Farewells and Football

Week two of the school year is in the books and nothing newsworthy has happened on that front. Jacob seems to be really enjoying SHS, and the lack of drama he's experienced thus far. My first graders are doing well. I love having a small class, it seems like I can give everyone much more attention. Jacob is finishing up his first graduate class this coming week. I'm sure he'll be glad to move on to a new topic in his next one. My next masters class begins on Monday, so I'm trying to get my brain ready for that. Thankfully this one is targeted towards elementary teachers unlike my last two that were broad educational psychology classes. Hopefully I'll take away more things that I can actually use in my classroom this time. Our weekend has been a bit more eventful than the work week to recap the last few days for you:

Last night Jacob went with me to the Bluebird (one of the many (3) restaurants in Mo-town) for a farewell dinner for my principal. He took a job at as principal at Hendricks Elementary in Shelbyville a week before school started and we hadn't had a chance for the whole staff to say goodbye. He was a really great principal, and will be missed at MES. He hired me there two years ago and was the best principal I've had, not to mention was my longest standing boss. Sadly, this is my fifth year of teaching and will have my fourth principal when they finally hire our new one. Everyone had a really good time at the dinner, and a lot of the teachers, assistants, and secretaries were there. We actually sat around and visited until after the restaurant closed.

Today, Shelbyville High School played their opening football game at the new Lucas Oil Stadium, so we decided to check it out. We drove through crazy traffic to get to the game. The Golden Bears won, and we got a chance to experience the newest addition to Indy. The building is beautiful, there were way more people there than I thought would be (I didn't even know Shelbyville had that many people!). We only wished we could have seen the retractable roof open, but it was too hot for that today. I'll leave you with some pictures Jacob snapped inside:

4 Down...176 to go

Like many of you, we too survived the first week of school. Thank goodness! However, every year I forget how exhausting it can be! It seems like life goes from boring to jampacked overnight. One day I can't find anything to do, and the next day I don't have enough time to get anything done!

The first week was pretty good. No catastrophes or criers that I know of. I only have 14 kids in my class this year. Awesome I know! (maybe not compared to Missy, but for me it is!) They were well behaved the first week, but you always see their true colors shine through as they get more comfortable with you, so we'll see how good they are this week! It's nice getting to teach the same grade two years in a row. I feel so much more confident about what's going on this year. I think Jacob really likes his new job. He seems really happy and impressed with the work ethic of most of his new students so far.

Other than school and thinking about school, not a lot of anything else has been going on here. I had Open House Tuesday night, about 75% of my students showed up, I thought that was pretty good, but usually kindergarten and first grade get the best turn-out when parents are involved. School is still new to them and they are still excited about helping out. Friday night we went to Greenwood to get a new computer for Jacob. Yes, we are now a two computer family. We really needed it with my masters classes getting underway again in another week, his continuing, and school starting. Last night we went to Bill & Jennie's so Bill could help Jacob get the new computer set up with some new software and for dinner. A good time was had by all. Today we went for the usual Mexcan restuarant lunch after church, have been working on planning for tomorrow this afternoon, and then its over to my parents tonight for homemade ice cream. Yum yum!

I'll leave you with a few pics of my classroom I promised so long ago:

Outside the door. This year I went with a camping/bug theme.

Change, Change, Change

Changes are coming for the Shively's-but I've decided to wait until the end of the post to tell you to keep you interested!

I spent two more afternoons at school Thursday and Friday and it is finally beginning to look like a classroom. Hopefully I'll have some pictures to post this week. I have to be ready-school starts in one week!

Saturday we spent the day traveling to near Terre Haute for my cousin Beth's wedding. She was a beautiful bride (she could have passed for a model), it was a lovely ceremony, but we were very happy to be out of the car when we finally got home last night.

Today I went to a shower for my future sister-in-law Ashley after church. It is hard to believe Ben and Ashley's wedding is in almost a month! It will be the ending of a busy wedding season for us.

And finally... drum roll please...we spent the evening at Waldron High School. Why would those crazy kids be spending their Sunday evening at school? Are they that obsessed with their jobs? Not exactly. We were packing! Jacob just got offered a new job teaching Spanish at Shelbyville High School on Friday! He is really excited about this new opportunity. He'll only have to teach Spanish I and II and won't have to have every student in the school, he will also get to have other teachers to work with, something he has been really missing since he was the only Spanish teacher at Waldron, and will be out of our financially challenged school district. While he'll miss a lot of the people at WHS (and baseball), but in the long run this is an offer he couldn't refuse. He will have a ton of work to do to get ready for the first day next week, but I know he can do it! Hopefully that tidbit of news was worth reading the entire post!