Two months! :)

Introducing Cora Elaine, our little snuggle bear! Today at her two month checkup she was 11 pounds, up from 7 pounds 15 oz. at her birth.
(she was born via C-section after about 24 hours of Foley bulb and Pitocin and no progress past 5cm). She's a breastfeeding champ, and usually finishes her meals in ten minutes or less.
We absolutely love her, and she was the best surprise ever after thinking she was a boy for most of the pregnancy (we were team green, and what baby clothes we had were either from cousin Rafe or gender neutral... But several friends and family members gave us tons of girly clothes so we are pretty much set through six months (she's in 3-6 months now, and we've been taking advantage of thrift stores for deals on bigger sizes for the future.  She found her thumb yesterday, and enjoys trying to put it in her mouth, but usually ends up gnawing on her hand. :p   its kinda hard to remember what it was like with just the hubby and myself, but i absolutely love being a mama, and i know daddy feels the same about being this little girl's daddy. Its kinda scary knowing that God's trusting us to raise her for Him to the best of our abilities, and I'm sure we'll make mistakes, but I'm glad He's there to guide us through it all!!

semana dos. . .

Week two:

Well, this week was slightly productive. :)
I say slightly because that's how it feels right now, after grading almost everyone's quizzes on animal vocabulary... But more on that later.

My computer has decided that its internal fans need to stop working. I'm not sure if this is from the dust of the badlands that collected in my backpack on my several hikes, or just because it's in the mood to die, but I haven't been able to use it in the past few days at all - even the fan-pad thing I bought to put under it to alleviate the heat it produces wasn't working. :( so no FB or gmail for me, unless I go to the library. And I was rather hoping to do some lesson planning at home... Especially since we don't have books yet, and I have no no no no no nooo idea how to go about choosing a Spanish textbook.

So I got to have my first "parent teacher" conferences... About 20 people came to see me altogether over the two evenings that conferences were held. Most of them were mothers or grandmothers.... Many of these kids don't have fathers in the picture. :( But it was good to be able to put faces to names that belong to them. I am still trying to know everyone's names; seating charts help :) a LOt. As does those people who actually turn in their homework...

Homework. *Shudder*. So last week I assigned everyone the daunting task of
1) Making vocabulary cards of the Animal List that I handed out, and
2) Making a travel brochure of a Spanish=speaking country or a city in that country.

and then on the due dates for the notecards, a very sparse handful showed me that they were done.
and for the brochures? That I was hoping to have decorating the walls on my "clothesline" for P/T conferences? ??? Yeah,... I received 5. Out of 102 or so students, I received 5 brochures on the day taht they were due. MEH. So I've been trying to be lenient and let them work onthem a little bit in class, but the points are going down... and Monday they are only going to be 10 points (out of the 20) maximum, barring neatness, creativity, etc...

We also went -albeit briefly - over a list of clothing vocabulary words. And a very, very basic run-through of the verb "llevar," to wear. I assigned a few of the classes 5 sentences stating what they wear... It's so hard for me to be patient with them right now, especially when they don't turn things in as a vast majority, and hard for me to be patient with myself, because I want to teach them everything at once, ..... and I need to find a better few websites than the (slightly) British ones to supply my vocabulary words. And I have no money to buy books... So I am using the few Spanish books I found at Goodwill (YEY!!) and a few that I found in the classroom, and trying to piece together something semi-understandable for my Spanish 1 kids, and my one spanish2 class (that is basically Spanish 1 level, unfortunately).

So right now it's kinda a day-to-day lesson plan experience. Maybe I can actually set up a whole week in advance this weekend, since I haven't gotten a paycheck yet,...
We are going to work on pronouns and maybe even get to start on conjugating -AR verbs...
and then practicing the verb llevar (to wear) and maybe a few more.... And maybe have them go shopping... for clothes. And practice their numbers at the same time.
Hmmm ideas. :)

Right now we are watching a movie on the Corazon de España. Madrid, Sevilla, etc... I want to go back now. wahhhh. lol. I want to take these kids to another country, but I'm not sure if that would even be possible monetary-wise, because they're in high school, and so many of them don't actually have a lot of money.
So if I can find a reallly inexpensive group trip type things I want to look into that for maybe this summer or maybe spring break... I want these kids to have so much more than they do already, and how much more cool would it be to visit a place like Mexico, which is just south of us.... ???

Pray for me that I can have wisdom with what to do. :)
and that I will be patient with myself. :) and consistent with the chillerns here.
and for my walk to be consistent.

I have one more class' worth of quizzes to put into the computer, and then a few to finish grading, and then I am going to look for things relating to clothing stores online... :)

If any of you have school supplies - notecards/3x5 cards, colored pencils, glue, markers, scissor(!), or any old magazines/catalogues that you don't want, I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to take them off your hands.

PO Box 1114
Sanders, AZ 86512

;)

Muchas gracias!!

~Amanda