"Hold Your Head Up"

Hold Your Head Up by Agent

And if it's bad
Don't let it get you down, you can take it
And if it hurts
Don't let them see you cry, you can take it

Hold your head up, hold your head up
Hold your head up, hold your head high

And if they stare
Just let them burn their eyes on you moving
And if they shout
Don't let them change a thing what you're doing

Hold your head up, hold your head up
Hold your head up, hold your head high

So this year I've decided to stand up for myself a bit more. I'm normally the type of person that will say yes to anything work related. I'm a push-over. I'll serve on more committees, I'll take the extra student, Sure I'll take the student no one else wants. Well I'm finally going to try and actually stand up for myself.

It's going to be hard. Especially in my school setting. For those of you that don't really know where I work, here's a short synopsis.

I work on a residential treatment facility for kids K-12 that have emotional, mental and psychological problems. These used to be the kids that were sent away to hospitals, facilities and even jail. Most of our kids have severe aggression issues. We are trained yearly on proper hold techniques. If you work in schools, think about the Behavior Classroom. Now times that by 20. That's what I work with on a daily basis. I really do love my job. It's stressful and I often break down (granted this is at home and not where my kids can see me!) I'm verbally and physically assulted often. But I know what I'm doing will make a difference. These kids don't have stable families, they don't come to school with name brand shoes. It's normally clothes from the Center's attic, with their initials black inked on. Not many people will stand up for these kids and actually think they can make it in everyday society. I think every teacher should spend a day in a setting like this, so that they can appreciate what they have so much more and start to make a difference in their student's lives.

I should also mention that my classroom is the one where the "bad" kids are placed. I tend to get the more difficult kids, and I welcome that challenge with open arms. I learn something daily from this and am very thankful that I can.

So now that you have an idea of my school, I'll let you know about our staff. We only have 6 classrooms, which means 6 teachers. A very small setting. And it is amazing that all of our teachers want what is best for their kids. However we have some that are so stubborn in their ways that they always get what they want. This is where I get put into a really awkward position. Again, 6 teachers, we all have a cap of 10 students. 4 male teachers and 2 women (Different I know, but I think it coincides with our setting. You will never see a preppy, prissy teacher here!)So I'm already at 9 kids. The two classes with younger kids are holding steady at 5 and 6. The upper middle school class has 6 kids and the H.S. class has 3. Yes, you heard me, 3. So based on that, do the numbers look right? I'll start by saying that we do try and keep kids together based on grade levels. However in the past two years, I have had a range of 4th through 12th graders in my class at 1 time. Now that is the deal with Special Ed. You differentiate, you scaffold. You learn to teach everyone. But right now I feel as if we have certain teachers that could care less about what is fair and right. They think they should get to pick and choose what kids are in their classroom. I'm tired of it. When one of my 9 kids because aggressive int he classroom, throwing things, cussing, hitting, it sets off all 8 of my other kids. I want what's best for my students and cramming them all into one room isn't working (Oh, it might be a good idea to mention that I have the smallest classroom on campus!) I want other teachers to start standing up as well and saying "something doesn't look right here."

I know this is turning into more of rant than an explanation of my feelings. I apologize for that. But Hell isn't that what Blogs are for?

Okay I'm done for now. I'm not even going to read over what I've written. So if you find a mistake, well done! :)

Update on Updates!

We are now at 14 weeks :) Woohooo!

This is a recap from our 12 week appt with the Doc.

On the 8 week appt, we met our nurse practitioner. She was incredibly nice.(and I'm assuming we will see more of her) This time we met our doc. He was awesome, so informative and funny.

Everything looks good. Apparently my blood type is O- which only 15% of the population are. Thought that was interesting. So near the due date, I'll have a shot that insures that my body won't fight off other blood types. Apparently the little beano will be a positive (Either O or B like Joe) and sometimes the kids blood can get in my blood, so they need to tell my body to not fight it if it does. He said that the first birth normally doesn't cause problems. But this shot will help the second birth even more.

He also explained that I am not immune to Rubella, and right after the birth I will need the vaccine for that. He was surprised that I didn't get it again b/c I work with kids. I have never heard that, so that's interesting!!!

He tried to listen to the heartbeat, but didn't have much luck. The baby is still tilted towards the back and all he could hear was movement. So we got to have a quick ultrasound. It was pretty cool. The little guy was sitting up and had these hiccup like movements. We saw his left hand stretched out and you could see all the bones! He was definitely waving at us :)

We are scheduled for another ultrasound and blood draw next week for some additional tests. Hopefully those will go well!

It's Official!!!

We are having a baby :) Due date March 27, 2010.

I'm currently 10 1/2 weeks. Here is our ultrasound picture from 8 weeks exactly!

Hopefully I will be able to post daily about our trek through pregnancy!

Funny Video

Joe and I have been laughing about this video for a few hours! I could totally see CB dreaming and doing the exact same thing (he actually runs into walls while he is awake!)

L.G.'s B Day Party

So as many of you know I started boxing around a year ago. Yes, gloves, mitts and hitting. I've grown to love it! I think it makes up for all those years that I swam and there was no physical contact! One of my friends (who we just moved about 10 blocks from and owns the gym) had her birthday party a few weeks ago. LG and Aurora decided to make Sumo Wrestling outfits for the party. What a blast!!!! I would totally recommend playing around with these if you ever get a chance!!!! There were also a few rounds of twister as well as dancing. Good Times.

4th of July Weekend

July 4th was here before we even realized it! We didn't really plan much for the holiday weekend. We ended up playing disc golf with a couple of friends. Then grilled out at the house followed by fireworks watching. Supposedly you can see fireworks from the Fort of Vancouver (however Vancouver city didn't have the money this year). So we settled on watching the fireworks of ALL our neighbors. I have never seen anything like it! Almost all the houses were setting off fireworks in the streets! (Under powerlines, trees etc.) We ended up stopping by "crazy Nathaniel's" house and watched him set off fireworks with his mom. They were quite impressive

On Sunday we ended up going to OMSI to see there CSI exhibit! We have yet to pay full price for this museum which is pretty cool. (We have gone free the last two times, and on Sunday it was the first Sunday of the month and it is only 2 bucks!!!) On our way home from OMSI we stopped at Next Adventure and picked up two disc's to play disc golf with! We then headed out to the Sandy River and Dabney State Park to play 18 holes and then float down the river. It was a perfect day. (I was worried it would be too crowded, but it wasn't bad at all!)

I'm going to try to attach some pictures, hopefully it will work! Stay tuned to see pic's from my friends BDAY party and SUMO wrestling outfits!!!

Slowly but Surely.....

I'll fill y'all in on what has been going on these last few months.

Yesterday my friend and I competed in The Great Urban Race (Portland). Have you ever seen The Amazing Race? Our race was loosely based on that show. It was a huge scavenger hunt that took us over most of downtown. You and your teammate had to dress alike. We went with simple iron on tshirts supporting our boxing gym Sweet Science! Other teams went all out, Mickey and Minnie, Two Peas in a Pod, TMNT, etc....




Our first photo-op :) Before our two hour trek through downtown.















They started by herding us all into a circle and going over the rules (No bikes, cabs, planes, cars, etc.) Then they handed us each team an envelope and instructed us to wait. Then the countdown began. We opened the clue packets and began. There were 12 clues (we are allowed to skip 1) Most of the clues we were able to figure out on our own. A few we used our "Call a Friend" (thanks so y'all!!!)






Clue: Go to the Smith Memorial Union building and recreate the sentence "Portland is a magnificent city to host the Great Urban Race" with letters and words cut out from magazines.









The Finished Project!















Clue: Take a picture in front of a larger than life Chinook salmon sculpture while making a fish face
















Clue: Take a picture posing with a real person wearing Chuck Taylors

One would think that being in Portland it would be easy to find a converse wearing fool (not so!!!)














Clue: Take a picture with the answers to two riddles:
(a)I opened in 1913 and was modeled after The Blackstone in Chicago and (b) I was designed by AE Doyle and the first of 20 of me is located at SW 5th Ave and Washington St. [Thanks to our lifelines for this one!]

(Notice the mask wearing woman in the background!)



Clue: Visit the restaurant that makes pizza "the way it ought to be" and take a picture of one teammate feeding the slice to the other teammate.












Clue: Take a picture standing in front of this statue. [The clue gave us a black and white photo of it]











Clue: Buy office supplies at Office Max and donate them to Schoolhouse Supplies

We had fun with this photo op!!










Clue: Take a picture of ten people flexing their muscles in front of the Skidmore Fountain.

Not a bad idea for this group. They had ten people waiting to flex and take a pic for a donation to Race for the Cure







Clue: Take a picture wearing either a saw, plunger, or golf club headpiece at Spoonman Creations at the Saturday Market.

I think we were getting pretty tired by this point and didn't take full advantage of where we were and our props!








Yeah we finished!!!! And no time penalties (You get a penalty if you take a picture of the wrong thing etc.)









All in all an awesome experience and I would totally love to do it again!