A wee bit of hope and shoe stories

Is anyone else feeling the way I am? A tad bit "down in the mouth" as they say on White Christmas? I have found myself religiously counting down the days until the school year is over. There is just something negative and un-optimistic about that. I have been looking to find reasons to get excited to come to my job. Instead of seeing them as "these last hellish days," I need to look at them as the last fews chances that I have to wield some sort of postive influence over my students. Every morning I am trying to hype myself up for this job. They don't tell you about this mental struggle in your undergraduate.

Okay, so here is what I have been thinking.... everyone hates their job right? So I just need to buck up and stop whining about it on my blogger! The thing is, that as a Chicago public school teacher, EVERYONE knows that my job is tough. If I meet anyone new and tell them what I do and for what district, I immedietly get raised eyebrows and a sympathetic, "Ohhhh... that must be tough." So this makes me feel specially entiteled to whine about what I do. But that is dumb. Because MOST jobs have their pluses and minues. Sometimes the minues in my job seem to overwhelm the postive. But STILL! So here is the wee bit of hope I mentioned in the title..... I will officially no longer bitch about any aspect of my job on this blog! Weehoooooo!!! The masses upon masses of people who read this can breath a collective sigh of relief. :)

Here is a fun thing that happened today. I am up at the board, making a poster of the components my students need to include on their upcoming science fair projects. I feel like everyone is listening and interested because they LOVE working on their science fair projects and they feel relieved that we are actually doing them. Then all of a sudden a hear a quiet voice ask, "Where are Ms. Dahlseng's shoes"? Followed by more students voicing them same question (if you are curious, they did NOT raise their hands to ask the question). Soon, the whole class was disussing what had happened to my shoes. They were just hidden under my long black pants! Even something as small as my "missing shoes" can disengage my little learners at this point in the year! Speaking of shoes, the other day I had to duct tape my shoes together because they broke in the middle of the day! My students had a field day with that because they are always ragging on me for not wearing name brand shoes. Some of them keep promising to buy me Jordans. :) I would take them and run!

I am an AUNT!

My sister had a baby girl last night around 3:30pm!!! This is the first baby in our family, and we are SOOO super excited! Well, Katie (my sister) is just exhausted and happy, but the rest of us who didn't have to go through labor are simply jubilant! :) I will try to post some pictures, but I am not entirely sure how to do it if I don't have a CD. I'll figure it out.

Other news...... my wedding is in 40 days! A visiting pastor was preaching on the significance of the number 40 in church yesterday. I honestly don't remember what he said, but I do remember thinking, "hmmm... thats cool." But I forgot. STILL.... in some way, having only 40 days until the wedding is significant, even if I don't remember why/how! :)

P.S.--if you are coming to my wedding and you have not sent in your postcard response yet, PLEASE put a 2 cent stamp on it before you mail. I totally did not think about the postage change when I mailed out my invitations. I apologize for the inconvenience.