Happy Monday before Fall Break! I'm not usually one to count down to a break, but, then again, I've never worked directly with kids before, and I am most definitely in countdown mode.

This past week was just a crazy as I imagined it would be, which is why I did not have any posts last week other than my start-of-the-week motivation post. I had a workshop on Tuesday, and all of seventh grade went on a field trip on Thursday. We ended up having to do a re-test on our novel due to a technical glitch, and we did not get any of the writing that I had planned on done.

This week won't be much better. I have an all-day training on Tuesday, and Friday is a half day, meaning I have three full teaching days...but at least one of those days will be dedicated to watching the movie version of the novel we just finished, and to be quite honest it will more than likely take two full days to watch the movie and do the activity to meet the standard we're covering. I hope to get at least an hour's worth of writing in for the week, but that's probably me being overly ambitious. In all actuality, we'll probably only get to do some type of writing on Monday, but it can't be our only focus because I've got to set them up for the activities they'll do while I'm out on Tuesday.

Anyway, that's what I spent a good portion of my weekend doing - planning for this chopped up week. I also got all of my grades entered for report cards. The first nine weeks officially ended last week. Our school does a parent pick-up for report cards, so I'll have to stay late on that day.

Also this weekend, we got some cleaning done and added a few fall decorations in among our regular decor. Sadly, the majority of my fall stuff is in a box that hasn't made it into this house yet, so it'll be Fall Break before I really get to go all out. We did watch Hocus Pocus 2, though, and baked some jack-o-lantern cookies. Our new neighborhood has lots of trees so we're really getting to experience the fall of the leaves for the first time in several years. Alexis loves it. And our weather actually feels like fall, which never happens this early in the season. It's not sweater weather by any means, but I can wear jeans and not feel like I'm having heat stroke.

Well, that's pretty much got you caught up. I hope everyone has a wonderful week!