kids say the darndest things

Student: Ms. McCormack, this is something really weird ...

me: what is?

Student: well, usually my boogers are green, but today, they are red. Wanna see??

me: ew, no. and go get some hand sanitizer right now!

This is my life ... some days I love it much more than others. This would be one of those moments that I don't love it quite so much lol!

Money

After school today I was hanging out in my classroom with one of my favorite 7 year olds in the world. She stays after school with me every Tuesday, and we play games and chat for half an hour or so until her mom picks her up. She was telling me that her family is thinking about moving to a new house and she is really sad about it because it means she will have to go to a new school. The only good thing she said, is that she will get her own room, and she gets to choose what color it will be. So, I started asking questions about how she would paint her room, trying to get her a little more pumped up about the whole thing (she wants to paint it Aggie maroon btw ... can you tell why I love this kid so much?!? hehe). She asks me what colors I painted my room, and I told her that since I live in an apartment I'm not allowed to paint. She had this thoughtful look on her face for a second and then responded:

"well, why don't you just save up some of your dollars and buy a house"

Oh, if only it were just that easy. I'll just save a few dollars and buy my own home. haha. Oh I love kids, they are too darn cute!

Yoga Superstar!

Let's not talk about how I had to go back to work today and how I would rather have jumped off the highest cliff I could find, and instead let's talk about how I was a yoga superstar today!

Let me start by saying that it has been FOREVER since I went to yoga! For awhile there I was going at least two days a week, religiously. Then, my favorite instructor had to leave. I was so distraught about the situation that I stopped going. I wasn't willing to give the new lady a chance. The thing is, Monday is always a super long work day. There is very little motivation to do much after school on Monday, and without knowing if the new lady was good or not, I wasn't willing to give up the time.

Anyway, tonight I decided to go try out this new lady. Turns out, I really liked her. The class was very similar to what the Monday class used to be ... challenging, but not too difficult. So, toward the end of class the instructor tells us we are going to practice crow pose. For those that don't know what it is, it looks like this:

It's not that easy. I've been working on it for a long time and I've gotten to a point where I am decent ... I mean, I can get my feet up and balance for a few seconds, but then I always topple (I can't even tell you how many times I have literally fallen loudly on my face). Last year I had made it a personal goal for myself to master this pose before the year was over, but, I had sort of forgotten about it, as I hadn't done crow pose in months. So today, the instructor starts explaining what to do for those who don't know, but since I already did, I just went ahead and got started while she was still talking. All of a sudden I realized I was completely balanced; I wasn't toppling over at all! Then I heard the instructor say, "I'm still working on perfecting my crow, I'm not very good at it, but I know some people in this room can do it. Oh! Everyone look at the girl in the pink, she's got it!" and I was thinking in my head "oh crap everyone is staring at me now I'm going to fall flat on my face" but I DIDN'T FALL! Everyone watched me in my awesome crow pose and I didn't ever fall over! It was amazing! When I let myself down people were looking at me and nodding their heads like, "wow, good job". My face probably turned red, but that's okay. I totally got it! I totally met the goal I set for myself! I'm sort of super proud :) yay me!

Project 365 - Week 1

Here are my first 3 photos of the year.

I figure I will try to post some sort of picture collage here on Sunday each week, so even though this week only had 3 days in the new year, I'll go ahead and post anyway. If you want to see a better view of each picture then click on over to my photoblog and you can see each one separately.

Not so bad for the first 3 days. We'll see how this goes once I start work again tomorrow and don't have all day to drive around random places and take pictures. haha I do really love this photoblog site though. I just spent HOURS looking through other people's photos. It's great to see what other people have done and get ideas. Plus, random people can look at your stuff too and comment. I mean, who doesn't love getting comments?!? :)

Chocolate Cupcakes

Chocolate Cupcakes - Two ways! :)

What else is a girl to do with so much time off but bake? (and with my new mixer which I am TOTALLY in LOVE with, I could bake every single day!) I have been wanting to try a basic chocolate cupcake for awhile now, so, today was the day. I used the Hershey recipe for these, and while the flavor is good, the cake was a little spongy for me. A decent chocolate cupcake for sure, but I don't think it will be my "go to" chocolate recipe. I'll have to keep experimenting for that ...

As for the frosting? I went back and forth between wanting a good vanilla frosting to top the chocolate cupcake, or a rich chocolate frosting. So, I decided to try both.

I'm not a huge fan of buttercream frosting in general (never really have been), but vanilla can compliment a good chocolate cupcake well, and I do like it in small quantities. That's why I made the mini cupcakes this time. Aren't they cute? These are perfect because each one only has a touch of the vanilla buttercream. And then of course there is the chocolate. I do really like this chocolate frosting. yum! :)

Accountability

I'm the kind of person that likes lists. I make lists, and I check things off my list. Heck, I've even been known to put things on my list that I have already done, just so I can cross them off. I like check marks, happy faces, and anything that holds me accountable for what I plan to accomplish in a given day/week etc.

I was thinking about all these resolutions I've made and how many of them are things I want to do daily (take pictures, read the bible), a few times a week (workout), or monthly (volunteer, try new things). I needed a way to keep track of all of this information and hold myself accountable. I like check marks and happy faces remember?!?

So, I started looking around and found this neat site: Joe's Goals.

It's free, and online, which means you can use it from where ever you are. You input what your goals are and then you can put check marks in each box as you complete them. If it's a daily goal, you can check it off daily. Better than that, you can see every day ever that you got a check. I love that it doesn't just go away after you've done it, you can go back and see how many times that goal has been accomplished. If it's not a daily goal, you can create a log book which shows up right under your weekly checklist. Then when you do something relating to that goal, you can make a note of it. This is totally right up my ally. Thought some of you might be interested in it as well, so I just wanted to share :)

Project 365

So, about Project 365 ...

I am going to make a serious effort to take at least one photo for every day in 2010. Just saying that sounds crazy, but here's the thing: not every picture has to be phenomenal. I would be kidding myself if I thought that I could take an awesome picture for 365 straight days. Some pictures will probably really suck, and I'm okay with that, as long as it's a picture. Not going to lie, some pictures may even be taken with my camera phone on days that I just can't get it together. Hopefully more of them will be decent photos than not, but we'll see.

I set up a photoblog to document my year in photos. If you would like to follow along, feel free to do so here: My Photoblog

I think I will try to post a collage of my photos at the end of each week here, but I can't guarantee that will always happen.

One day down, 364 to go. haha!