first day of school

for the most part, a really good day. my 1st & 2nd period went great. i had a cute little powerpoint all ready to go with family pictures, class stuff, etc. they were respectful and sweet, and i already love them...

...then came 3rd period. first of all, it's a co-teach class which means it's half regular ed & half special ed kids... part of "no child left behind." even though many of these special ed students really need to be in their own "special" class, the government requires them to be in mainstream regular class, so that is co-teach. i've never taught a co-teach before, so i guess i'm due.

the upside is that i get a special ed teacher in there with me to help out (my co-teacher is wonderful - a huge praise!), the downside is that there were 45 students in my 3rd period! seriously, 45 students in a class meant for 30. And 17 of them were special ed. i kid you not, 17 special ed kids. and i'm supposed to teach??? it took 20 minutes just to get them to close their mouths and listen! obviously, there was a huge scheduling mistake, but i just tried to go with it. hopefully tomorrow the wonderful counselors downstairs will remove many of these precious children from my room. just so you know, the class limit for co-teach is 25 and only 10 are allowed to be special ed. that is how it's supposed to work. yeah, we'll see.
so any prayers around 9:20-10:10 every morning would be appreciated.

avery & tatum did great today with gigi (brian's mom) coming over to keep them. God is so good; even though i've been dragging my heels about going back and dreading it, i just felt peace this morning that this is where i am supposed to be this school year. CSHS is where God has me and i am happy to be there. even though i would love to be home with the girls, they are in great care and somehow God is working out this situation for the best for all of us.

by the way, brian's volleyball team is doing really well. it's so cute (don't tell him) but he comes home now and talks volleyball strategy with me and tells me his experiences coaching girls, and it just warms my heart, that he is actually enjoying this!!! with 3 daughters, i think this is only the beginning of his love for girls' sports (again, don't tell him)! i know from experience, girls are so fun to coach and bring such a different attitude and motivation to their athletic pursuits than boys do. anyway, volleyball been a blessing so far and i am grateful that he likes it.

baby girl #3 is still nameless, but she is now letting her mama know she's in there. i love her so much already and it's so fun to "interact" with her... she kicks me, i push her elbow/foot back in.

hopefully i'll have another update soon on my 3rd period. we're supposed to start a group project tomorrow, but with standing room only in that class, i guess i'm going to have to think up another creative assignment.

girls, girls, girls

she's sucking her thumb... is she not the cutest?

wow! another girl on the way! brian's first comment was "how are we going to pay for all the weddings?... forget college, we need to save for weddings." by the way, jennifer, we will sign the paperwork for the arranged marriages next time we see you. can we just marry them all off at the same time?
avery knew the whole time. she kept telling us it was her baby sister in my tummy, and we kept asking her "what if it's a brother?" and she just said "no, it's a sister."
i am just excited to watch these 3 girls grow up together. i've asked several people who are from families of all sisters if they are close with their sisters, and so many have told me that they are not very close today. it really made me sad, but i just decided i am going to pray everyday that God will let my girls grow up being the best of friends and stay that way their whole lives. i never had a sister, so i have no idea what it's like, but i do know i always wanted a sister. i remind avery & tatum pretty often how lucky they are to have each other.
God knows what we all need... brian & i (thank you Lord) need 3 little girls to raise!

thanks edouard (or however you spell it)!

all we got was a lot of rain. a little bit of thunder and lightning last night, but just alot of rain today. since every place in houston closed down for the day (seriously!), we couldn't get any of my errands run, so i decided to make the best of it. we put on our raincoats and crocs, took our rubber duckies out of the tub, and let them race down the river that is our street (we live in a small cul-de-sac, which is great b/c there are never any cars driving by except our neighbors). anyway, tatum's big pink ducky consistantly beat avery's smaller pink ducky down the river. since i let avery choose which ducky to use, i didn't feel bad that hers kept losing. i didn't get a picture of the duck race b/c i was worried i would drop my camera in the water, but here are some pics of our front yard being hit by edouard.


in the above picture, you can see in the far left corner the "river" of water that our duckies raced on.

tatum's favorite word right now is "dis!!!"(this). the three exclamation points afterwards are important to let you know she really means it. also, today she dropped the baby bath in the tub and said "uh-oh." it was so cute.

okay, avery is another story. i try to remember all the funny things she says, but there are just too many. here's a couple i remember from this week:

i was showing her the pretty jewelry in the james avery catalog i got in the mail and of course i mentioned that it is called "james AVERY" and isn't that cool? the next day when we looked at it again, she called it the "james mama" catalog!

long story short... we are trying to figure out if she is big enough to ride in a booster seat instead of a regular car seat, so i took out the measuring tape and told her i needed to measure how tall she is to see if she meets the requirement (she does). anyway, a few minutes later, she asked me if she could borrow that thing because she wanted to "pleasure" me. i knew i shouldn't laugh too hard, but when i told brian later, we both died laughing! she still walks around the house with it "pleasuring" things. ha!