The Starfish

Last night was the athletics banquet at school. I simply love seeing the kids dressed up - they almost look human :) I joke, I joke. We had a nice meal and some laughs, handed out some awards and parted ways by 7:00 p.m. A success in my books. I have only one (YES ONE!) more teaching day left of school. The rest will be filled with supervision, marking and catch up... and I can't wait! This challenging year has taken a toll on me but even more so my students. I have simply not improved as a teacher as much as I would have liked. I guess I should repeat what I say to my students to myself sometimes: "life is hard and then you die". Oh wait, I say that when they are complaining..... "Live and learn". That's the one I use when they don't do as well as they would like. One of my delightful swim team managers made me this re-purposed notebook as a gift. She came to raid my recycle bin earlier in the day promising to show me what she made out of it at a later. It's so cute! It has the story of "the starfish" on the front. It's the one about the old man throwing starfish into the ocean one at a time and then a young man comes by and asks him why he bothers when it won't make a difference (the old man's efforts are futile in the young man's opinion). The old man replies, as he throws another starfish in, that he made a difference "to that one". Awww. So nice! And with a nice little personal message inside to boot! You know, as much as the kids are getting to me these days I truly do love my job and them.... it's when they are all together that the problems start ;)

Camping in Alberta/When Will I Learn

This past weekend was David's mother's side's (usage of apostrophes questionable) annual camping trip at Jarvis Bay (Silvan Lake, Alberta). Half of this side of the family lives in Calgary so this is a nice mid-way point for us to meet. As per usual Alberta weather - expect the unexpected. Friday night was very cold and we spent all evening crowded around the fire playing camp fire games and making the best of it. Having taught all day I decided to go to bed "early" sometime between 11 and midnight only to find that despite my touque (sometimes worn on my head, other moments me socked feet), fleece jammies and a heavy duty sleeping bag I was shivering so badly that I could not sleep. At 2 am I went to find the hubby to try to convince the radiator of  man to get his butt back to the tent. Whilst waiting for him I found the ultimate solution and a little shut eye thanks to my LuluLemon hoodie which I managed to put my feet through. Honestly, those things are soooo warm. In the morning, David and I woke up at immediately the same time. No, we are not so connected that our circadian rhythms are in sync. We both woke at the same time because our tent had fallen on our faces and the cold snow on top of it awakened us! Yeah. Snow. I thought we were out of there for sure but we built a new fire and toughed it out and by 3:00pm it was 17 degrees out and lovely camping weather. More about the weekend when I managed to scrap some of these pictures but here's a pics from our adventurous stay.

Trying to stay warm in bed and questioning our choice in provinces to live.

 Great book! Highly recommend if you're into neuropathology or just think that learning about how the brain works or, in this case, doesn't work is extraordinarily interesting!

Little BIL playing the gey-tar. Very talented.

 David's camping beard... yummy... Didn't know he had the mountain man in 'em but I kinda like it :P

Trying to stay warm. Heart.

Learn to Nacissist...

A favourite (mostly of David’s) signature saying around our home is “learn to _________”. The blank could be filled with a verb, I guess, but is most often filled with adjectives, adverbs or nouns. For instance, if I was having trouble finding some viral video about a teenage pop star in angst or something, David might comment: “learn to Miley Cyrus”... I guess it’s just one of those things you just had to be there for...

Not sure about this page. I haven’t posted it for two reasons: (1) I feel like it needs some distressing, etc. but I’m too lazy to take it apart and put it back together (2) I feel like such a loser when all I scrapbook are the handful of pictures where I think I look decent. I am one of those girls who suffers from a complete and total body-dysmorphic-self-conscious-beat-yourself-up-‘cause-you’re-not-good-enough complex. For most of my life I have been very un-photogenic; so much so that people near and dear to me have, in a kind way, said as much themselves. Yes, part of this is because I make ridiculous faces at the camera 99% of the time. However, that just solidifies the picture as weird/funny/funny-ugly thus not allowing me to fall into the category (god forbid) of unattractive. So the narcissist in me has started to keep a folder of pics entitled “Me”; only the photos which I consider to be me at my best go in there. But wait, it gets worse. Every now and then I pull up the folder and go through the files reminding myself that I’m not half bad. Is that sick? Is it nothing? Is it just plain weird?

Well, whatever it is, it feels kind of good to share the quirky tid-bit about myself on the good ol’ interweb. Now I just hope someone has a similar tendency so I can’t sleep at night ;)