So here we go. I am on some new medication and the doctor said specifically to take it in the morning, not at night, but that means weird side affects come on strongest during the middle of the day. So I am home sick during church again… I am hoping this will pass by Tuesday (hooray for 3 day weekends!)

As I was playing with the camera, I found some fun pictures other than the characters, so I am going to share those too. First up, some Christmas pictures!

I bet you can’t guess what’s in that ginormous box that Stevie’s checking out. 🙂

Then…. The Truck! This is our new monster friend that I can hardly climb into (because it’s so large). Dodge Ram 1500 4×4. Guess Jared spent some quality time with it one day when I wasn’t paying attention to take these pictures. 😉

I like that second one so much because it looks like it is backing that naughty car up against the wall. 🙂

Lastly, my students’ projects. These are SO neat. I love these things. The pictures don’t show them as well as I had hoped they would, but take my word for it, most of these are so neat in real life, and are the size of real people. 🙂 The kids had to look up quotes on how their characters looked and passed those off to me BEFORE they could start on the character.
Meet Stargirl- Made with bulletin paper, colored pencils, and real cloth for her clothes (I love her- she might just be my favorite)

Then there’s Bella, from Twilight, drawn with pencils,

Then Annabeth, from The Lightning Thief (with REAL JEANS!!! LOVE IT!), Sunny, from Series of Unfortunate Events:

Then Jacob Black, literally 6’5″ and very pretty. I told the girls they made him look so good I could almost kiss him!

Then Jasper… and I love the details they did- I tried to do a close up of his arm (think of Eclipse, Twilight fans!)

Then couple of characters at once: Alice, (cloth clothes and yarn hair) from Twilight Saga; Massie (Cloth clothes and yarn hair) from The Clique Series; Tyson from The Lightning Thief Series, and Draco Malfoy from Harry Potter Series. And another Alice…

And last but not least, Gilderoy Lockhart, from Harry Potter. I love that they put glitter on his teeth to make his “gleaming smile,” as the quotes say. 🙂

Aren’t my kids so clever? Most of them did their best work. 🙂

Well, Christmas break was great, and certainly not long enough. Jared was amazing. He made Christmas day wonderful. He got me so many wonderful gifts, but the biggest surprise of all (literally and figuratively) was the digital piano he got me.

It plays and looks like an upright piano, but basically plugs in and is electric and all that. It’s so neat. I am quite rusty and am warming up again. It was such a big present… I felt so undeserving of the gift, but I have been trying to make use of it as much as possible!

Then the week of New Years, Jared’s family came down to stay with us and see Austin, kind of like what my family did for thanksgiving. It was a fun time to have them here, Sunday-Friday. We stayed at home a bit more, but still showed them a little around the town and our various work places. Naturally, Stevie worked his Iggy magic and they all loved him too, especially Jared’s dad. 🙂 We had a good time with them here, and we were sorry to see them go.

Since then, I’ve just been dealing with my headaches and school and grading. I took today off actually for a doctor’s appointment and I was hoping to get into some other stuff too, but I’ll just do some extra grading instead. Blech. Having the grading periods in six six week periods is really hard, instead of four 9 week periods. I like the 9 weeks better, personally. It doesn’t seem as rushed.

On the upside, tomorrow I am going to bring my camera to the school and take some pictures of my classroom with some of the projects the kids did for characterization- I think you will all be so impressed with my 7th graders!!!!!