Gonna See It In Color: Thank goodness for a "last week" of school!

Well, it's been a while....a long while! Our Thanksgiving was good. Ethan came home for the week, and we had two T-dinners within 24 hours. I swear Mom was trying to kill me, but we all survived. We made about 50 gallons of apple cider and then they let Ethan slice the turkey up. It was a scary situation there for a few minutes....

Since Thanksgiving it's been a whirlwind. Ethan went back to Casper for a week and a half, during which he attended a judging in Oklahoma and Texas on the same day there was a murder-suicide on his school campus. Thankfully no students were hurt, but a sad story nonetheless. He also finished his finals and seems to have survived his first semester just fine. He's back now for a whole month, which is crazy to believe. He will have been back for just over a week before I'm even out for two weeks, and then he doesn't go back for another still!

At school we are slowly, incredibly slowly, but surely making our way through the first chapter of the new Algebra book. We managed the first two lessons in a timely manner, but the third and fourth took us TWO weeks, and should have taken one. The other math teacher and I decided that next year we're taking a week out to focus on fractions and distributing among other concepts before attempting equations, which is what lessons three and four are all about.

At Prosser we're all about improvement, so the Language Arts and Math departments this year began using the benchmark assessments to better assess our kids throughout the year. These assessments are designed to test the kids three times a year on standards that we (teachers) have chosen for the specific tests, knowing what we will have covered by that time. The first one went okay, but showed us that the kids were still really low on concepts we were covering in class at the time of the test. It's an interesting way the school system works these days...much simpler when I was a kid, bahahahaha! Thankfully only one week left to go before two glorious weeks off!

I continue to love working with the staff and my PLC members. On our PLC there are two math teachers, two language arts teachers, a science teacher and a history teacher. It's been a fantastic time getting to know them, and I am SO incredibly thankful I am working with the teachers I am. :)

Last Sunday I took family pictures for friends who I did maternity pictures for last December. Their baby boy Eli is such a cutie these days, and it was fun catching up with them for a few minutes. I also took engagement pictures for another friend, so we had fun too!

Today we went on our annual tree hunt. A week late so Ethan and Steph could be home, but I'm so glad. Can't imagine tree hunting without them! It was a successful day :)