Me: Did you eat breakfast.....

Oaks: "Best day at school ever!"

Shirly: Yes
Me: (skeptically) You did, what did you eat?
Shirly: I had a couple of pieces of venison jerky.

Exciting week here in beautiful Coffman Cove and the Howard Valentine School (for the awesome), happs included an emergency/special PTA meeting (DRAMA), a new after school club on Thursdays and our first XC meet.

Not much to report about the PTA meeting except that we have a lot to prepare for the XC meet on October 1st and we set a date for the Halloween Carnival (Saturday, Oct. 29). Oh yeah, and we'll be selling bottled water at the XC meet.

French Braiding and Double Dutch, Thursday night was a total success. The four girl students and myself had a dance party and braided each others hair after archery practice on Thursday. It was awesome. Today I got up early and was at school by 7AM (and hour and half b/f school normally starts) to braid all of the Lady Timberwolves hair before our XC Meet (Teacher of the Year). Oh my goodness the XC meet.....

.....So James and his wife take their own car so I'm stuck driving the entire school to the meet, whatever. It's in Craig about and hour and half away. We have satellite radio in the van so it's bearable. Any who, we're almost to the meet when I hear, "AAAGHHHH, Miss Moody, Ace*, Ace is sick." Then I smell the puke. I pull over, get everybody out of the van. Ace has managed to puke ALL over himself, on the back seat of the van, and on Chase's backpack. Now all the girls are gagging, acting like they are going to puke and Chase, well, he is our first grader, he's crying. F. Naturally, I don't have anything to clean up the puke. So I have Ace take off his clothes, put on his track suit and we wait for James to come back. All the kids (like 10) get in his truck and I take Ace, we go to the school. I wash him off, he runs the race. Everybody is happy, except the van reeks of puke. Back ground, two of our students didn't show up this morning b/c they were sick last night, one of Jame's kids was sick last night, and one of our 6th graders didn't show up because he's sick. So needless to say, after hanging out with sick kids all day I feel kind of sick. Oh yeah, best part of the story. I tell the kids' parents as they are being dropped off this morning that I will call them when we get back to town because I don't know what time it will be. When I get back to school I go to the office to get their phone numbers only to discover that none them (there are 3 at this point) have phones at their homes (kind of like me). So after spending my entire day (or week for that matter) with them, I then got to drive them all home. Whateves, they all did kick-butt today. We are really proud.

Oh and this happened, after the meet we took the kids for pizza. Jame's wife, Becky ordered all of the pizza and drinks. She told the kids that they had to drink water because they shouldn't drink soda after a meet. I thought this was really surprising given the whole families propensity to consume sugar. When we sat down she told me that the only reason she didn't buy them soda was because of me, she didn't want me to be pissed. IT'S WORKING!!! Don't worry, she made up for it buy buying the whole team ice cream. Baby steps.

Next week: BEACH CLEAN-UP in Kasaan, woot woot. Can you say field trip?

Two things:
1. Please note the ladies' attire: tie die and peace signs. :)
2. Looks what is written on the board. Guess who was teaching last?

Me:(during health) Okay, write down one goal you have for the fall.
Oaks: (written) Play a lot.
Me: (smiling)

* Names have been changed for confidentiality purposes, I'm serious.