Getting Back in the Swing of Things

Apparantly, it has been four months since I have updated this blog and so many exciting things have happened in the past four months, that I have to resolve myself to update it more.  The most exciting thing is that my husband and I are expecting a baby in January!  We are ABSOLUTELY thrilled and cannot wait.  While I am truly excited, I am also a bit nervous as well, since it is my first pregnancy.  At this point I am twelve weeks along, or one week away from entering the second trimester.  I am due January 24.  The biggest challenge so far is trying to figure out what we are going to do with everything in our guest room so we can convert it into a nursery.  Our house has two bedrooms, so we are going to have to find some place to put everything, more than likely a storage unit.  I can't wait to get started on the nursery, but until we get everything moved out of there, we are at a standstill.

Another challenge is how much time am I going to take off from work.  Since I am due in January, I have decided to start my "maternity leave" when school is out for Christmas in December, although technically my maternity leave won't start until after the baby is born.  Then if we can get everything worked out financially I plan on staying out the whole spring semester and then returning to school in the fall.  We are praying to God that everything will work out in this manner.  My grandmother has offered to watch the baby when I go back to work, so that will work out wonderfully.

And another thing, we are NOT going to find out the sex of the baby, not until he/she is born!  Although, everyone I have talked to absolutely knows it is going to be a girl, and my gut instinct is that it is a girl too, we are still going to let it be a surprise.  We are excited either way and will be truly happy whether it is a girl or a boy.  So needless to say, our nursery will be green, but that will be perfect in case we have more little ones that will have to share the room with baby #1.  Well that is all for now.  School starts back for me in 3 WEEKS.  Way too short of a summer, but I am ready to get back in a routine, and it is only for four months!  I promise, with the advent of a new baby, I will update the blog a little more regularly :-)

A Quick Break

Wow! John and I have been so busy the past couple of weeks! I am involved in a fantastic production of Bye Bye Birdie. I have a couple of bit parts, which is great because it's absolutely no pressure and I can have a lot of fun with it. My last onstage experience, I played Kate Keller in The Miracle Worker, and it was a pretty weighty supporting role. Lots of fun, but also a lot to worry about. This is a completely different but incredible experience. I would love to have another leading role later on, but for now I am enjoying getting to relax a little more back stage than last time.

In case you are not familiar with the musical, it is about an Elvis-type singer, Conrad Birdie, who has been drafted into the army. His agent is tasked with writing a song for him entitled "One Last Kiss" in which he is to sing the song and then kiss a lucky girl "goodbye" before heading into the army. It is absolutely hilarious and anyone who is local I encourage to go see it this weekend!

Needless to say, John and I have both been busy with rehearsals. (Did I mention John is accompanying the music on guitar, bass, and trumpet?) Our first performances were this past weekend. We did four shows, plus had four days of complete run throughs. Therefore, this is the first night in eight days that I have not done a complete run through of the show! I am exhausted, but it's a good exhaustion. I have tomorrow off too before a last minute rehearsal on Wednesday and three more shows Thursday-Saturday.

Here are some pictures of 2 of the 3 roles I play.... ( a news reporter and a townsperson)

                                 

If that isn't enough, I was "blessed" to have contracted some slight food poisoning over the weekend, so I had to deal with that around performances. Then today we had parent/teacher conferences. Our school does PTC's slightly different than other schools. Rather than devoting a whole day to PTC's, we do ours after school from 3:00-6:00 and have four a year. This keeps us from taking two extra days to do them and we can get out of school two days sooner at the end of the year. However it makes for a LONG day. I have to be at school at 7:30, so 7:30-6:00 is a pretty extreme shift for a teacher when you deal with children all day, and then have to keep going into overtime for three more hours once school is done! Fortunately I was able to get a lot of things done; some lesson planning and some preparation for our 5th grade musical to be performed in March. It consists of jazz standards and is really going to be so much fun. It also comes with lesson plans for jazz music which I will be using in April for jazz history month.

My last comment is that I simply love the Olympics. Especially the Winter Olympics. It's my absolute favorite. I love it so much I record it every time it's on TV so I don't miss an absolute minute of USA winning medals. I would also like to add that I love Evan Lysacek and Apolo Ohno. ;)

Goodnight!

I'm Back!

Ok, it has been over a month since I have last blogged. And I am truly sorry for that. I have decided to change the premise of my blog. Instead of writing about my job, I am just going to blog about my family, which right now just consists of my husband John and I. All of my mommy friends blog about their children, and one day I will get to blog about my children, and then perhaps it will be more interesting to read! Until that day comes however, I will do the best I can at keeping you updated on the latest comings and going in our lives. And maybe I can get more followers of my blog. Please follow my blog! Ok, after that shameless plug, I'll be going now :-)

I'm sorry, it has been forever since I have posted a blog! This is definitely the most wonderful time of the year, but also the busiest! After a lot of hard work (and stress on my part!) we had our Christmas program at school. It was a huge success. I'll have to admit, I was extremely nervous. I normally get a little nervous about programs, mainly because of the unpredictable factor, but I was really nervous about this. Everytime my students would practice, they would forget the words, or go too fast or too slow! When the big day came, they did fantastic! The gym was packed with parents, more than I have ever seen come to a school program. I had three groups of students sing, plus the dance team and cheerleaders performed. It was definitely better than last year's program. Now my next challenge is finding a musical that 5th grade can perform in the spring! There is always something to prepare for. Sorry for such a short post, but as it is now Christmas break, I have to get started on wrapping presents, cleaning house, and all of those other things that have been neglected until now!

Back to the grind!

We had a great Thanksgiving but now it is time to go back to school, if only for another three weeks until our next break! Today I only taught first through third grades because I was sick this morning. We are having a Christmas program on December 17 and the first and second grades are singing four songs, along with some other entertainment. Today I began teaching the kids their songs for their programs. We are singing "Away in a Manger", "Santa Claus is Coming to Town", "Silent Night", and "Jingle Bells". I was extremely amazed and saddened that half of the children had never heard "Away in a Manger" or "Silent Night"! They knew the other two "secular" songs very well, but the Christian songs reflecting the TRUE meaning of Christmas in the birth of Savior, they had no clue about. I am hoping that learning these two songs will plant a much needed seed of the Gospel that a lot of them are so desperate to hear.

Today I began teaching 3rd grade how to read music notes. I started with just teaching the lines notes and then I will do the space notes another day. I was extremely surprised and pleased that they understood it very well. I use the mnemonic device Every Good Boy Desrves Fudge to teach the order of the line notes. After they memorized that sentence, then I pointed to the notes without the letters and had them name them for me. Then on the Smart Board I had placed different notes and had them come to the board and write their names. They got them all correct! I was very happy. I also had them trace treble clefs on the Smart Board and they liked that as well.

When I came home I finished decorating the inside of the house for Christmas, so I will leave you with a picture of our tree next to the piano.

Thanksgiving Week!

Today was the first day of a two day week. One of the best school weeks of the year! I have to admit, the only thing I am doing with my students is watching "A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving". For one thing, I only have 2 days to do a week's worth of planning. Another thing is my recorders came in and I need to spend time organizing and getting them ready for the students for after Christmas, which takes a little while. And of course, it's a two day week, so trying to get the kids to learn music and sit still during a break week is next to impossible! It's like teaching when it's snowing and the kids are hoping school will be called off!

Today was also great because our girls and boys basketball team played a game at school today. Our girls won and our boys lost, but both teams played well and I was very proud of them.

Today I had a piano lesson with my youngest student and she is really improving a lot. She is seven years old and has been taking for almost a year. It seems like at first, things were going very slow for her, so we went back and did a lot of review, and now we are on new material and she is playing chords! I am very proud of her because she has a very small hand and it is hard for her to stretch but she is doing great. She gets nervous when we do new stuff because she doesn't think she can reach the notes, but she does great on the first try and surprises herself. Today was her best lesson.

I also got some Christmas decorations for my mantle at home that I am really excited about! Now if only I had the time to put my tree up! We just bought a new house a couple of months ago so I am excited about decorating it but also a little overwhelmed about it as well.

Finally, we went to the Alabama-UTC football game this weekend. I am a HUGE Alabama fan and have been all of my life but I had never been to a game until now. It was so much fun! I told John that we should get season tickets! So we'll see. I'll leave you with a few pictures from the game.

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It's Friday!

Finally Friday! Definitely a favorite day of the week for all teachers. I wanted to share an experience I had with my 8th grade classes yesterday and today. As I mentioned before, I teach music for Kindergarten up through 8th grade, so it can be challenging searching and planning for such wide spread age groups. The group I have the hardest time with is 8th grade, because it takes so much to keep their attention. Unless it is related to rap music or MTV they are not interested. I try very hard to tailor the lessons to cater to their attention span and make them somewhat fun but they will not have any of it. Of course this particular cohort group was the same last year, when they were in 7th grade, so a lot of it is just these particular students and not the age group.

Needless to say, this week I did a short unit on bands, as in marching bands, concert bands etc. The first lesson didn't go over too well. Yesterday however, I touched on drum corps. I explained what a drum corps was, showed pictures, and we listened to a performance from the top drum corps group in the country. And much to my surprise, they were actually interested! They wanted to see video clips of the groups, so I managed to go to the Drum Corps International website and find clips of each group doing their championship performance. The kids really enjoyed it and even began critiquing some of the performances! I told them that I was going to a college football game this weekend and I would try to take pictures of the marching band to show them. Now if only I could get them interested in the rest of what I teach.

The problem with this age group is they are only exposed to one kind of music. I want them to learn to appreciate other types of music that actually require real skill and musicianship like classical and jazz but it is such a challenge. Any ideas on how to do this?

On a personal note, I mentioned above that we are going to a football game. We are going to see Alabama and UTC in Tuscaloosa. I am very excited because I have been an Alabama fan since I was little and this will be my first game. I will try to post pictures when I get back.

Also I ordered the cutest Christmas ornaments today for my piano students. They are personalized with their name and year on them. I have posted an example of what they look like.



Hope everyone has a wonderful Friday!