Stick A Fork In It

This semester is done! I was done with going to class on Thursday, but I still had 2 assignments I needed to submit online. I got one submitted yesterday and I am having issues submitting the second one, but since I have done it and I only need to submit it I am saying that I am done for the semester. I basically get 5 weeks of a break since I do not have any finals to take. Justin has a final on Tuesday and then he will be done too! Please pray that he does well. He is done with ROTC so he doesn't have to go to PT anymore for the next few weeks. He, also, has a new position at the Detachment! He is a Training Squadron Commander. Pretty much he got promoted. He is now in charge of the people that took over his job from this semester. Yay him! Not to mention, now that he isn't a Field Training Officer anymore he's able to participate in SOP again and the new commander for next semester asked him to be Vice Commander which means he's basically Vice President. He had the option to "run" for Commander, but he didn't want to.

My assignments... The one that I have already submitted was a Clinical Report where I talked about my reading tutoring sessions with the little girl I tutored the last 2 months and I assess her progress. Holy cow! Putting that report together made me so proud. I know this may not make a lot of sense to yall, but students have 3 levels they can read on: independent [easy], instructional [needs some help and makes a few errors], and frustration [needs a lot of help and makes a lot of errors]- when I started tutoring the girl she could read at an instructional level [which is always the level book I would choose to read with her] of 2 and when we finished she was reading at a level 7! I was so proud to see that she jumped 5 levels in just the last 2 months. Not to mention she improved her writing so much. I wish I could share all her tests and such so you could actually see her improvement, but surely yall understand why I can't do that. I hate to say it, but the girl could be a little brat, however. Some days she was a good student, but other days she just... wasn't. The last day I was with her she knew we were going to have a goodbye party [I had her on Tuesdays and Thursdays and someone else tutored her on Monday and Wednesday's so they had their party the day before my class did] and she said "you better have bought me a present!" pffffft! That totally made me wish I hadn't. Not only that, but when she opened her present to find a book [which I was instructed to buy her] she said "you know I don't like books!" Ug. Shoot me in the foot. And then we had KRISPY KREME DONUTS at the party [what kid doesn't love donuts?!?!?!] and when I was walking her back to her classroom afterward she complained about the fact that she didn't get a brownie like she wanted. Jeez. So ungrateful. I'm sure I was the same way when I was her age too, though. It reminds me of one of our home movies... It was my birthday and I was having a party and someone had gotten me a game called Cooties and you can very clearly hear me say "I don't even like this game!!" PAH! Out of the mouth of babes, as Allison would say. The fact that I ended up loving that game makes the whole thing even worse! I actually just saw it in WalMart the other day when we were shopping for Dirty Santa gifts and I was temped to buy it. But anyways. Thankfully the girl was good most days and I'm thankful she was willing to participate in our sessions. One of my friend's had a student that was always a Danny Downer and he hardly ever wanted to read his books... Which led him to just say random words instead of actually try while he was reading, of course not realizing that his score affected his progression in the program. *sigh*

Anyhoo. Onto brighter subjects! We FINALLY put up our Christmas tree last night. It's about time, right?! We wouldn't even have it up now if Justin hadn't have gone out to the shed and put it up while I was finishing up my report. In a way, he saved Christmas! ;)

We also, finally, got our Christmas cards ordered and they are on their way to us! Hopefully I can get them addressed and sent out within the next few days!

We've been going to a few Christmas parties here and there. I went to one that was specifically for Elementary Education majors. We originally were going to do an ornament Dirty Santa, but then one of the girls came up with the idea of doing a children's book Dirty Santa so that we can all start building our classroom libraries! It was so much fun. I ended up "winning" Pete the Cat! I have a little bit of a sentimental connection with it because last semester when I had to spend 10 hours at the RISE program [my FIRST EVER "placement"] they always referenced or read a Pete the Cat story. I was pretty happy when I scored it for my classroom. 

These girls are the ones that I will be with for the next year [once we hit our internship we will have to go our separate ways!]. We ALL had music class together and only three of them [the two behind me and the girl in the red dress] will not be in our classes anymore. Those three will be taking the same classes as us, but they will be taking them at different times and with different teachers. The rest of us will always have the exact same classes!

And this is the awesome book I scored! There are a handful of Pete the Cat books, but I got this bad boy; which is the same one they would always read at RISE!

We also just went to an ROTC party on Friday. Once they put up photos I'll steal them and include them in a post! I had only planned for us to stay an hour, but we ended up being there almost 3 hours! Times flies when you watch people open up Dirty Santa gifts, let me tell ya! The hosts decided that instead of making the Dirty Santa gift be a $20 cap, they made it a $10 cap and had everyone also bring a $10 children's gift to be donated. I thought that was a really great idea! I bought a baby doll set that came with three outfits... And against my better judgement I let Justin pick his own gift- it was a football. Men! I got a good little giggle out of it and then tossed it in our cart and we went on our merry way. I guess he gets an A for effort, right?!

Not much else has been going on around here. We have just been wrapping up the semester and relaxing while we can. We are going to have a VERY busy break! Please pray that we have safe travels- 2 trips to Enterprise plus a trip to Vegas to see Dad and Elaine for the first time since last Christmas I think? We're going to try and make the most of our vacation, but hopefully it won't fly by too fast. It seems like the breaks get shorter and shorter every time.

We hope all of yall are doing great and hopefully we will be seeing a lot of you during the Christmas season. For those of you we won't get to see just know that we love and miss yall!