What Happens When...?

What happens when 200 women gather at a beach resort for a fun weekend together?

What happens when one of them distributes glow-in-the-dark bracelets while at the beach at night?

What happens when two roommates who have received glow-in-the-dark bracelets go back up to their room and are still awake at 2 am?

What happens when those two roommates disassemble their bracelets and pretend that they are lightsabers?

This is what happens.



That's me and Damselfly having a lightsaber fight in our hotel room at 2 am on our weekend retreat.

We are very silly.

Hello? Is anyone there? Anyone??

Hi.

I'm still here.

But with so little time left for blogging.

Oh, how I miss all of you!

I peek in through your windows every now and then to get a glimpse of what is going on in your lives. (i.e., I skim through my reader every now and then. Please don't think I'm stalking you!)

The internship is going great, but boy am I beat.

Just wanted to say hi.

A New Hobby!

I've found a new hobby!! Digital scrapbooking!! I used to adore paper scrapbooking, but it's just not practical for me anymore. I'm so not organized with my supplies, so it takes twice as long to get everything out and see what I have than it does to actually make the pages! I found a few freebies on some digital scrapbooking sites, and I used photoshop CS3 to do the layouts.

Once again, I copied from my best friend. (Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery!) She had the idea to do "then and now" layouts of pictures of her son from each month and also from a year prior to that month. So I've done the same. So far, I've only done March (above) and August (below. Obviously.) I hope to eventually do a whole year's worth and then have them printed into a photo book.

Oh. And the only reason I've had time to do this? Because of the tropical storm that kept school closed but let me keep my electricity to run my computer. :)

Busy, Busy, Dreadfully Busy!!

Well, my first week of student teaching is about to come to a close. This has been pre-planning week, in which teachers prepare their classrooms, attend a TON of faculty and team meetings, and, well, plan for the year ahead!

I have been busy from the time I wake up until the time I lay my head down at the end of the day. Today we attended our student teaching orientation from the University and we found out just how busy we are in fact going to be for the next few months.

Seriously busy. You've no idea what I've got to do! Busy, busy, shockingly busy. Much, much, too busy for you.

(I'm not being mean. It's a Veggie Tales song.)

Anyway. Since I am now working WAY MORE than a full-time job, a lot of my personal "fun" stuff is going to have to take a back burner for awhile, blogging being one of them. I will be spending a ton of time on this computer, and when I complete my work I will be ready to RUN out of the room.

I may be back every now and then. I hope to try and at least stop by your blogs occasionally! I will most likely keep up on Twitter, so please follow me on there if you aren't already. My twitter name is GMeadow.

I will be done with student teaching the week of Thanksgiving. Then we'll see what happens! I may or may not take a full-time teaching job. While my son is doing much better at the daycare center, I still miss him a whole lot and I'm not ready to give him up for such a long time! After my 3 months I will be ready to be Mommy again. Maybe I'll find something part-time at a preschool. We'll just have to see.

So while to the rest of the world it will appear that I have gone into hibernation, rest assured that I am working my tail off. And please, when your children head off to school this fall, say an extra special "thank you" to their teacher. Most of you have no idea the kind of time, hard work, and love these people pour into their students, your children.

See ya around!

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Tonight I am sad. This is my last night as a stay-at-home-mom.

Tonight I am excited. Tomorrow I embark upon the final leg of my journey towards becoming a certified teacher.

Tonight I am anxious. I have been "out of the loop" for a couple of years now and my skills have gotten rusty. The world of education is ever-changing, and there could be an entirely new way of teaching math by now. No joking.

Tonight I am scared. My little son will go to daycare for the first time in his life. Will he eat his lunch? Will he be able to sleep on the little cot they give him at naptime? What if he can't fall asleep? What if he's not tired when they put all the other kids down? Will they check to see if he needs his diaper changed often enough? Will he like the other kids? Will the other kids like him? Will the teachers be able to see how special and precious my baby is?

Tonight I am happy. I have worked for nearly eight years to achieve the goal that will be reached on December 12, whereupon I will walk across a stage and be handed a piece of paper that says I have attained a college education.

Tonight I am mournful. For the next 15 weeks, I will be missing half of my son's life. He will spend more waking hours with someone else.

Tonight I am jealous. Jealous of the people that will get to hear the new words my son learns. Jealous of the people that will get to see the smiles and hear the giggles of my little boy. Jealous of the people that will give him his food and take care of his physical needs.

Tonight I am angry. Angry at myself for making poor choices in the past resulting in my current situation. I am angry at the education system for not providing support for mothers of young children. I am angry that we live so far away from my family, who would be more than happy to take care of my little boy while I take this final step towards completing my education. I am angry at the economy for making the prices of houses triple in the last 5 years, making it necessary for a family(at least, our family) to have two incomes in order to purchase a modest home.

I am feeling so many things right now. I can't decide which emotion to settle on. I have my son's backpack ready for tomorrow. It has a change of clothes, several diapers, his blanket, pillow and stuffed monkey for naptime, his morning snack and his lunch box. I have chosen the outfit I will wear for tomorrow, and as soon as I finish this post I will pack up this laptop in its bag and include a notebook, pen and pencil with it so I will be prepared for anything tomorrow.

The only thing I can't prepare for is how I will feel being away from my precious, precious, baby.

I know some of you moms out there are anxious for school to start again so you can get your kids out of the house.

Me? School starts tomorrow, and I am in agony.

Week of Fun: Pictures

Well, I haven't been blogging every day during my Week Of Fun, but here are some pictures showing the highlights of the week!


Me, my son, and my friend's boy playing at the water playground.

We took the boys to a really cool place called "Pump It Up" which had two ROOMS full of bounce houses of various sizes and shapes. It was hard to get a picture IN the bounce houses, but they had this little area for the smaller children to climb around on.

The boys splashing around at the beach!

Next time I need to remember to bring my son's water wings, because he just wanted to plunge headfirst right into the water! Unfortunately, he can't swim yet...

Week of Fun: Day 1

Today began my Week of Fun with friends Holly and her Man-Cub.

Our day of adventures began at the Ft. Lauderdale International Airport. There is an observation area where you can park your car and watch the planes taking off and landing. This particular runway serviced mostly smaller planes, but we saw a couple of larger ones from Air Canada and Delta. Mostly we saw little puddle-jumpers from Spirit and JetBlue.

The boys just loved it! They would squeal, point, and wave at the planes as they came in. It was a little hard for Holly and I to keep the boys contained- they kept wanting to run across the street over to the barbed-wire fence separating the airport from the viewing area. A plane must have come in every 2-3 minutes!

After that, we moseyed on over to Hollywood Beach. (This is Hollywood, Florida, people. Nothing spectacular.) It was a beach that neither Holly nor I had been to before. The water was just GORGEOUS, and Chris just ran right up to it and would have plunged in head-first if I hadn't grabbed him! Chris and his friend the Man-cub ran up and down the shoreline, giggling when the waves broke over their feet. They didn't like it so much when the larger waves came and knocked them down, but they were both troopers! We stayed at the beach a little over an hour, which really surprised me. And this was without any sand toys!!

I snapped a few pictures on my camera, but haven't got them onto the computer yet. (Husband, WHERE is the card reader??!!!!) I hope to get them up for you soon!

Tomorrow, Holly is taking us to a super-secret indoor Location of Fun. I have no idea where we are going or what we will be doing. Only that I need to wear socks.

I am intrigued.

His First Scraped Knee

My little boy got his first scraped knee today. Well, it's more of a scraped shin than a knee. We were in the front yard playing and he tripped over the brick edging separating the grass from the flower bed. He has a 3-inch long diagonal scratch. It's the first time he's bled!

The little trooper! As soon as I picked him up, he just wanted to start playing again but I knew I needed to administer first aid. He was more scared of the band-aids than he was of his fall, the poor thing! It took 3 band-aids to cover the entire area. In hindsight, I would have been better off taping a large piece of gauze to his leg. I will probably do that when it's time to change the bandages. The little guy squirmed and wiggled and I had to hold him down in order to get the band-aids on, which just made him scream more.

Then I let him sit on the couch, eat a popsicle, watch his favorite movie ("Finding Nemo") and then I gave him some chocolate milk, and a little while after that I put him down for a nap. He's been asleep for almost two hours now.

The poor little guy! I'm sure he'll recover quickly. I need him to recover quickly, because my dear friend Ivy and I have planned "The Week of Fun" for my last week of being a stay-at-home mom. A week from today I begin my teaching internship, so every day this week we are going to take our kids out to do something fun. We haven't settled on an itinerary yet, but items on the list to be considered include:

-watching the airplanes from the observation area at the airport

-going to the beach

-exploring a new park Ivy found

-going to the zoo

-some super-secret surprise things that Ivy wants to show us!

So since I will be having The Week of Fun, I might not be around the blogosphere quite as much this week. I only have a little time left with my little boy, and I intend to enjoy it to the fullest.

I Should Be Sleeping

Warning: I use a bad word in this post. Don't judge me.

I woke up three hours ago. Hubby was snoring, and my jaw was sore because I was sleeping on my side and putting pressure on my face where the teeth were removed. I took a Vicodin, thinking that once the pain eased, I'd go back on to sleep.

Nope. I put in ear plugs, thinking that if I drowned out the snoring, I'd go back to sleep.

Uh-uh. I went out to the living room, got on the couch, thinking that since the living room is a little cooler than the bedroom thanks to the powerful ceiling fan, I'd be more comfortable and fall back asleep.

Wrong again.

But at least I'm getting caught up on reading all of you dear people!!


Here is a picture of me when I was a baby. There is really no purpose for me putting this here right now, it's just damn-thirty in the morning and I'm bored.



Forgive my language. I get cranky when I haven't had enough sleep.

I've Moved!

Hey everyone!

For those of you who haven't yet updated your blogrolls or readers, please take note of my new URL:

http://gmeadow.blogspot.com

I will be blogging over there from now on. Thanks!

-Guinevere

On This Day in History...

This day, four years ago, I wore the perfect white dress....

and carried a bouquet of flowers in the glorious colors of an autumn sunset, which is my very favorite thing to look at. Even though it was in the dead heat of summer.

This day, four years ago, I was a little irritated that my husband chose to wear a Winnie-the-Pooh tie on our wedding day. But then I thought about it, and realized it was cute and sweet, because he was just being himself.



This day, 4 years ago, I spoke words that would change my life forever.

This day, 4 years ago, I wore flip-flops. While it may have irritated my husband that I chose to wear flip-flops on our wedding day, after he thought about it he realized it was cute and sweet because I was just being myself.

Happy anniversary, honey! I love you more than you'll ever know.