33 Weeks Down, Seven To Go

Well, the new school year is upon us. We start day after tomorrow. Open house is tonight. I'm excited to see the kids again. I decided this year to forego using butcher paper on my boards and went for the cloth option (which I'm noticing is a lot more popular this year). This involved going to my local fabric store and buying 11 different fabrics. No, I'm not going crazy with this idea. I use a cool curriculum called Recorder Karate, which borrows the belt system from the martial arts. There are nine belts. I bought fabric for each of the nine belts for my RK board, plus an additional solid color to use as a band across the top where my lettering is (that part is just paper cut on the Ellison machine. I cut out the fabric this weekend and tried sewing it together on my sewing maching, which isn't working properly and is really annoying me right now. Sunday night I just wanted to take it and throw it onto the highway from the overpass by my house. I spent a couple of hours last night at my in-laws sewing the things together. It looks fabulous! The board is about 4' tall and 11' long - which just so happens to be a length that is evenly divisible by 9 (for the belts)! That certainly made the math easy on how wide to make each strip. The kids will put their cards on the appropriate color when they earn the belts by playing a specific song. They move their cards along the board as they progress. They really enjoy it and it's highly motivational. Too bad I wasn't the genius who came up with it (though I am on an e-mail list with that genius!)

I'm doing my best to keep things organized and uncluttered this year. For those of you who know me well, you know that this will take major effort. I'm making this my goal ostly so that things are nice in here once I go on maternity leave in about 6 weeks. (Yikes! Is it really that close!?) I'm due in 7 and off the week before, provided the baby doesn't decide to come early. As long as I'm still pregnant on October 12, that will be my last day until January 3.

I was hoping to escape without any stretch marks on my belly. No such luck. I only have a few for now and they are relatively small. They probably appeared when I 'sploded last month. Hopefully I'll be able to keep them to a minimum.

We were awakened (or at least I was) at 5:00 this morning by about half a dozen fire trucks (just the engines and lights, no sirens thankfully). The house two doors down caught fire. It was under control pretty quickly and I don't think anyone was hurt. I never ended up going back to sleep. My alarm was set for 6:00 so I could be at work by 8:00. I was out the door shortly after 7:00. By that time, luckily, the Battallion commander's SUVs were moved from in front of our house so I could actually get out, as were all but two fire truck. At least the SUVs would have been easy to move had I needed to get out earlier than I did.

My plan tomorrow is to get class lists somewhat in order so I can be totally prepared for Thursday morning. I want to have my room ready to go the second I walk in on Thursday. Things where I need them, books and CDs in the appropriate places, stereo set up, etc.

Kids will be here in 2 hours! Yay!