Long Overdue Update

Ok, I know that it has been way too long, and that lots has gone on, like the boy's first day of school and my Dad and Uncle coming to town, but I've been a little crazy lately (Notice I didn't say life has been crazy, nope, it is all me.), and so I have fallen behind. (We'll get to me don't worry, but let's have pictures of the boy first!)

Owen's First Day of School!!!!!

I'm not sure how I feel about my little man going to school. Pre-K didn't exist when I was a kid or in the school districts that I have taught in, so the concept of 4 year olds going to school still seems odd to me. At the same time Owen was very excited about going to school like Mommy and Papa, so I am happy that he is excited about it.

We make too much for Owen to go to Pre-K at the public schools (If you are making less than me I do not see how you are surviving here...oh that's right, the State gives you everything.), so we had to find him a private school. And when I think private school I think of Catholics and Nuns. So we enrolled the boy at Holy Redeemer Catholic School, which is fine except that I was a little disappointed that they don't have any nuns.

Since I was actually going to work in those days (again, more on that later) Beki had it worked out how she was going to get him to school. But it meant that he had to get up a bit earlier than he has been used to.

You can get him out of bed, but you can't make him wake up!

Once he was awake he was pretty stoked to be on his way, but first Cheerios.

(Yes, I know I swore off Cheerios months ago after they came out with the Chocolate ones...but then I had some...and they were good...and I'm not allowed to buy them...so we stick with Honey Nut Cheerios with Strawberries.)

In his uniform with his backpack on ready to go!

Remember how you took the Schoolbus to school when you were a kid? Well the boy takes Metrobus.

Sitting on the bus with Mommy...I think he is eating something.

This really isn't the entrance to the school, but it is more impressive than the real entrance.

The Boy is all about Lightning McQueen, until you talk about Backpacks, then there is only Buzz Lightyear!

Owen with some of his classmates.

We found out this past Friday that Owen has become the class bully, hitting and pushing the other children. Like we got the official duplicate copy discipline notice from the school. Three weeks into his school career and the boy is already in trouble. (I bet what is happening is that someone is taking his toy, so he takes it back. Owen doesn't tattle tale - mostly because Beki and I don't care - he has learned to solve problems on his own. So if someone takes his toy, he just remedies the situation, and then the other child runs off to tell the teacher.)

After his first day of school Mommy and Owen went and got a snack. (Papa was supposed to be the one picking up Owen, but he got stuck at a stupid meeting at work, so mommy had to rearrange her schedule...she's awesome like that.)

Potty Training!!!

Owen is totally potty trained now (My greatest triumph as a teacher by the way. Nothing beats the satisfaction of having your child finally go poo in the toilet by himself. I don't even care that he still needs a little help wiping, the poo is at least in the toilet.) and we probably don't need to do the reward chart anymore, but it makes him so happy to put a sticker on it, and I like buying the boy new toys, so while we up the number of successful trips for each reward, if you visit our house you will find proof of our son's bowel regularity posted all over the bathroom door.

This time he got Mater. I don't like people in large groups, so I avoid stores as much as possible (except Costco, I don't seem to mind Costco). To make my life easier, I just ordered Mater off of Amazon.com. This makes it even better, because then a package shows up in the mail, and all packages belong to Owen and must be opened immediately. So today we got the excitement of having a package waiting for us, and the added fact that it was actually for Owen.

Yea...I'm using my superior height advantage to tease the boy a little bit...

but he was very pleased in the end!

The Visit from Papa Coins and Uncle Paul!!!

This year has been quite time for people visiting. Grandma Nettie, Aunt Karen, Maddy and Macy came for Christmas, Grandpa and Abuela came for a visit in June, and now Papa Coins and Uncle Paul were coming for a visit. (A quick note about the Papa Coins name. My father has a little bit of the CDO (It's like OCD, but alphabetical like it should be) and decided that he wanted to amass a coin collection. If I am not mistaken, this happened after Uncle Paul showed my father how to use eBay. Anyway, he has a ridiculous amount of coins at his house, and so Maddy started to call him Papa Coins. When Owen was out there this summer that is what Maddy was calling him, so that is his official Grandparent name....FOREVER!!!!!) The secret to getting Papa Coins to come and visit you is to have a sporting event held nearby. It just so happened that on Labor Day Boise State was playing Virginia Tech at Fed Ex field. (That is the stadium that the Redskins play in. They call them the Washington Redskins, but their stadium is in Landover Maryland.)

Knowing my extended families love for the hometown college football team, I launched a cunning plan. If you have been following our happenings you know that we turned our upstairs bathroom into a laundry room, and that we are now short an upstairs bathroom. If you know anything about my family you will know that my Uncle Paul is an incredibly gifted handyman, who happens to be a bit unemployed. So, showing our work:

1 Football Game

+ 1 Uncle with not much to do

+ 1 round trip plane ticket

+ Papa Coins paying for the tickets to the game

= 1 New Upstairs Bathroom (As well as doors on the laundry room and a new door in the bedroom.)

Owen and Papa Coins playing Life. Really they were just making it up as they went along, but Owen just really liked having new people to play with.

I'm not sure what Uncle Paul is doing to Owen here, probably trying to squeeze him like an Orange. Owen liked to roughhouse with Papa Coins and Uncle Paul.

(And then I wonder why he gets in trouble at school.)

I have 1 piece of Boise State apparel, so I fit in and we were ready to go.

The Game!!!

(You will notice that this section has no pictures. This is because there is no way that I was taking anything of value with me, so the camera stayed home.)

If you remember, and I have mentioned many times, I do not like people, but more than that, I don't like dealing with people in their cars. Driving to the stadium meant that I would be dealing with lots of traffic going in and lots of traffic going out. So I decided to give my Dad and Uncle Paul a real taste of the big city, and we took the metro. I am proud to say that they both figured out how to use the little card to get the gate to open, and I was a little surprised by the number of fans using the metro to get to the game. I had been a little concerned about our safety, but with this many fans we were going to be fine. It is a bit of a walk from the station to get to the stadium, but we three made it there in pretty good time. Papa Coins bought our tickets from a scalper who said that they were on the 30 yard line - which they weren't - but at least they were on the correct side of the stadium. In fact, we ended up on the lower level in right about the goal line of the endzone where all of the scoring occurred. We were surround by Virginia Tech fans, but the BSU section was literally across the aisle, so we were close enough to feel like we were part of them.

The stadium was probably the biggest one that I have ever been in, and though it was billed as a "Neutral Site" game, it was definitely a Virginia Tech home game. And the Hokies know how to be loud. It was so loud that you could not hear the band during pregame or halftime. It was pretty quiet after the first quarter when BSU led 17-0, but then it got exciting and loud. And as we all know, Boise State scored at the end and won, and that made the trip home a whole lot easier to deal with. As we were exiting the stadium I noticed that not drinking makes going to games a whole lot cheaper. Most of the seats had 6 or 7 empty beer bottles under them. At $8 a pop that is like an extra $50 on top of your ticket. Plus being sober makes it a lot easier to get home.

Remember how I said that I was surprised how many people were on the metro on the way to the game, well after the game it dawned on me that all of those people had to now get back on the metro. So we followed the rest of the masses down the road towards the station - it was about a mile - but being able to walk straight gave us quite an advantage and we made it through the chaos at the station and onto our train easily. As we were walking though they had some lady on a megaphone telling the crowd that the last train was scheduled to leave at 12:40. This was about 12:15 and I thought to myself, there is no way in hell they are going to get all of these people onto the last couple of trains. I wonder what happened to them all, because as I mentioned, Sobriety is a great asset when maneuvering through crowds and we got out on the first train. But how could the metro not know that there was a football game that night. Surely they have a plan in place that they implement when the Redskins play. They wouldn't really leave all of those people stranded would they? Well...this is a Union job, so probably. We made it home around 2am, and I was up for work the next morning at 5am, go me!

While we were away, Beki took Owen to go and play with his best friend Dean and Dean's family. They went to the University and splashed in the pools.

Is there really anything that little boys like more than splashing?

Not sure what is going on here, but he looks like he is concentrating something fierce.

Hello!

Can we splash with our hands?

The feet work much better!

Then they played baseball on the sundial. Here Dean is using the "Ball Machine" to pitch a ball to Owen.

And here is Owen running the bases...of course he is running to third base instead of first, but that is a detail we will work out later.

Papa Coins stayed an extra day to help work on the bathroom and hang out with Owen - and take us to a restaurant - but eventually it was time to take Papa Coins to the Airport.

This would be the section where you would expect me to provide you with pictures of all of the awesome things that Uncle Paul did while he was here. Paul worked like a dog, and had to deal with a lot of, let's say "interesting" building situations. While we got the bathroom almost finished, we still need to finish sheetrocking it, put in the floor and the fixtures. Then there will be pictures. Just know that Paul does great work, so if you need something remodeled or fixed, call him!

And at the end of the week it was time for Uncle Paul to go home too.

And now for a couple of random pictures, and a series of pictures documenting something that I probably should have stopped.

Dean's mommy was sick, so Dean came over and spent the night at our house! They both had on their Helmets and they were fighting Monsters or Pirates or Whatever they wanted to.

My two favorite people.

Deviant Behavior That I Should Have Stopped but Took Pictures of Instead!!!

I don't know why I had the camera out, but for some reason I did, and the boy wasn't really paying attention to me, he was focussed on the prize. I saw what was going on in his brain, and I probably should have stepped in and stopped it, but it was more fun just to take pictures of it to show you what my son does when you leave him alone.

I did step in at this point, but I figured that he got the lid off and the spoon out, so he deserved a little bit for his hard work.

And Now.......

The Section You've All Been Waiting For......

What in the Hell is Wrong With Chris!!!

If you are on "The Facebook" you probably know by this point that I am having some difficulty with my current job situation. The last time that I actually posted on this blog was the description of how I was sent home from work drunk on the second day of school, which is actually one of the least of my worries. Now if I were to write out all of the experiences of the last three weeks it would take 6 pages (I know this because I actually have written out the entire story, if you want to read it, let me know and I will email it to you.) so I will try to give you a simplified version of why I am on the verge of leaving the Teaching Profession:

1. I was told that I would be teaching two small choir classes of 15-20 students; they have 38 and 42 students.

2. My classroom only has 36 desks.

3. More than half of the students and a quarter of the band students did not register for the class and do not want to participate.

4. I have NEVER been asked or expected to teach Band or Choir students who did not want to be there and participate.

5. The Principal told me after the first week of school that they were hiring another Creative Arts teacher to alleviate the overcrowding in all of the Creative Arts classes. (For example, the Technology teacher has 40 students in a class, but only 30 computers.)

6. The Principal also asked me to find out from the students who wanted to stay in Choir and who did not, leading us all to believe that the situation was going to be resolved.

7. The Principal accused me of telling students that I did not want to teach them when I followed her instructions and found out who did and did not want to be in my class.

8. There IS NOT going, nor ever was going to be another Creative Arts teacher, I am expected to "Teach the students that are placed in my class.

9. The students who do not want to be in Choir and Band are disruptive and throw things (You know, like paper balls, pens, chairs) at each other and at me.

10. The Children stole my iPod, and even though I found out who did it and passed that information on to the Dean of Students, he hasn't "Gotten around to dealing with it.)

11. The Principal publicly reprimanded me in front of staff and students for not having contacted parents.

12. The Principal reprimanded me for calling parents. (When I called them they asked me how they could help get their child into a class that they actually wanted to be in, so I told them to contact the guidance office at school, and they all did...on the same day...pretty much all at once.)

13. My Principal has told me that I can not have any say on who can or can not be in Band or Choir. (The County Course Description for Band and Choir states that both course have a prerequisite of Audition and/or DIRECTOR APPROVAL)

14. My Principal has called me a drunk and a liar.

15. My Principal asked me if my old job was still available, basically telling me that she does not want me at her school.

16. I have tried to contact my Union for 2 weeks and cannot get them to call or message me back. (I bet if my name were Shaquita Jackson I would not be having this problem.)

17. My doctor says that I'm not going crazy (I say that I am already there) but that my health has declined to the point where she is concerned about me going back to work without this situation being resolved.

18. My Supervisors want to transfer me to an Elementary General Music position, but it takes approval of the Principal, who won't release me until they find someone else to take my place.

19. I cannot fathom anyone willing taking this assignment.

20. I am running out of sick days.

Really as I have had lots of time to think about things, the big issue here is control. I do not teach a Band Class, I run a Band Program. I do not teach a Choir Class, I run a Choir Program. (By the way, I do teach a General Music Class, you can put whoever the hell you want in there.) I run the program. I do not manage the program, I do not supervise the program, I RUN THE DAMN PROGRAM AND I SURE AS HELL WILL BE IN TOTAL CONTROL AS TO WHO WILL AND WILL NOT BE ALLOWED TO PARTICIPATE. My Principal likes to tell me that she has lots of students who are in Math class who do not want to be there. I bet that is true, but that is Math CLASS, it is not an elective and the students all know that even if they don't like it, they have to be there. Plus I do not know of many teachers who run a Math Program or a Science Program.

This Middle School has never reached their Test scores, and 85% of the teachers and the entire administration is new, so I can understand that things are a little crazy. But I can also recognize when a situation is or is not going to work. My Principal has established herself as a My Way or the Highway person, and unless I am given control to run my program, I choose the Highway.