A little something before winter break

Things I have learned from my time at FC Joyce:

- When first introduced to silly bandz I thought they were simply ridiculous, but have since learned they are a fantastic bargaining chip

- Second grade girls LOVE to play ring-around-the-rosey

- If you pull out a camera to take a picture, kids will stand as close to the lens as possible

- Always be ready for a sneak-attack hug… or just a sneak-attack attack

- 6^th grade girls are the keepers of all the gossip (according to them, Brett and I were boyfriend and girlfriend)

- According to students, your name for the first week or so is “AmeriCorps”

- There are so many rules to the game of four square

- Kids are smarter and hear more than you think they do, of course it’s always concerning things they don’t need to know

- The more outrageously bizarre your behavior, the more awesome they think you are

- You can do so many things well, but what will stick out the most is your ability to color inside the lines on a coloring book page

- There will always be a pencil that needs to be sharpened (and sometimes it’s broken on purpose)

- … or a mistake that needs an eraser

- … or a math problem that needs explaining

- If a student can reach into your pocket, they will and sometimes leave things for you to find, or take things for you to realize it’s missing much later in the day (like a cell phone)

- There’s no need to take it easy when playing tetherball with an 8 year-old, they will beat you no matter how hard you try

- You will leave school with about 500 new best friends!

- I have a lot of 8 year-old pen pals, thirty to be exact

- Our celebration video is up on Youtube thanks to Catherine!

my 4th grade friend Esly

Some of my playground crew

Taylor's and my afterschool tutoring group (you can almost see Taylor under all the kids on the left)

My buddy Ezra

My bestie Little Dominique

It was fantastic to have my pod 7 friends back, if only for a couple days. I’d forgotten how much I laugh when I’m around them. I’ve missed them so much! But no matter, I’ll be seeing Ashley at some point over the break and I get to meet her family! And I’ll get to see my family! Even more of a yay!

On Wednesday night we had brisket. Real, honest to god, Texas brisket from Rudy’s! Mom and Dad (in their infinite awesome-ness) air-shipped it to me! The teammates did it all up while I was in meetings and surprised me with a table full of balloons, a huge singing birthday card, cupcakes and presents! A Justin Bieber calendar, my own jar of Nutella, window gel stickers, and a confused panda puzzle! J.Biebs is totally going on spike with us for the next round! I had to teach my teammates how to build a brisket sandwich with WHITE bread, dill pickles, and bbq sauce with a side of potato salad. YUMM! G2 thanks you, Mom and Dad!

The last day at school was so hard. My kids surprised me with thank you letters and one of the girls got me a little desk jar with a sunflower on the front. She told me it was for pens AND pencils! Oooh, multi-tasker! They told me after school they had been planning on it for 5 days! 5 days! That’s an eternity for 8 year olds! I’m going to miss my babies so much but they’re right down the street. Hopefully we can go visit them every now and then during transitions.