The Walkers

This car passed Megan and me a couple weeks ago and I nearly caused a traffic accident while switching lanes to take a picture with my phone. It's a bit blurry... but it's not every day you see a couple boasting two dogs, four cats, and three (what I can only assume to be) fowl. I just wish I could read their names.

We spent last week in Washington visiting my parents. It was so much fun... I love it when Kaiya gets one-on-one time with any of her grandparents. I'm pretty sure she's the favorite. While in town, we were able to attend my friends' wedding reception and celebrate our five year anniversary! Wow. My friends Ashley and Geoffrey got married a couple months ago in Maui (I'm totally jealous) and decided to celebrate with family and friends last week. It was so good to see everybody from home and catch up. It's funny to me that they're all getting married now (four of my best high school friends had/have weddings this summer!) when I'm chalking up anniversary number five and pumping out kid number two :) Anyway, I left my camera at my parents' house. I think. But Brad took some pretty good pictures on his phone that are worth sharing. These ones are from some hiking trails around Round Lake (where we had our wedding party pictures taken). This pretty p...

Kaiya ditched me in her room this morning and shut the door. Not a minute later I heard water running and found her in the bathroom. Yes, she had climbed up onto the counter, into the sink, retreived her toothbrush and toothpaste, and proceeded to brush her teeth. She actually turned the water off before I snapped the picture, whining that her jammies were "messy".

I feel a little guilty about my English teacher preachiness for a few reasons. 1) I break grammar rules all the time. I overuse parentheses, ellipses, and sentence fragments. I like to make up my own words (like preachiness). I tend to throw in commas wherever I feel like it, even though I know the rules. And I like to start sentences with conjunctions. 2) I feel like I have made people too self-conscious about their blog posts and comments. 3) I know that my rants just come off as annoying. Here's the thing... I have accepted the fact (well, I'm trying to accept the fact) that certain rules don't seem to matter when it comes to electronic communications. Most people won't care about the nit-picky stuff in an email or on Facebook. And honestly, it's not stuff like that that keeps me awake at night. I promise. I'm much more bothered by the countless store signs, billboards, and local newspapers containing blatant errors. (Hire a copy editor!!) In other words, ple...

I've been in meetings all week with the other sophomore English teachers at my school, aligning our curriculum and creating some common assessments for the upcoming year. I know, it sounds boring, but it was actually really beneficial. I'm excited and grateful that we'll all be on the same page (for once). And those crazy kids can't complain about so-and-so being easier or harder than so-and-so. The suckers will never know what hit them. Mwahaahaa. Anyway, our conversation lead to common errors that we see in students' writing. But here's the thing - I don't just see these mistakes in my students' writing; I see them everywhere!! We narrowed it down to a list of 20 of the most glaring errors (most of them homophones) that adults have no excuse for making. And because I assume you care, I'm sharing the first five quick and dirty lessons with you. Its is possessive. It's is a contraction. The dragon opened its legs; apparently it's a hermaphrod...

I was lucky enough to have my 20 week ultrasound on my birthday yesterday. It is so relieving knowing that my little buddy is healthy. It's also pretty relieving knowing that we don't have to stress about "trying for" a specific gender at any point in the future, because It's a BOY! I'm still processing... Brad and I both kinda' thought I was cooking a little girl in there.