Amen and Thank You, Tommy Lee Jones!

It's about time someone well known made an ad like this!

The state of Texas is taking billions of dollars away from schoolchildren this coming school year. On top of that they are increasing class sizes and implementing a new state test which will be more rigorous than TAKS (called STAAR). My district is on a hiring freeze, a salary freeze, the district wants to furlough our holidays, and we're losing all of our specialists (which includes math and reading specialists.)

Texas is pretty much shooting the middle finger at all students and the future of our state and we're all supposed to be okay with it because they're saving a few dollars right at this moment. What they're not thinking about is how their decisions today affect the future. They can either fund education today or the prison system in the future. Looks like they've made their choice.

Tooth #2

 

Natalie was so excited to lose tooth #2 yesterday while she was brushing her teeth! She left it in a baggie in the bathroom again because she's such a light sleeper. We heard her get up out of bed around 9:30 pm last night. She was up just to check on the tooth. Mark says she was awake again around 1:00 am in her bathroom looking at her tooth. I didn't hear anything that time though. This morning she was up early and in our room around 5:30 am to show us what the tooth fairy left her. Needless to say she's tired today!

Fruit Arrangement

 

I received this lovely Edible Arrangements gift today from one of my student's parents at school for teacher appreciation week. It was so beautiful that I didn't want to eat it! Luckily I had Natalie around to help make the decision easier. She loved the flower and star fruit shapes and had fun eating the fruit from their skewers.

Poor Sad Fish Tank

Let the mourning begin...Mark's fish tank, his pride and joy, is officially dunzo. One day the corals started turning white and dying for no apparent reason. The fish are still alive and kicking which makes me happy, but the coral is shot. It's a mystery why they're dead, and while we've theorized how it happened, we'll probably never know for sure. RIP once beautiful corals.

Brrrr!

What a chilly day in May we're having! It was about 55 degrees with wind the entire day, which is really unusual this part of Texas in May! Not surprisingly Natalie's field day was postponed until Wednesday due to the weather. We went out to recess today at school and the wind just about blew us over. Plus there were slight water droplets in the air which only made it colder. But it's supposed to be up in the high 90s within the next several days. Only in Texas!

Sweat or Unsweat?

 

 

Yet another reason why the Texas legislature cannot afford to make the drastic budget cuts in education that they're making. These pictures were taken at a local Mexican restaurant close to our house. Do you like your tea with sweat or without?!

Natalie's Weekend

On Saturday we started out the weekend by driving next to the parade route for a small neighboring town's weekend celebration on the way to dance class. Natalie and her friend Bella, who was riding with us, really wanted to get out of the car and watch the parade, but I think we saw most of it driving by! We didn't take that route on the way home!

Natalie enjoyed some time with her grandparents while Mark and I dealt with a dresser situation at Babies R Us. We had ordered some furniture for "Pancake's" room and everything was great except for the four drawer dresser. The second drawer from the top was difficult to roll in and out and just never closed correctly. After a conversation with the manager, another dresser was ordered. We had them unwrap the box at the store to check it out before we brought it home. This time the top drawer was not rolling in correctly. After switching out drawers with the previous dresser it worked, however. The good news is that we got a percentage taken off the dresser for our inconvenience. It's in the room now and looks good.

Today we went to Peyton's baptism at church. Her cousin, Brayden, was baptized too. Afterwards we joined their families and extended families at Macaroni Grill.

Natalie and Kamryn had their first trip to the swimming pool this afternoon. It seemed a little bit on the chilly side to attempt the water, but I'm sure it wasn't cold for them. Luckily the daddies took them. Natalie came home shivering and complained of being cold until she took her shower. It was really overcast and the wind was blowing, so it wasn't the best weather for the pool, but they didn't care.

We're supposed to be getting a "cold front" coming through tomorrow and Natalie's school is having field day. We'll see how that pans out!