A Portly Post of Predominantly Pictures

Well hello, didn't see you there! Actually, that's a lie... I knew very well who *cough* parents *cough* have been breathing down my neck for a new blog :) not that I blame them, quite a lot has happened with very little communication which, so I've learned in my relationships, can be quite detrimental? Yes, I believe so. So much has happened since we spoke last that I'm finally starting to realize why little blogs of seemingly little events is the way to go. Thankfully I took pictures over the last few weeks and they have jogged my memory about fun little outings and events that I've had with my wonderful fiance, my family, and others! But first, a quick update about life in general...

Well we're about five weeks (I think... it's about this time I lost all dimension of time last year) into the school year and, even with it's ups and downs, this year is a VAST improvement on last year. I have a lot more students/bigger class sizes and some interesting characters to say the least, but I am legitimately beginning to love what I'm doing! Don't get me wrong, I could really use a break from pubescent teenagers (especially with this past week being Homecoming Week... basically all my students were stir crazy because one dance per semester equals all the drama involved being crammed into one week. Oh, and add onto that funny costumes each day... but I felt pretty good on Superhero day with my cape, wrist cuffs and goggles; they called me Super Casebolt) and our administration are cramming meaningless tasks onto our plates with unreasonable timetables and I'm working later nights than I did last year (shockingly, but this time it's WITH students and to refine the stuff I already did last year for better learning/rigor)... but all in all it's been amazing :) over the summer, some good spiritual and emotional R & R inspired some mental growth on my part and my mindset has completely changed. Likewise, this means my attitude and outlook on my work has completely changed, making life so much easier, more enjoyable and comfortably out of my hands. If you would like specifics, I would love to share! But otherwise, I won't risk boring the masses :)

I have three honors classes, all pretty large (one is 35 kids... and they're loud... but they're really great kids, kind, funny, and HOLY NERDS! I call them my nerd herd) and two general classes. It's been fun! Also I've been in charge of my PLC's efficiency, been helping out a new student teacher (can't wait until I can have my own... the conversations about pedagogy and why we do what we do are phenomenal, and sadly often lost upon the veterans in my district), and have already been asked to do drama by some students... we shall see, the plate is fairly full. OH! And in case you're wondering how the biology state testing went for your kids last year, the results are in... two years ago our pass rate was 54% and this past year our pass rate was *drumroll please* 76%! I'm so proud of our improvement, we bumped from one of the lowest schools to being the 3rd in the state for science. Not too shabby! In general though, the year has gone well :) maybe to the point where I may want to stay here?! We shall see...

Okay, I've not delivered a very "portly" post so far so I promise I'll try to make this brief before tomatoes come at me through my computer screen... choir has been aMAZing as well! It's been wonderful getting back into a group of girls and working to create something great :) I wanted to let you know that we have two concerts each year and the dates for them are as follows (no pressure):

Christmas Concert: December 8 & 9 (we think...)
Musical Theatre Concert (he's made me Maria from Sound of Music... I'm no Julie Andrews, but hey, you know me!): February 16

And now on to the pictures! See attached captions to truly drink in the eventful goodness that has been my wonderfully blessed life these past few weeks!

 Thought I'd start us off with a nice dead animal carcass hanging in our neighbor's back yard and a lovely sunrise on the way into school.

 Richard and I took the gondola up Crystal Mountain one Friday evening and had a picnic dinner :) it was beatiful and somewhat comical; he's afraid of heights but wanted to go, so I neglected to tell him how high the gondola really went. Quite the ride!

 Happy Birthday Grandma! Love you more than words can say!

Rich and I also took a different afternoon to enjoy Mowich Lake with our books and lawn chairs :)

The Puyallup Fair was clastrophobic as always but too fun! And obviously included invisible sheep (as seen by the sign)... for some reason, Richard didn't want me to post this one...

The weekend after the fair was the state's free museum day; Rich read in an article that you can sign up to attend any museum in the state for free, so he took the day off and planned a full-on day date for us. And, like the good little frugal man I love, he of course tried to find the most expensive museum to visit so we got good bang for our buck. So this is a gorgeous piece of Christ asking for water from the Samaritan woman at the Seattle Art Museum!

 Ahh the Seattle Aquarium! Don't remember ever going, so we just HAD to :)

And my boyo was, quite literally, the only adult basically jumping into the tide pool... not surprising

 

 A b-e-a-UTIful Seattle sunset to cap off the perfect day on the town :)

 :)

Thought you would like to see the inner workings of a high schooler's mind... I had my kids create mnemonic devices to remember the order of "kingdom phylum class order family genus species" in organism taxonomy. Got some interesting ones in there... made a fun classroom competition though! Got donuts for the student who won "best device" in each class, even though I had to sneak them past admin (we aren't allowed to give treats to our kiddos).

I got a video of my classroom so that you all can see it... I feel truly accomplished in how I've made it home and my own. Took a while and some "borrowing" from abandoned rooms, but I absolutely love the outcome :) welcome to my second home! Sometimes it feels like my first though...

My first staff badge! I didn't get one last year because (honestly) I didn't shower on picture day. But now I'm all staffed up!

 

Some pretty flowers from my honey :) I think I've got a future in arranging! Not really... but not shabby.

And finally, my Lily of the day is actually a video. We've discovered over the past few months that the absolute BEST toy we have ever and can ever get our fur baby is actually not really a toy at all... you know those rings from milk gallons? Those and the lids are hours of limitless entertainment for both her and for us. So enjoy!

 

Love you guys, hopefully it won't be so long before an update :)

Chels