. I'm not 100 percent about it. The curriculum has a lot of online courses, especially in their Junior and Senior years, and I don't know if that will be a good fit for Piper. I think online courses are hard for anyone, but add ADHD on top of that, it's not a good combo. We will see how she does with her online classes this year. If she doesn't do well, I might want her to try going to Borah with me. We will see what shakes out.

I've been wanting to go to Blue Heart Springs in Hagarman for a while now, and my friends Shelly and Mary also wanted to go, so we made a plan to do it. We weren't able to schedule it over the summer, so we had to go today. It was fun, and I don't regret going, but it's definitely not as cool as the pictures online make you believe. Even the pictures we got make it look better than it was. It was a little underwhelming for all of us, but we had a great time going on a day trip, and I had enough time to still do some lesson planning and make dinner when I got home. Okay, this was long!