first day of school

Today was definitely the best first day of school I've ever had. Nothing really great happened, but nothing really bad happened. The nothing bad happening part is what made my day so great. It was just a better start than I have had in the past. I actually felt like I knew what I was doing.

My first year of teaching I had a wonderful class, but my first day of school was a disaster. I had a kid color all over a table, I was late everywhere I went, I had no idea what I was doing and I ended my day chasing a kid into a muddy field who was escaping time-out. My second year wasn't all that bad. I just didn't realize how much my first group of kids had matured over the year and I wasn't ready for my "babies" on the first day of school.

I can already see that this year has potential to be a great one. I have some really great sweet kids in my class and have some really wonderful parents as well. Yay!!

So in honor of it being the first day of school, I thought that I would take you back to my school days and show you all of my first days of school........with a little commentary!!!

Kindergarten

This picture made it to the local news. I guess they thought I was really cute!! Or maybe they thought it was cool that my Mom made my first day of school outfit.

1st Grade

Fresh red keds and another homemade outfit. I loved those shoes!!!

2nd Grade

Another school themed first day of school outfit made by none other than my Mom!!

3rd grade

I guess this year I asked my Mom to make me a non-school themed outfit. I got Sunflowers, including one in my hair.

4th grade

Fourth grade must have been when I put my foot down on homemade outfit. This outfit was from Limited Too! I was SOOOOO proud of it. And I loved the belt!!

5th Grade

This was when it was cool to wear a denim jacket and a denim skirt. And this was also the year that everyone had Mary Janes. You were only cool if you had black Mary Janes.

6th Grade

This was my first year out of elementary school and the year I permed my hair. I thought I was really cool in this outfit and I thought my perm was beautiful. But the socks.....What was I thinking??

7th Grade

I have no idea what I was thinking with these pajama like pants. You can't see them, but I was wearing Dr. Martin sandals. Everyone had them....literally everyone.

8th Grade

I was going for the preppy look in 8th grade. I look like I should have been the teacher.

9th Grade

9th grade is when I started having volleyball practice before school. My Mom insisted that we took a literal "leaving for school picture.

This was my "after school" picture my freshman year.

10th Grade

Off to volleyball practice!!

11th Grade

This must have been one of our 6:15 practices, because I looked absolutely horrible that morning.

12th Grade

My last first day of school picture.......or so I thought!!

No College Pictures.

1st Year of Teaching

My sweet Mom woke up early to keep the tradition and take my first day of school picture.

2nd Year of Teaching

I forgot to take an "official" first day of school picture, but this is one that I took with a student on the first day of school. This was the year I started off as Miss St. John and finished as Mrs. Link!!

3rd Year of Teaching

My sweet husband snapped a picture of me before I left for school this morning bright and early.

Today was a wonderful day and hopefully a start to a wonderful year!!

I hope all of you teachers out there had a wonderful First Day of School!!

meal planning monday

Monday: Shrimp Alfredo

Tuesday: Chicken Salad & Chips

Wednesday: Southwestern Bacon Wraps

Thursday: Swiss Steak @ my parent's house

Friday: Sour Cream & Chicken Enchiladas, Mexican Rice & Beans

Saturday Lunch: Grilled Cheese & Soup

Saturday Dinner: Grilled Chicken, Macaroni & Cheese, & Veggies

Sunday Lunch: Crispy Chicken Salad w/ Ranch

Sunday Dinner: ABF Pizza Party @ our House

my husband is the greatest

All teachers know that the week before school is absolutely crazy. This week has been nothing short of crazy for me!!

My sweet husband has been so patience with me this week though.

He never complained about the crummy meals that I threw together each night.

He never complained about the laundry that piled up so high it started to overflow into the bathtub.

He never complained about my multiple to do lists that were laying around all over the house.

He never complained about the growing pile of dishes in the sink.

He never complained about the mess from our party on Saturday staying in our kitchen all week long.

He never complained about only seeing me a couple hours each day.

He never complained about me working on school stuff the second I got home from school until the moment I crashed in bed.

I'm pretty sure I have the greatest husband!!

Thanks for being so patient with me this week. I love you, babe!!

scratch that

So we ended up having absolutely nothing on my "Meal Planning Monday" list from this week. I had no time to get to the grocery store and I think the earliest I got home this week was five o'clock. We ended up eating some leftovers, Taco Delight eating at my parents house one night, a frozen pizza, Pei Wei and chili cheese wraps. REALLY HEALTHY HUH??

Now that school is about to start I really need to plan my menus out. So I'm working on a grocery list and my menu for next week right now. Don't be surprised if you see some of the same things from last week since we didn't actually have them!!

Happy Meal Planning! I can't wait to hear what you are having!!

meal planning monday

Meal Planning Monday slipped up on me this week. Here's what I have so far, but since I'm off to work I'll have to post the rest later.

Feel free to leave a comment on what you are having this week and maybe I'll fill in my holes with your ideas!!

Monday: Lemon Pepper Chicken, Zucchini, & Sliced Potatoes

Tuesday:

Wednesday: Southwestern Bacon Wraps

Thursday:

Friday: Drew's Graduation Dinner with Family

Saturday Lunch:

Saturday Dinner: Steaks & Baked Potatoes

Sunday Lunch:

Sunday Dinner:

and the bad dreams begin...

Well, I had my first bad dream about school last night.

I have such a hard time going to sleep the week before school starts. I go to bed thinking about how I should arrange my room, or how I should do my homework schedule, or things that I need to do in my classroom. It takes forever for me to fall asleep. And then once I fall asleep, I have the wildest dreams about school. I toss and turn all night long and really don't feel rested in the morning .

You would think that since I have two years of experience under my belt that I wouldn't be so nervous/anxious about the new school year. But I am. I am definitely going in more confident this year than I have in the past two years, but I definitely get nervous when I think about the first day of school. You just never know how it's going to play out.

So, would you say a pray that I would get some good sleep this next week so I can be ready for the first day of school on August 24th?

if you don't hear from me for a while....

You can find me in Room K15

I've already been up in my classroom a couple of times this summer to get it all put together, but today was officially our first day back to school.

Welcome to Mrs. Link's Classroom!!

Check back sometime after August 24th and I'm sure I'll have some funny Kindergarten stories to tell you!!

iGoogle & google reader

My life will never be the same because of iGoogle and Google Reader.

Okay, maybe that is an exaggeration. But it's seriously amazing. If you don't have and iGoogle page then you are seriously missing out. For the longest time, I thought that Google Reader was the sidebar on my blog where it has the blogs that I read. But it's not. It's so much better than that.

You can check you e-mail, read your blogs, check the weather, and do so much more all from the same page.

See.....

Here is what my iGoogle page looks like.

Go to http://igoogle.com/ and set up your own. (you'll need a google account) But if you set up a page, don't forget to actually go to the blogs that you read leave comments and become a follower. Everybody blogger loves comments & followers!!

all tangled up

Last week when I was working on my desk for my Office Space, I put Izzie on three leashes and hooked her to the refrigerator outside so she could hang out with me.

She loved having some "freedom" outside to move around.

But she couldn't figure out how to keep untangled.

Finally she figure it out how to stay untangled .....

....by just hanging out underneath Matt's car.

my new kitchen

Let me remind you what it looked like before....

And here is how my kitchen looks now!!

I'm just now getting around to posting pictures because we just officially finished it last night. We decided to cut costs and save our backsplash. We didn't realize that the granite was a little shorter than the formica that we had, so when the granite guys were all done there was a small gap between the tile and the granite.

(If you click on the picture you can see it better.)

So last night, with the help of my Dad, we cut some small tile, filled in the small spaces, and caulked it to make it look like it was all part of the plan. Here is how it looks now.

While I'm showing you pictures of our new countertops, I thought I would give you a little tour of our kitchen.

This is the view from our living room.

I know I've already shown you my office space, but I thought I would show you again because I'm kind of obsessed with it. It's where I'm blogging right now!! The door goes into our laundry room.

Here's our laundry room.

Here's our eating area and the door goes out to our back patio.

I can't show this picture of our kitchen table without showing you a picture of what our kitchen table looked like before.

Mom found this table at a garage sale for about $20 or 30. It was ugly green and only had 5 chairs, but we saw potential in it. Mom painted it black for me and then we went to Canton and found a bench for $40, that was originally marked $120. Score!!!

I am so glad to have my kitchen all put back together. Maybe I'll be able to talk my husband into that Stainless Steel oven and microwave sooner than later so we can really be done with remodeling the kitchen!!

(Matty, if you are reading this.....hint hint, babe)

Oh and for those of you wondering how we got locked out of house last night. Here's the story in a nutshell.....

We decided to take a break from the tile work and go get dinner with my Dad.

Matt closed the garage door and ran out. We both realized that we didn't have our keys. We went and ate, hoping we had left a door unlocked. We came back home to discover no doors were unlocked. Our only spare key was in Rockwall with my Mom where she was eating dinner with friends. So we had to wait until she got home to get back in our house, We had enough time to watch a movie with my Dad at my parents house. My Mom finally got home around 10pm. So needless to say, we will be getting a couple more spare keys!!

meal planning monday

Monday: Spaghetti & Meat Sauce, Garlic Toast and Green Beans

Meteor Burger with my Dad

Tuesday: Golden Pork Chops, Rice, and Brocolli

Wednesday: Skillet Tacos Nachos

Thursday: Hawaiin Chicken, Zuchinni, and Potatoes

Friday: Smith Staff Family Cook-Out

Saturday Lunch: Whatever you can find!!

Saturday Dinner: Spring Creek BBQ at our house with family

Sunday Lunch: Grilled Cheese, Chips, and Fruit

Sunday Dinner: Leadership Dinner at church