Things and such...

So this past weekend was pretty great. Took off work on Friday, so we left after work on Thursday to go to Chambersburg, where Mike's track team was holed up in a hotel for the State track and field meet on Friday and Saturday. Stayed there Thursday night, saw his girl shot putter take 4th in the competition on Friday. Stayed Friday night, and saw his boy javelin thrower win states on Saturday. Dramatically. He was warming up really well, tossing the jav well over 200' without much effort. Then came his first throw in the competition and he slipped on his plant foot, and had a bad throw. No big deal, two more to go in prelims. Second throw, slips again, another poor throw. Uh-oh, he's got to get one in on his last one, or he may not make it to finals at all!! Takes a half approach, basically stops and chucks it with just his arm, and throws it 184'5". This puts him in NINTH PLACE. They only take NINE to finals. He beat out TENTH place by ONLY ONE INCH. For those of you in the throwing world (which are probably few, given my audience) you know that this is a ridiculous circumstance, and that he is LUCKY BEYOND BELIEF to have even made it to finals. SOOOOO they take 9 to finals, but only the top eight place. In finals, they throw in reverse order, so the kid who was 9th throws first and the kid in first place throws last. That means our guy is up first to throw. BUT WAIT! PIAA officials decide to be jerks, and tell our guy they could DQ him because his shorts have too many Under Armour logos on them! The horror! He must quickly put another pair of shorts on over top of the ones he's wearing, and PHEW, he can throw. Now the boy is just fired up (he was favored to win coming in to the meet...). So, the first throw of finals, and our guy pops a 221'3" throw. You know, a mere 40' farther than his last throw:) It was amazing just to watch it. He was only 3 feet off the state record. And it was a PR for him by about 2 or 3 feet. That ended up being the winning throw. The kid who came in second place threw 203'. Yes, our guy won by 18'. Not too shabby. He's going to Puerto Rico in a couple weeks for an international meet, then we're going out with him to Ohio State University the third weekend in June for Junior Nationals. So yeah, Mike's a stud coach.

After Saturday's events we finally came back home. Mike's sister was in town from Texas, so Sunday after the first hour of church, we left and went to HersheyPark with Mike's parents and sister. I underestimated how dull HersheyPark is when you can't ride the rides. We had a good time, nonetheless.

Monday we had a picnic at our house. Whenever Mike's sister is home, there's always a big to do because most of their family is local, and they love to see Amanda when she's here, since she's really the only family that lives far away! We'd done it before in parks, or at Mike's parents house, but we decided to offer to host since we've got the big deck, new grill, and big yard. It was a good time!

AND - we made the announcement to Mike's extended family that I'm pregnant:) I haven't blogged about it previously, because he wanted to tell his sister in person, and his family in person. I think they may check this blog (hi!) so I didn't want to blow the secret!!

Anyway, here are some observations on pregnancy so far:

I get nauseas all the time and it's not pleasant. Toothpaste makes me gag. And I don't really get sick enough to vomit, but I almost think it's even worse sometimes when I get the dry heaves, and just can't stop for 15-20 minutes at a time. I've been surviving mainly on cereal, fruit, yogurt and occasionally burritos or something like that. I can't stand chicken, unless it's in nugget form. Or if it's in hot wing form, with a side of Grape Nuts. I kid you not. And every time I eat, I feel like I've eaten a thanksgiving meal. You know, when you've eaten so much that you have to undo the button on your pants, and then you have to breath really, really deep, but can't because you feel like your stomach will explode.

Also, pants aren't cool. They're tight and constricting. And my boobs are getting big, ruining my regular, everyday outfit of khaki's and a button down. I literally had a button pop open one day. Thank goodness I was wearing a white t-shirt underneath! Flashing boob would not be a good career move.

Also, my sense of smell has gone crazy. Now when I go for a walk around my neighborhood, I can tell which houses have cats, because I can smell the cat pee all over the yard. I am also having a hard time being around particular students who are smelly. They are smelly for a variety of reasons, but they all really gross me out.

I'm not showing too much, and I wish I would just hurry up and SHOW, dang it! I just look chubby for now. My goodness, when I look down at my own tummy, I feel like I'm HUGE! I mean...ENORMOUS! And then I look at myself sideways in the mirror, and it's just a tiny, tiny little bump. But I guess I'm only 16 weeks, and my pregnancy book says that for many first time moms, "showing" doesn't start to happen until almost 20 weeks. So. Ya know. It'll be a while.

My job continues to suck. Apparently many people here have voiced concern over the increasing problems we've had with unruly students, and unsupportive administrators, and low teacher morale. So at our last faculty meeting our administrators thought it would be helpful to give us a tongue lashing, explaining that we should just suck it up, deal with discipline ourselves, and stop whining because the administrators have enough to deal with because so many parents are calling in to complain about their kid getting disciplined. I think a nice, "We know it's been a tough year, but you're doing a good job, so hang in there, it's almost over" would have been nice. But no, it's tough love here. Actually, it's "SCREW YOU" here, because they just don't care about the teachers. All they care about is making sure that parents get what they want, so that less parents will complain, so that administrators will have less to do. Sounds like a solid plan. Not. Why don't we just let students do whatever they want? Oh wait, that IS what we do!!!

Moving on, there are only 6.5 school days left with students, plus one day of inservice after that. My room is pretty much cleaned out already. I did that yesterday and today. I'll have a few things to take out my last in-service day, but mostly everything else is gone already. Farewell, PHS. I hate you.

On another note, I wore my "I HEART WORLD HISTORY" t-shirt today for our dress down day. Kids loved it. Told me I was cool. I already knew that, but whatever.

So, it's 3:30 and I can leave work now. Bye.