Friday, November 16, 2007

House hopping and Jr High woes.

We are moving a week from today. Bye bye to the beautiful cave.
But this weekend, it is hello to the Nam's house...
Our dear friends are kind enough to loan us their house for the week while the Jansen clan joins us here in Arizona for a week-long Thanksgiving vacation. I loaded up all the food, the cookbook (Frog Commisary), the essentials (wine and the lime press plus the food processor) and our clothes and "moved in" this afternoon while the Nams are on their way to LA for the weekend.
It will be a series of moves for me all week. Tommorrow I will be taking a load of things down to the Shanks to begin our moving into their basement. The apartment is all packed up and mostly ready to go. I wanted to get a headstart by clearing out all our clothes and bathroom items (you know, that last car load of random items) and moving them down there. But we'll see how fast I move tommorrow morning.
Yesterday, I literally wiped myself out at work. From seven until 3:30, I was on my feet trying to keep the attention of 500 7th and 8th grade boys fixed on nutrition and health. You try it sometime. My highlight moment of the day was with this boy named Devon. You could tell the minute he walked in. He was the wild child. You can't always figure out who is going to be the silent but deadly child...but you can always pick out the vocal ones. My strategy is always to find one kid in the crowd to focus on, using their name and using them as an example. There's always one. This time, it was Devin. My rule is that during my presentations, you talk, you do push-ups. Girls or boys, it doesn't matter. So when Devin started commenting 4 seconds into my presentation, I said, "Drop and give me ten." He looked at me with this face like "you're not serious?!". I repeated my instructions and he did them. I couldn't help it. I went ahead and said it even though I probably shouldn't have. When he finished his ten push-ups, I said off-handledly, "I'm surprised you could do ten in girl jeans." I couldn't help it. What are you supposed to do when all these 13 year old boys wear tighter jeans than their girlfriends do. The whole class roared. I have to say, it was my favorite moment of that very long day.

1 comment:

Tiffany said...

As a former junior high teacher, I can totally relate to this story! How I would have loved to make my kids do push-ups! That is awesome!